Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Judea Rochelle
Johnson Goldman
101 REASONS WHY I’M A VEGETARIAN
edmond.jen@verizon.net
of law: Instead of society judging which
of its actions should be legal or illegal,
it makes this determination itself. Is
24 As many as one person in three
in industrialized countries may
be affected by foodborne illness each
there any wonder that precious little year, with children, pregnant women,
Emerge Holistic economic loss exists for the benefit of the sick, the poor, and the elderly being
Specializing in vegetarian farmed animals? the most at risk, according to the World
nutrition & lifestyle counseling
www.emergeholistic.com • 917-355-0913 21 In the mid-1970s, chicken proces-
sors argued that in order to keep
Health Organization. Furthermore,
Stacey A. Sawel, director of scientific
101 REASONS WHY I’M A VEGETARIAN
26
of the crazed look in the veal calf’s eyes and a vandal’s
Birds are cheap and cages cent of grain worldwide lav-
splash of paint above the nose. The air vents above the face
are expensive, so battery add an extra touch of ignobility to the composition. ishly goes to feed livestock. And
hens live out their dreary days in Appropriately, the photographer found this one in the just when the world seems to
space just about the size of their decrepit meat district of New York City. think it needs more land to cul-
bodies. No hen gets to run, build tivate grain to feed to animals
a nest, enjoy a cleansing dust bath, into pens and shot or beaten to death. (so more people can eat them), per-
mate, lift a wing, protect a chick, for- Some pigs ended up being buried alive. capita world cropland declined by 20
age in the sun, perch, or fly. Instead,
this creature will spend her time 29 Gigantic open-air cesspools of percent—this in the 1990s alone. The
urine and feces are invariably World Health Organization says 1.2
crouching and fending off the frantic situated adjacent to the barns that billion people in the world don’t get
feather pulling of cage mates. And hold thousands and even millions of enough to eat. More meat production
every egg that is laid will roll away factory animals. The stench that they is definitely not the answer.
down the slope of a wire floor, which give off is exceedingly more pungent
will also cripple her legs and feet. than everyday farm odor—even miles 32 Polychlorinated biphenyls
(PCBs) are highly toxic chemi-
27 The senseless waste of the away. It will hammer you, perhaps cals, once used widely in a number of
world’s growing meat-centered only intermittently like Chinese water industrial applications. Though they
diet is illustrated by a hypothetical torture. In one Illinois case, assess- are now banned in the U.S. and other
statement put forth by the Population ments on nearby homes were officially Western countries, their residues have
Reference Bureau: “If everyone reduced by 10 to 30 percent. become part of the food chain, lodged
adopted a vegetarian diet and no food
were wasted, current [food] produc- 30 A male calf born to a dairy cow: in the fat of fish, beef, pork, and milk
What does a farmer do with this products. Various studies have linked
tion would theoretically feed 10 billion by-product of the milk industry? If he prenatal exposure to PCBs—even tiny
people [65 percent more people than is not immediately slaughtered or fac- amounts—to impaired intellectual de-
alive today], more than the projected tory-raised, he is made into fancy veal. velopment in children. Women who
population for the year 2050.” To this end, he is locked up in a stall plan to become pregnant are advised
28 In 1997 a bird virus jumped to a and chained by his neck to prevent to avoid foods containing them, be-
human for the first time in his- him from turning around for his en- cause the chemicals can accumulate in
tory. The avian influenza strain H5N1 tire life. He is fed a special diet without their bodies for years.
eventually killed six people as well as iron or roughage. He is injected with
entire chicken flocks in Hong Kong. antibiotics and hormones to keep him 33 Some U.S. farmers feed their
chicken flocks manure. No, it’s
101 REASONS WHY I’M A VEGETARIAN
and
the Vegetarian Cinophile
Naomi Weinshenker
According to renowned nutrition
researcher T. Colin Campbell, “Cows’-
milk protein may be the single most
38 Genetics through single-trait se-
lection has become as important
a component of today’s intensive farm-
significant chemical carcinogen to ing as drugs and confinement hardware.
Bob Gotch which humans are exposed.” The animals themselves, right down to
Lantern Books
36 Beef cattle are best suited to
moist climates, like those of
Europe, where they evolved. But in the
Sows, breeding cows, and hens have
similarly been reduced to piglet-, calf-,
and chick-making machines.
www.lanternbooks.com
1-800-856-8664
U.S., many are herded in the West on the
nation’s most arid land. Native grasses
long ago were overrun by heartier for-
39 U.S. subsidies to ranchers on
public lands come to about $500
million annually. To eliminate livestock
A GREAT BOOK FOR YOU:
eign varieties, inadvertently brought predators—real or anticipated—one
here on bovine hooves. Grazing usually government program uses steel-jaw
Living Among Meat Eaters takes place along fragile riparian leghold traps, firearms, cyanide, and
A GREAT BOOK FOR SOMEONE YOU KNOW?
zones—the strips of land along rivers poison gas to exterminate thousands of
Help! My Child Has Stopped and streams where wild species of black bears, mountain lions, bobcats,
Eating Meat! An A–Z Guide to plants and animals concentrate and re- foxes, and coyotes every year.
ever becomes commercially viable. In compelling because the data collected fat, high-calorie, fiberless food imbued
the meantime, as the technique is per- have allowed meaningful comparisons with artery-clogging cholesterol. More
fected, cloned animals will suffer pre- between populations with similar ge- than a quarter of the nation’s lakes
mature deaths and deformi- post advisories warning con-
ties, and their meat and sumers that fresh-caught
milk are all but guaranteed fish may be contaminated
to enter the human food (see #32 and #56). But ac-
supply. cording to one expert quoted
61 From the animal-feed bread- alive) is 137—a relatively tiny number. spite the fact that bacteria in animal
basket of the nation’s midwest, The worldwide horror about the dis- foods have become increasingly deadly.
massive amounts of fertilizer, pesti- ease arises from the hideous nature of
cides, and manure runoff travel down it. Over a prolonged and ghastly pe- 66 From farm to table, animal foods
are a filthy business. Antidotes
the Mississippi River and end up in riod, victims display involuntary to the many pathogens they harbor are
the Gulf of Mexico. This high-nutrient movements and appear insane. The an ever-burgeoning industry. On the
mix causes an ecological chain reac- theory is that these people became in- farm, there are ionizing systems to re-
tion that ultimately ends with micro- fected with the brain-wasting disease duce pathogen-laden dust. In the
scopic organisms robbing the bottom after eating beef from cows who had slaughterhouse, there are steam, saline
of the ocean of oxygen. Marine life been fed brain and nerve tissue of and acidic solutions, irradiation, ultra-
must relocate or die. Slow and nonmo- scrapie-infected sheep. Evidence con- high pressure, competitive exclusion
bile species will suffocate. The phe- firming the transspecies link gives cre- (which adds benign bacteria to crowd
nomenon is known as hypoxia. Scien- dence to the notion that the disease, out the lethal kinds), electrolyzed wa-
tists have dubbed affected areas “dead which has an undetermined though ap- ter, liquid nitrogen, and ozone gas. In
zones.” Each summer the Gulf ’s dead parently long incubation period, may the supermarket, detection tabs moni-
zone grows to the size of a small U.S. someday become much more wide- tor food temperature. Other detection
101 REASONS WHY I’M A VEGETARIAN
68
w w w. p o w e r f u l b o o k . c o m
Today the poul- after each had received
try industry is a more than a thousand
Peace begins in the kitchen. vertically integrated citations.
Go vegetarian!
oligopoly, meaning that
a few giant chicken Pamela Rice holds a sign in mid- 71 Turkeys today
have been selec-
companies control pro- town Manhattan as part of a tively bred to such an
duction, from chick spirited demonstration of 25 ac- extent that their huge
tivists. The target? Big Red, a
HELP ANIMALS. hatching to grocery- breasts make it impos-
$100-a-plate “celebration” spon-
store delivery. Squeezed sible for them to accom-
www.pleasebekind.com sored by 31 red-meat and red-
into the arrangement is wine restaurants and purveyors. plish the sex act on
the contract grower. their own. The industry
The big company owns the birds; the must artificially inseminate them. The
PleasureFood.com grower supplies the farm hands and the job is nearly as dehumanizing for the
212-715-6100 factory confinement hardware. The sit- workers—who must work rapidly for
uation often appears good to the grower long hours and low wages—as it is de-
when she signs her first contract and plorable for the tortured breeder birds,
Chula & Winston goes into debt by several hundred thou- who are essentially raped once or twice
sand dollars. It’s not long before she a week for 12 to 16 months until they are
My heart and soul
finds that the multi-billion-dollar cor- sent to slaughter.
—Marilyn Ramos poration she’s dealing with is now call-
ing all the shots, and that the debt she’s 72 In most large commercial
chicken slaughter plants the in-
incurred has reduced her to little better verted heads of doomed birds are first
Norma Ramos, Esq. than indentured servitude. And now, as plunged into an electrified brine bath.
federal manure-handling regulations The electric current is set at a voltage
begin to be instituted, their burden is just high enough to immobilize the
likely to fall solely on the growers, birds and to promote bleedout without
the raw bakery allowing the giant chicken conglomer- hemorrhage. The birds not only are
Gourmet raw vegan desserts ates to slough off any responsibility. sentient during slaughter but must also
& festive cakes
www.rawbakery.com
69 About 22 percent of human re- suffer the excruciating shock. The cur-
lated emissions of methane is re- rent serves to minimize inconvenient
101 REASONS WHY I’M A VEGETARIAN
Tamarind Tree
Heat-and-serve Indian entrees
today at the rate of one every three
years, where earlier they may have oc-
curred only once in a century. Histori-
87 Joel Fuhrman, M.D., who has
cured hundreds of people from
chronic diseases with no-nonsense veg-
www.tamtree.com cally, ranchers suppressed “cool” grass etarian diet plans, says that it is impos-
fires on the bovines’ behalf, allowing sible to devise a diet that conforms to
tinderboxes of dense foliage to build up the recommendations in the scientific
Your “101 Reasons” saved my life. below taller trees. Factor in cheatgrass, literature about food and health if ani-
—Ted Teisler a nonnative plant that would not have mal foods are included in significant
had the opportunity to take root in quantities. Sure, meats contain nutri-
America without the overgrazing of ents, but plant foods give you more nu-
Triangle Vegetarian Society cattle. This prolific weed provides dry, trition for your calorie.
88
SINCE 1986 • EXTENSIVE WEB SITE
papery kindling in early summer, per- Just as smokestack emissions re-
www.trianglevegsociety.org
TVS, POB 3364, Chapel Hill, fectly conducive to massive forest fires. sult in acid rain, toxic fumes
NC 27515 • 919-489-3340
Shop cruelty-free.
84 Negotiating truck on- and off-
ramps can be a cruel challenge
for large mammals bred for muscle
from decomposing livestock waste on
factory farms become poisonous to fish
when they are returned to the Earth via
VeganEssentials.com without attendant skeletal strength. rainfall. The errant ammonia also rav-
Broken bones are common. Likewise, ages terrestrial ecosystems because
Phone: 1-866-88-VEGAN
the bones of egg-laying hens are espe- plants that thrive on nitrogen are fa-
cially fragile, weakened by a life of in- vored over species that don’t. Fallout
Help advance vegan
tense egg production. Industry research can degrade environments as far away
nutrition research. has revealed that by slaughter time, as 300 miles.
89
ENROLL ONLINE:
over one in four will have broken bones. Pursuing food from animals
www.veganhealthstudy.org And since chicken catchers—the labor- must be considered highly risky
ers who gather up birds into transport behavior, as humans more and more
VegDining.com cages—are poorly paid by the job, not catch diseases from animals: Creutz-
Your online guide to vegetarian the hour, they are invariably swift and feldt-Jakob disease, Nipah virus, in-
restaurants around the world brutal on the birds. fluenza, and now SARS can all be
www.VivaVegie.org
T
They are particularly intent on hav- he VivaVegie Society is a non- Founder Pamela Rice is an expert
ing you see animals as nothing more profit, 501(c)3, organization, on vegetarian issues. She gives lec-
than abstractions. dedicated to public education tures on government subsidies to
If I’ve done my job, however, “101 about vegetarianism. When the the meat industry and the environ-
Reasons” will reconnect you by mak- group was formed in 1991, its objec- mental impact of society’s meat-cen-
ing it clear that in exchange for a tive was vegetarian street advo- tered diet. She has organized and
moment of personal pleasure, you cacy—reaching out to New York City emceed numerous vegetarian events
not only bring misery to some cor- pedestrians with the group’s hall- in New York City.
ner of the world, your survival has mark publication, “101 Reasons Why
nothing to do with it. There is, in I’m a Vegetarian.” Then, as now, INFORMATION LINE: 212-871-9304
Find a useful order form on the second page of the references (back of this page).