Why is Nate Vegetarian?



There are at least eight good reasons why I am vegetarian, plus a few decent more. In contrast, the best excuses I’ve heard for eating animals is pleasure and convenience, which I consider not worth killing for. It reminds me of taking candy from children, preying upon the weaker by taking all they have. Those of my generation will need to learn how to accept our grandchildren‘s forgiveness. If you want to know where you would have stood on slavery, don’t consider where you stand on slavery today, but look at where you stand on animal rights.


1) Cruelty. How animals are imprisoned and suffer before slaughter is a mark of shame against humanity. We should be lucky to never similarly have a more powerful species hold us in such disregard, treat us so cruelly before killing us in such vast, incalculable numbers, today literally ~100,000 a minute. If humans killed each other at the rate which we kill animals, humanity would be extinct in 17 days. Only recently have we learned to value life in humans of other races, nationalities and sexual orientations. Few would watch a film of meat production, and when something is too horrible to look at, I believe we should also not tolerate or contribute toward it. If only we heard their cries.

2) Climate Change. Methane produced by humanity's livestock accumulating in the atmosphere is the greatest of our contributions to changing Earth’s climate. Electric cars and public transport and LED lights and recycling, though all great, have altogether less contribution than would humanity simply not eating animals, so all reduction is beneficial. A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, says the United Nations Environment Programme.

3) Mass Extinction. Natural wildlife has been replaced by humans and their bred animals, creating the Earth's sixth mass extinction. Between 1970 and 2020, populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish dropped 68%, says the World Wildlife Fund in 2020: 39% of terrestrial wildlife gone, 39% of marine wildlife gone, 76% of freshwater wildlife gone – all in the past 40 years. In contrast, there are now 1.5 billion cows on earth. Based on biomass, only 4% of mammals on Earth are wild, 36% are humans, and 60% are livestock. The biggest cause of wildlife losses is the destruction of natural habitats, much of it to create farmland. Three-quarters of all land on Earth is now significantly affected by human activities. Killing for food is the next biggest cause – 300 mammal species are being eaten into extinction – while the oceans are massively overfished, with more than half now being industrially fished, according to WWF.


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4) Gross. It is disturbing to watch people put dead animals in their mouths, especially while I am trying to eat. Dead animals do not smell like food, however prepared, but have death stink. Would you eat food after finding a dead animal in it? Muscles, skin, veins, and nerves torn in my mouth is a horror. Even when young, I felt this way about fish as it's more obvious what is being eaten, then chicken, and later all animal meat as I reconsidered it as muscle and whose it had been. Seeing a hamburger is equivalent to seeing a dead raccoon on the side of the road, its smell provoking similar reaction. I am not a coffin for animals.

5) Empathy. For those who hunt, why eat a happy, long life wild pig or deer any sooner than a similar pet cat? Pigs are as intelligent as dogs and chimps. They all feel the same basic emotions as humans, personalities, minds. No one wants to be hunted. If you eat meat, you love pets, not animals. Pigs are smarter than dogs, they dream, can run up to 11mph, can recognize their own name at just 2 weeks old, and love belly rubs.

6) Antibiotic Overuse. The animal meat industry now consumes 80% of all antibiotics, says the Food and Drug Administration 2012. So much unnecessary antibiotic use strengthens the resiliency of bacteria, which transfer resistance genes to human pathogens and contribute to the diminishing effects of hospital antibiotics for human use. Also, the antibiotics and hormones in our water supplies come ~97% from the growth hormones fed to otherwise sickly group-confined livestock, accumulated as run-off wastewater from those animals's urine and after human consumption. Organic livestock has less controlled feces runoff and with reduced antibiotic use means more sick animals, which are then sold to be killed as non-organic.

7) Viral Outbreak. Most germ outbreaks to humans came from close contact to animal livestock or animal hunting with habitat destruction, including nearly every pandemic: HIV from chimp hunting, gonorrhea from cows, syphilis from cattle or sheep, 1918 Spanish swine flu (killing ~4% of humanity, infecting 500,000,000) and 2009 swine flu pandemics from birds to humans through kept pigs, bird flu now cultivated by kept market poultry into 131 influenza strains with antigenic shifts largely within kept pigs which cause seasonal epidemics yearly killing 500,000 and infecting 5–15% of humanity, STEC E. coli from cows and their manure crop fertilizer, three Ebola epidemics from hunted bats and primates, tuberculosis spread through goats and cows, 1998 Nipah virus from pigs, HSV-2 genital herpes likely from scavenging ancestral chimp meat millions of years ago, rubella German measles virus from animals, 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic from kept pigs, vCJD Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease from eating mad cow disease in kept cows, MERS-CoV from camels, SARS and SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 coronaviruses from wet market bats through caged civets and pangolins, and COVID-20 coronavirus from mink farms. Humans this last decade have had five epidemics and two pandemics with the CDC saying 3 out of every 4 new or emerging infectious diseases in people come from animals. When viruses jump species, they usually stop there, have a near non-existent chance to spread disease through a new species. It takes regular mixed contact between species for enough opportunities to eventually win that lottery, which for humans is keeping animal livestock and hunting.

8) Inefficient. Livestock is wasteful of resources. During the final months before being killed, a cow is fed about 10x more food value than its muscles produce, mostly grain and soy which could otherwise feed humans. 100 Cal beef = 1,000 Cal grain. This excess feed needs 1,000% extra labor and fertilizer and pesticides and water to grow, which along with run-off manure washes away into our waterbed and chokes nearby freshwater ecosystems. Animal products also require far more packaging, particularly with plastic. 40% of corn is used for ethanol to add to fuel; another 40% is used for livestock feed.

9) Longer Life. An animal consuming diet is linked with increased cancer risk, in particular prostate and colon, and associated with high cholesterol, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease and several other chronic diseases. Processed meat is classified as Group 1, meaning there is convincing medical evidence it causes cancer.

10) Thrifty. Non-animal food costs less money, then stores easier and safely longer.
 
 
11) Religion. The idea that animals are god-given for us to use? How convenient a conceit, the excuse of every conquerer, to pretend permission for stealing, for killing at their pleasure.
 
 
How many meat eaters does it take to change a lightbulb? They won't! Their ancestors didn't have lightbulbs and neither do lions.
Wie viele Fleischesser braucht es, um eine Glühbirne zu erwechseln? Sie werden es nicht tun! Ihre Vorfahren hatten keine Glühbirnen und Löwen auch nicht.
 

Vegans have absolutely no reason to lie about conditions of meat, dairy and egg farms. By exposing those industries, they do not personally gain anything. But there are billions of dollars riding on animal agriculture. Think long and hard on that before accusing vegans of propaganda and brainwashing. Do-gooder derogation is the backlash reported by moral minorities, traced to resentment by the mainstream against feeling morally judged.





Why is Nate Aspiring to be Vegan?

Most all of the reasons for being vegetarian remain true to a lesser extent for all animal agriculture, something I'm still learning more about. So all of the above reasons, plus a few more.

11) Why does a cow make milk? Do you know what happens to the calves? Dairy cows are mechanicaly rape-inseminated once a year for live births which are then immediately taken from their mothers and killed or penned. The mom's life is reduced from twenty years to five years (worn out, so slaughtered usually for leather) and the calve's lives to usually about a day (soft leather).

12) Hens do lay fertilized eggs which are hatched and sexed, all male chicks being immediately killed.

Dairy Is Scary


 
 
©2015-2021 T. Nathan Roane, good vegetarian since April 2nd, 1993 and bad vegan 2016 onward using B12 supplements
composernate@gmail.com