Go Vegetarian, Part I

Well, I put it off for several months, and I think I deserve some recognition of my restraint. But here is my exhortation to go vegetarian. First, a note on etymology: vegetarian comes from “vegetare” which is Latin and means “to enliven.” It comes up sometimes, so just FYI. Also, if you remain completely unmoved by what I’m about to tell you, don’t ever ask a vegetarian if she eats animal crackers. It’s the dumbest, most annoying joke imaginable.

Vegetarianism is the right thing to do. The first, but most certainly not the last, reason to eschew meat, and perhaps even eggs and dairy if you have the strength and dedication, is that to consume animal products causes animal suffering. At a very basic level, death is something that all animals try desperately to avoid. Animals die for you to eat meat, and even if one could imagine that there are completely painless, fearless ways to slaughter an animal, and it seems unlikely, you are robbing them of the enjoyment of life. And animals do enjoy it. If you have a pet, you know this.
But if needlessly killing a sentient being doesn’t bother you, then what about the acute suffering that animals go through as they are raised for your plate? Unless you are buying certified organic and cruelty-free, then you are contributing to the life-long torture of farm animals. According to FARM (www.farmusa.org), some 300 million turkeys and 9 billion chickens are slaughtered for human consumption. In factory farms, poultry is housed in sheds with roughly 10,000 birds to a shed. The animals are fattened up as quickly as possible, and many collapse under their own weight, and are then unable to get food and water or protect themselves from the mass of other birds. The sheds aren’t kept clean, and there develops a build-up of sulfides, methane, and ammonia. The birds are only taken out of these sheds to be crammed into wooden cages for transport to slaughter. I’ve seen rescued turkeys who had to be supported by a sling (for more stories of animal rescues, visit www.animalsanctuary.org ).
Then there are the cows. Beef cattle are kept in feed lots, where there is no shelter, no grass, no space; there are tens of thousands of cows kept in a single lot. Cattle are dehorned, castrated, and branded without anesthetic.
And of course, the pigs. Breeding sows are kept pregnant almost all of the time, the only respite is the 2-4 weeks (as opposed to the natural 12 weeks) of nursing 10-12 pigs. The gestation crates are so narrow that the sows cannot move. The farrowing pens are not much better. After 3-4 years the sows are sent to slaughter. After premature weaning, the piglets are put in tiny crates and fed synthetic formula, where they, like the cattle, are castrated and tagged without benefit of anesthesia. They are then moved to overcrowded feeding lots for six months before slaughter.
During transport, animals are deprived of food and water for hours. If they’re too weak to walk to the killing floor, they’re dragged. Sometimes animals are skinned, dismembered, or even boiled alive while still conscious.
And I haven’t even gotten to the egg-layers and dairy cows.