h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It seems that some people fail to realise the main reason why a lot of people abstain from the consumption of flesh. The main reason I do not consume flesh in any form is that an animal has usually suffered horribly so you can eat its'corpse. The conditions most animals raised for consumption in are apalling.It's enough to make you sick,in fact it does make me sick to think about it.One example that springs to mind is a film I saw at an Animal Liberation meeting of a hen laying its egg on the decaying corpse of its cell mate. Do you really think anything produced in that kind off situation can be good for you? Would you lock a dog inside a 3m by 3m pen,never to see sunlight or feel a fresh breeze on its skin? No? Well it is common practice in pig farming.This is the point of being a vegetarian! To help stop this needless cruelty,not for environmental or economical reasons.From this aspect vegetarianism makes a lot of sense!

Yes. Also, if everyone was vegetarian, there would be less livestock and more plants. Live stock are a drain on oxygen, not plants. Therefore, there is no worry of consuming too much oxygen. The point of being vegetarian, however, is not really to do with this. The usual idea is that the concept of killing and eating something is morally objectionable, and is something that we do not want to be a part of in any way.

I hate to jump on the Eco-bandwagon, but you'll also find that animals produce tonnes more methane than humans do, in fact if you take NZ for an example over 30% of their greenhouse emissions comes from livestock. Also the production of meat protein is very in-efficient, it takes about 30kg of water to produce 1kg of meat, and that's not taking into account the water used on the grain that they are fed on, which is also an inefficient crop. So if the world only kept livestock on area's that could no be farmed like floodplains and grew veggies everywhere else famine would be a thing of the past.

Ohh and I have'nt even mentioned about how US meat producers are as influential to Government Policy as the Oil Industry is.

All in all, meat is bad.

Furthermore, the science in the original post is backward. The more vegetables are being eaten, the more will be planted, drawing carbon (CO2) out of the air and into plants, whereas animals typically farmed for meat tend to be a primary cause of methane emissions (another greenhouse gas).

Also, the original poster has neglected to consider what it is that livestock animals consume themselves - the plant protein (often in the form of soybeans) used to feed cows/sheep/pigs etc is horribly inefficient - for every 10 pounds of plant protein, we get a return of 1 pound of meat protein. If meat production ceased, our water and grain resources would be more than sufficient to feed people the world over who are currently starving. The clearing of the Amazon rainforest for the production of livestock feed (soybeans) is also another good reason not to support factory-farmed meat if you care about preventing global warming.

The levels of livestock produced today are due to market forces. If everyone went vegetarian, it would no longer be profitable to breed billions of livestock animals, and over time, the numbers of beef/pork/etc livestock would decrease, meaning less methane, and, if you're worried about 'respiration' - less of that, too.

I live content as a vegetarian with all the plants I "killed for my dinner" knowing that if someone's got a steak on their plate, many more plants were destroyed, more precious water was wasted, and more environmental degradation took place - as well as the suffering of cows in the beef industry - than I could ever match with my five spice tofu and steamed veg on rice.

In conclusion, there are sound environmental, ecological, economic and animal welfare reasons to pursue a vegetarian diet.