Comment by Emma Lea and Robert Ryan
Some people consider vegetarianism an inconsequential fad. However, it is one of the most simple and powerful things a person can do to promote personal health, a reduction in environmental destruction and the creation of an ethical, humane civilisation.
The case is often made, even amongst socialists, that it is more important to put people first than to worry about non-human animals. However, such a perspective fails to understand the many benefits involved with being vegetarian.
The reason that many tropical rainforests and other ecosystems are destroyed is so land can be used to graze livestock for meat production.
Desertification is the impoverishment of arid, semi-arid and sub-arid ecosystems by the impact of human activities. Twenty-nine percent of the Earths landmass is suffering desertification (1987 figure).
This is increasing annually by 21 million hectares. One of the major causes of desertification is the grazing of livestock for meat production.
More than half the water used in the United States is used for raising animals for food. It takes 210 litres of water to produce a kilogram of wheat, but 21,000 litres of water to produce a kilogram of meat.
Feedlots and slaughterhouses are major polluters of rivers and streams, filling them with poisonous residues and untreated animal wastes. It is estimated that 105,000 kilograms of livestock excrement are produced in the US every second, and there are no sewage systems to treat these wastes.
Over 40% of the world's grain harvest is fed to animals going to slaughter for human consumption in the First World. Consider the wastage when it takes 16 kilograms of grain and soy to produce just one kilogram of beef, or three kilograms of chicken.
If the grain which is now fed to livestock were fed to people, there would be more than enough food to support a much larger human world population.
Numerous medical studies have shown that vegetarianism yields many health benefits. The meat and dairy industries do not tell consumers that most adults in western countries have too much iron in their diet, due to meat, poultry and fish consumption.
These animal foods contain haem iron, which is dangerous because it is highly absorbable. This can lead to toxic levels of iron in the body cells. This condition, known as haemachromatosis, has symptoms very similar to those of iron deficiency: weakness, fatigue, diabetes, loss of menstrual periods and arthritis.
Unfortunately, many people who present symptoms of iron overload are told to consume more meat products, which can worsen their condition. A vegetarian diet diminishes this risk of iron overload because the type of iron found in plants is absorbed by the human digestive system only in the quantities needed.
Compared to populations which eat a meat-based diet, vegetarians live an average of six years longer and experience a markedly reduced incidence of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, amongst other illnesses.
A 1992 study of German vegetarians found a reduction in mortality for ischaemic heart disease of two-thirds compared to those on a typical omnivorous diet. Researchers at the German Cancer Research Centre have shown that the immune strength of vegetarians, with regard to the ability to destroy cancer cells, is more than double that of people on typical omnivorous diets.
Animal food-products also deplete calcium from the body. The more animal protein in the diet, the more acidic the blood becomes. Calcium needs to be pulled from the bones to neutralise this acidity, and the calcium is then lost in the urine. This is why osteoporosis is much more common in populations with the typical meat-based western diet.
Eating animals and animal products also exposes you to the antibiotics, growth hormones and other drugs that are fed to livestock, as well as to the pesticide residues which accumulate higher up the food chain.
Animals are often raised in dark, unsanitary, overcrowded sheds, in stalls that are so small that they cannot move around. Animals undergo the pain and fear of stock mutilations such as fire face-branding, debeaking and teeth-clipping, as well as that involved in transportation.
For the taste of their flesh, millions of animals are raised and slaughtered under appalling conditions each year. This can hardly be ignored by people who want society to move in a more humane direction. In the words of Anna Kingsford: "The vegetarian movement is the bottom and basis of all other movements towards freedom, justice, and happiness."
Some scholars have proposed a continuity between feminism and vegetarianism, for women and non-human animals suffer a similar objectification under patriarchal capitalist society. In regard to non-human animals, we forget that they are living creatures with their own unique perceptions, needs, pleasures and pain.
Instead, as a culture, we think of some animals as being mere machines which produce meat for us. Through this objectified and distorted view of animals, we are able to dismember and eat them with indifference. In a similar way, women too are objectified and their bodies are regarded as depersonalised "meat".
Vegetarianism is a positive attitude which rebels against the existing dominant culture of oppression and exploitation. It places the environment, human health and ethics over industrial profits. The authors consider that vegetarianism should be an integral part of socialism, as feminism generally is.
For more information, please refer to the following books, from which we obtained the above information: Diet for a New America by John Robbins; Why You Don't Need Meat by Peter Cox; The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J. Adams; Eat Right, Live Longer by Dr Neal Barnard. These are available from alternative book stores and your local vegetarian society.