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the effect of choosing a vegetarian diet
effects of animal agriculture
effects of animal agriculture
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Humans have a major impact on the environment. The choice between vegetarianism and a meat-inclusive diet also makes a difference on the environment. Vegetarianism is the practice of excluding meat from your diet. There are six main types of vegetarianism: lacto-ovo, vegan, macrobiotic, fruitarian, raw-foods diet, and natural-hygiene diet. The two most common types of vegetarianism are lacto-ovo (consuming animal products like dairy but no meat), and vegan (consuming no animal products at all). Meat-inclusive diets are made possible with animal agriculture, the farming system of raising animals for slaughter. Both diet types, vegetarian and meat-inclusive, include the farming of edible plants, but meat-inclusive diets also include the additional steps of feeding the crops to the livestock and then slaughtering them for meat products before shipping the food items for human consumption. These additional steps require that more plants be grown for the livestock to consume (called feed crops), before a final product is produced. Through animal agriculture, copious amounts of water and land resources are used and air pollutants are produced. While all agriculture is destructive, animal agriculture is far more harmful to the environment than vegetarianism.
Water is one of the largest environmental issues the world faces today. Year after year new efforts and regulations to conserve and clean water are put into regulation. The spread of vegetarianism is great for a thirsty world since it uses only a small part of the water used by animal agriculture. With only eight percent of the world’s water used for animal agriculture, this would be a great savings. In the United States of America alone, one-third of usable water goes to animal ag...
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"How Much Water Should You Drink Every Day." WebMD. WebMD, 25 Jan. 2014. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
Messina, Virginia and Mark Messina. The Vegetarian Way: Total Health for You and Your Family. New York City: Three Rivers Press, 1996. Print.
Steinfeld, Henning, et al. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2006. Print.
“Veganism and the Environment: By the Numbers.” Culinary Schools. Culinary Schools, n.d.
“Vegetarian.” ProCon. ProCon, 16 Apr 2014. Web. 23 Apr 2014.
Vidal, John. "10 Ways Vegetarianism Can Help Save the Planet." The Observer 17 July 2010: 52. Print. 23 Apr 2014.
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People can be classified into two categories, meat eaters and non meat eaters. Meat eaters or carnivores are common in society so there has to be a tremendous amount of meat production to meet these needs. But has anyone ever thought about the amount of fuel and energy it takes to make it and how it would ultimately destroy the Earth? Many have and it revealed to them that the cost of being a vegan or vegetarian is far less than continuing their carnivorous ways. Two authors have their opinions to offer, even if they are on the same side of the argument and want to convert people to being a vegan. In “Eating Green” Margaret Lundberg states why becoming a vegan is healthy, not only for the person, but also the environment. John Vidal’s “10 Ways Vegetarianism Can Help Save the Planet”
Simplifying the Case for Vegetarianism is an article written by Andrew Tardiff as part of the academic journal Social Theory and Practice; published by Florida State University, Department of Philosophy in 1996. Tardiff was a part of the department of philosophy at Rhode Island College and wrote other articles, including A Catholic Case for Vegetarianism and Vegetarianism Virtue: Does Consequentialism Demand Too Little?
Rachels, J. (2013). The Moral Argument for Vegetarianism. In L. Vaughn, Contemporary Moral Arguments - Readings in Ethical Issues Second Edition (pp. 617-622). New York: Oxford University Press.
The food industry is in a state of necessary revolution, for obesity rates seem to be rising exponentially, counties striving to develop have hit lack-of-food road blocks, and massive animal farms produce threats such as unethical treatment of animals and food-borne pathogen spikes. With these dilemmas revolving around the food world, it is natural for one to ponder, “Are human’s inherently omnivorous, eating both animal and plant based products, or were we suppose to be receiving nutrients solely from a vegetarian diet?” Kathy Freston, author of The Lean: A Revolutionary (and Simple!) 30-Day Plan for Healthy, Lasting Weight Loss, discusses her viewpoint surrounding the dilemma by writing “Shattering the Meat Myth: Humans are Natural Vegetarians.” Freston’s answer to the questions presented above
Krizmanic, J., (1995). “The Best of Both Worlds” Vegetarian Times Nov. 1995: 96-101. Retrieved: February 13, 2011, from:
Corliss, Richard. “Should We All Be Vegetarians?” Time. Time Inc., 15 Jul. 2002. Web. 11 Apr. 2011.
Years ago it would have been unheard of for anyone to not eat meat on a daily basis, since during one period of time it was considered a staple for some. However, meat eaters started to pay attention to what they were consuming once Upton Sinclair’s famous novel The Jungle was published in the early 1930’s. It drew so much attention that the Pure Food and Drug Act passed to prevent the unsanitary and hazardous practices mentioned in The Jungle from happening. However, before Upton Sinclair’s novel was published few were already recognizing the ethical and nutritional (in this time period) hazards that happened because of the commercial meat industry. The International Vegetarian Union was established in 1908 and was one of the first notable movements and the organization that brought the most publicity towards vegetarianism in the western world. This organization stood against the ethical, environmental, and economic effects the commercial meat industry had on our nation. Even with the founding of this organization many do not understand vegetarianism or veganism in Europe or the United States and thus discuss it negatively, but this is an event that should cease to happen. The negative discussion of vegetarianism has negative effects that should be avoided and will be discussed.
Though vegetarianism was never a taboo subject as are some other controversial topics, The question of whether or not human beings should live off meat still is highly discussed amongst all types of people. Spiritual leaders, activists, scientists, and doctors have spoken up on behalf of their group’s opinion. Amongst the arguments of what is right when it comes to the food chain, resonating on many a mind is where the concept of vegetarian came from. Was it started as a religious virtue or a moral decision? Perhaps it was a forced lifestyle or a diet trend gone wrong (or right depending). Health wise, which is better for us? Educating ourselves by answering these questions helps us answer the, perhaps, most important question of all. Which lifestyle will we, as individuals, choose?
Every day across America millions of people wake up to start their morning. Throughout the day the vast majority of these people will consume meat, but 3% will replace the pig, cow, and chicken products for vegetable or fruit made meals (Harris). These vegetarians all have many different reasons to make this choice. This decision is a huge change in one’s life and is not without questions. Some people may wonder why would anyone abstain from the amazing food that contains meat. This essay will briefly explain the history of vegetarianism, the reasons for vegetarianism, and answer questions about vegetarianism. Vegetarian diets are all around better than diets containing meat because of three main reasons; the abuse of animals, the environmental damage, and the health benefits for humans.
Walters, Kerry S, and Lisa Portmess. Ethical Vegetarianism: From Pythagoras to Peter Singer. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Print.
A United Nations report states that land used for animal agriculture, both for grazing and production of crops fed to livestock, takes up an astounding 30% of land on Earth. ("Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources") To meet the industry’s demands, over 260 million acres of forest in the U.S. have been cleared to grow grain fed to farm animals. ("Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources") With that in mind, the meat industry also dumps disease-causing pathogens through animal waste that pollutes water and forces the need for waste lagoons to be constructed, which are susceptible to leaking and flooding. ("Facts about Pollution from Livestock Farms”) Scientists say that about 14% of the world’s greenhouse gases are released by said agriculture industries, which is a growing concern for climate change and global warming. (Silverman) The meat industry uses one-third of all the fossil fuels consumed in the United States. (Moore) There is no question that farming animals has a negative effect on the environment and steps should be taken to mitigate air and water pollution risks and future deforestation. If animal agriculture was phased out, land used for animal grazing could be returned to forest land and some of it converted into fields for cultivating crops for humans. A global shift toward veganism, resulting in the elimination of the meat and animal agriculture industries, would protect the environment from various detrimental effects.
America focuses heavily on its livestock and crops earning us a major role in global trade as a farming nation. Unfortunately this has led to some poor choices in treatment of our animals. Many farmers who believe in animal rights say that it started back when farmers only tended to fewer animals, “Ownership of farm animals became concentrated in fewer hands, and flocks and herds grew larger. As a result, the individuality of animals was lost to their owners and they began receding from most people's everyday life” (Namit 29). When people lost their connection to the animals that provided their food, the quality of the animal's lives began to dramatically decrease. Consumers constantly pushed farmers to their limits with high quotas. To keep up with demands agriculturalists turned to some unorthodox practices to keep costs low and still maintain their annual quotas; “To raise efficiency and cut costs, farm animals began to be engineered for abnormally rapid weight gain, fed unnatu...
In fact, the amount of resources that go into production of animals for consumption is somewhat startling. When factoring in transportation, grains for feeding, etc. and directly comparing them to the output of protein for consumption, a vegetarian diet seems much more appealing. David Pimentel, a Cornell ecologist specializing in Agriculture and Life Science, stated beef production “requires a [fossil-fuel] energy output to protein output ratio of 54:1” and that 100,000 liters of water goes into just one kilogram of beef. Also, cows are notorious for producing large amounts of methane, totaling 500 liters per cow per day (Goffman 3). Methane traps heat in the environment, heating the surface of the earth causing problematic situations to occur all over the earth, including the ice caps melting and eliminating species. And when cattle, which are...
Albert Einstein said, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” Nowadays, a growing number of vegetarians has been showed in many studies, such as a poll started by a nonprofit organization named Vegetarian Resource Group. It showed that United States has 6-8 million adults who do not eat poultry, meat, or fish (“Becoming a Vegetarian”, 2009, pp4). Much more people choose to be a vegetarian because it is more flexible than before, which means that vegetarians have more choice to combine a healthy lifestyle and high quality of life together. Food products like quinoa and fake meat are available for most people. Moreover, restaurants, schools, and hospitals are friendlier to vegetarians with some special offers. In addition to this, an iPhone APP named Vegetarian Scanner can alert people that the food contains meat (DeVries, 2012, pp41).
Every person has the ability to make their own choice of whether to eat meat or not. However, eating meat is directly tied to negative health effects, pollution leading to a depletion of ozone, and the depletion of hundreds of thousands of acres of land “wasted” on animal production when they could be used to solve the hunger crisis or lower emission levels. What humans eat is no longer a matter of choice; it has become a matter of life and death. Literally, the future of the whole planet rests on the decision of whether or not to eat meat. If humans chose to eat less meat the world that wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences (outlined above.) Vegetarianism is one possibility, as is Veganism; however the world would be