Vegans Save the World. Alice Alvrez
According to a survey done for the Vegetarian Resource Group (cite below), there are approximately 16 million vegetarians in the USA, and they estimate that about half of those are fully vegan. So it may seem like nobody else you know is vegan, but there are millions who have given up animal products completely.
As for the Vegan Society, their symbol is the standard trademark for vegan products around the world and their website is the main online destination for resources, information, and product details for vegans.
How Veganism Helps Animal Welfare
This is the core issue of being vegan: the treatment and welfare of animals (all animals, including insects).
What distinguishes vegans from vegetarians is that we recognize that there is more to animal treatment than simply not killing them. People get very hung up on the idea that taking eggs or milk isn’t harm, and that it’s just fine. That’s a very myopic view of things, and not accurate at all. In fact, animals kept for wool, milk, or eggs are probably suffering more than those kept for meat because they suffer for many more years.
Since you are already reading a book about veganism, you’re probably very aware of animal welfare issues around a traditional meat-eating diet. But if you’re still on-the-fence about the seriousness of this global problem, keep reading.
Not all animals undergo the same cruelties, but there are some pretty consistent issues across the board in the livestock industry. In almost any case, animals are kept in extremely small spaces living in filth. They are treated cruelly with no concern for their pain or fear. Antibiotics are used almost constantly because livestock would surely die from infection from their living conditions otherwise.
For the “lucky” animals not destined for slaughter, life is not good. Eggs come from chickens kept in tiny cramped cages for their entire lives, and dairy cows undergo repeated pregnancies and constant milking for years until they die an exhausted death. In most dairy operations, male calves aren’t needed so they are sent off to be sold as veal. That means their short lives are spent locked in containers so they can’t move, to keep their muscles tender.
Sheep kept for wool don’t fare any better, though this tends to be a surprise to most people. Careless shearing conditions lead to cuts, scrapes and other bloody injuries that are not usually treated properly.
The situations aren’t just about crowding, disease and dirty conditions either. Staff in many of these livestock facilities treat the animals horribly. There are countless videos that have been taken showing beatings and other violent abuse that goes on in factory farms.
The only way to eliminate all of this abuse is to remove the consumer demand for these products. If people stopped buying meat and other animal products, there would be no need to hold billions of livestock animals captive. That’s how being a vegan helps.
How Veganism Helps the Environment
Being vegan is mainly about the ethics of using animals for our benefit, but there are other important reasons why you might want to give up eating animal products. Besides helping the animals themselves, a vegan diet can help the environment as a whole.
Raising animals for food is a huge drain on the environment, and it uses up many more resources that using the same space to produce plant-based food.
To start with, keeping animals for meat is an enormous waste of water, which is a resource we are starting to run out of in many parts of the world. It will take more than 2,000 gallons of water to eventually produce 1 pound of beef for consumption. A pound of wheat would only require 25 gallons. Add in the use of fossil fuel to maintain the vast amounts of crops for feed as well as everything else (transport, slaughter, and processing). On average, it will use up 11 times as much fuel to produce one calorie of animal protein as it would for an equal calorie of plant protein.
Now, that’s just wasted resources. The bigger shame comes in land use. Not only are millions of acres used for pasture and feed lots, even more land is taken up in the growing of feed crops. Food is grown, just not for us. According to PETA, approximately one third of the entire planet’s land surface is used to house livestock animals or grow their feed.
The problem isn’t just that space is wasted and native ecosystems are razed, but land is made dead and barren by overgrazing and the repeated growing of the same crops. Land used as pasture gets heavily contaminated with animal manure, which can negatively impact the local water supplies too. The EPA estimates that 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states are polluted due to animal waste runoff.
The bottom line is that the animal food industry is a horrible drain on the Earth’s space and resources. We can all eat much better with less environmental damage if we ditch the animals.
A vegan lifestyle isn’t just extremely good for the world, it’s personally good for your own body. For all the concerns about protein and other nutrients, a plant-based diet is a healthy one. You’ll do yourself a lot of good by saying good bye to meat and other animal products.
Cholesterol: We all know about cholesterol, a type of fat that is only found in animal products. Too much of it can lead to hardening arteries and heart disease. Since cholesterol doesn’t exist in the plant world, this is one health problem you won’t have to worry about.
Other forms of fat are pretty high in meat as well, though you can get high-fat vegan foods too (avocados are one example). Overall, you’ll find your fat intake drops considerably when you ditch the animal foods.
Antibiotics: These are unfortunately becoming a common “ingredient” in most meat and dairy products raised in factory conditions. Animals are given huge amounts of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick in their dirty living conditions, and those antibiotics are still present in the meat or dairy products once they hit the shelves. They are in the environment as well as your body, and it’s slowly but surely helping to create antibiotic resistant “superbugs,” or illnesses that cannot be treated because they have mutated to be unaffected by the drugs.
Hormones: Along with antibiotics, hormones are also being added to meat products which means you’re consuming them when you eat meat (or eggs or dairy). They’re used to force animals to grow larger or faster than what is natural, or to mature earlier. That makes livestock farming more profitable, even if it’s very unhealthy. When you eat meat or milk products, you’re consuming traces of these hormones which can lead to a disruption in your own body chemistry.
Vitamins, Fiber & Antioxidants: The health benefits of being vegan aren’t just from the things you’re avoiding, but also the increase in your intake of nutrients. The variety of fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds that are part of a vegan diet offer much more for your body than meat products do. By filling up your plate with healthier plant-based food, you’re going to be getting more nutrition overall. If you’re still worried about protein, check out the section on vegan proteins. It’s not a problem.