It is an imperfect world. The tires on my car contain animal products. The road I drive on most likely contains animal products. And when I drive my car I unintentionally kill bugs. And yes, animals are killed when a field is farmed. But the argument from some meat eaters seems to go that a meatless diet would kill more animals than a diet containing animal flesh.
In my last post I talked about how a vegan diet does not require more land than what is currently being used for farmed animal feed because the amount of plant based food needed to feed farmed animals is about 2x more than what it takes to feed a human (Check out this study from Cornell University). Therefore, if the amount of land needed to feed a vegan population is no more than what we currently use to feed animals for a meat based diet then a vegan diet does not increase the number of animals already being impacted by farming plant based food for farmed animals.
Does that mean a vegan diet is equal to a meat eater’s diet? Clearly not. In the United States alone, more than 34 million cows are slaughter for human consumption every year. That is just cows! What about the pigs, lambs, goats, turkeys and chickens? Worldwide it is estimated that over 58 BILLION animals are slaughter every, single year. 58 billion! My mind can’t even imagine a number that large. If we all went to a plant based diet then we would be eliminating the torture and slaughter of 58 BILLION living begins every year. Is a vegan diet equal to a meat eater’s? No. It is blatantly far more humane.
So does a vegan diet kill more animals and bugs during the farming process? It is probably about the same as current levels. But if we look at the total impact and include the obvious end of killing farmed animals it is clear that a vegan diet kills far, far less animals than a meat based diet.
But let’s be honest, in your heart you knew that already didn’t you?
Not only does a vegan diet save animals from being slaughtered, but consider this: UN figures show that a child starves to death every five seconds. Look at your watch and count them: another death, another death. During every 30-second television commercial that we Americans blindly relax through on the couch, six children somewhere else in the world have died simply because they didn’t have enough food. And it doesn’t have to be that way – we could have prevented it, but we don’t. America and the rest of the western world grows millions of tons of grain and feeds it to confined and tortured farm animals, while our fellow human beings who need that grain to survive are literally dying every single day.
A vegan diet helps address world hunger – an often overlooked fact. This makes the number of deaths caused by, say, McDonalds even more staggering. It’s more that the many beef, poultry, and dairy animal deaths, and it’s more than the many human deaths caused by consumption of fast food. It’s also the many human deaths caused by our self-indulgent placement of more importance on our desire to consume greasy, highly caloric foods than on others’ desires to provide simple nutritional sustenance to their families.
By: Rob on September 3, 2011
at 8:30 am
Excellent reminder Rob! I do tend to forget that other humans are also suffering and dying because of our diet choices. I’m thinking this should be discussed more since, sadly some people take the view that these are merely animals we are talking about.
By: Debbie on September 3, 2011
at 1:33 pm