EATING OURSELVES TO EXTINCTION

EATING OURSELVES TO EXTINCTION

I stopped eating meat over thirty years ago.  This was before there were so many vegan products on grocery shelves, before there were so many factory farms and before we knew the damage animal agriculture does to our planet.  I stopped eating meat because torturing and killing another living animal is barbaric.  With every bite of meat, we lose a piece of our humanity.

Now we know the damage animal agriculture is doing to our planet. It is causing 51% of greenhouse gases and 91% of rain forest destruction. Two-thirds of our land mass is used to either raise or feed livestock. Animal agriculture is depleting our natural water supply and polluting our oceans, rivers and lakes. All of this causes more severe weather patterns, wild fires, flooding and other disasters. Bee populations are rapidly declining, leading to food losses.  We are on the verge of the sixth major extinction just because humans eat other earthlings.

There are 7 billion humans on earth and about 1 billion suffer from hunger.  Every day 21,000 children die of starvation.  Yet, most of the food we grow is fed to animals that will be killed and eaten.  It takes 16 pounds of food just to make one pound of meat. 96 billion animals and 3 trillion fish are killed every year for food, but 80% of that goes back into feeding livestock. How insane is this system?

The very thought that some lives are more important than others is creating violence in this world. The thought “I am a human; I am more important than others” leads to “I am white; I am more important than others” or “I am a man; I am more important than others.” Fear causes us to excrete adrenaline into our systems. Animals are no different than us. When we eat other earthlings, we are eating their adrenaline excretions.  This, along with the hormones added to animal feed, makes humans more aggressive. If we continue with all this violence and wars, we soon will wipe ourselves out.

We have to start thinking of future generations, our children, our grandchildren.  What kind of world do we want them to live in? Scientists have predicted that if we continue on our current course, humans could be extinct in less than 100 years. We can end violence. We can reverse global warming. We can feed the world. All it takes is for each of us to take one small step—go vegan.