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Vegitarianism - a hidden persp (Click to select text)
Vegetarianism- A Hidden Perspective Americans eat more meat per person in the world, and the world is suffering because of this. The truth is that many global problems, like hunger, or rainforest destruction can easily be solved if Americans cut down their meat consumption. If you eat meat, you have something in common with most of the cows you have eaten. They've eaten meat too. The meat industry has developed ways to boost its productivity and lower it's costs. This process is a form of recycling. When a cow is slaughtered, about half of it by weight is not eaten by humans. These parts including the head, hooves, horns, bones, and blood are dumped into giant grinders at rendering plants, along with the entire bodies of cows and other farm animals known to be diseased. Rendering is a 2.4 billion-a-year industry, which processes forty billion pounds of dead animals a year. There is no such thing as a dead animal too diseased, too cancerous, or too putrid to be welcomed by the rendering plant. Another staple of the renderer's diet, in addition to farm animals, is euthanized pets- the six or seven million dogs and cats that are killed in animal shelters every year. The city of Los Angeles alone sends some two hundred tons of euthanized cats and dogs to a rendering plant every month. Added to the blend are the euthanized catch of animal control agencies, and believe it or not, roadkill! When this gruesome mix is ground and steam-cooked, the lighter, fatty stuff floating to the top gets refined for use in cosmetics, candles, soaps, lubricants, and waxes. The heavier protein material is ground into a brown powder (about a quarter of it is fecal material). This powder is then mixed with artificial hormones, antibiotics, and large portions of grains. This is then fed to livestock. Farmers call it "protein concentrates." The hormones and antibiotics that livestock eat are getting into the people that eat them. These hormones have only been around for a few years, so the effect on the human population is not yet known. No major studies are being done in this area anyway, so this ignorance could be killing people already, in the form of cancer or other illnesses. For some reason, Meat eaters have five times the risk of cancer compared to Vegetarians. American meat eaters have the highest risk of cancer infection in the world. Countries that eat a less meat-centered diet have a much lower cancer risk than the U.S. Animals that are raised for slaughter are kept in extremely unhealthy surroundings. Pigs, for example, are kept in pens so small that they are not able to even turn around. They are gorged on "protein concentrates" and huge amounts of grains so they are big and fat. The aim of this is to get them so fat that they can't stand up. When they are too fat to move, they are dragged out of their pens into a chamber. They are then shot with a shotgun from above. The dead pigs are then put on meat conveyor, where they are gutted. The "good" parts are packaged and distributed to supermarkets, the bad parts are sent to the renderer. And so the cycle of "protein concentrates" goes on. Cows have it a bit better than the pigs. They get to walk around in densely packed feedlots in the sun. An average of 660,000 animals are killed for meat every hour in the U.S., that's nearly six billion a year. World hunger is rapidly becoming a huge problem in many countries around the world. If the U.S. population decreased their consumption of meat by only 10%, 60 million people could be adequately fed by the freed-up agricultural land. This would end the hunger problem in Africa, if the U.S. were willing to export it for low costs. A huge part of American crops are fed to livestock for little meat in return. It takes an entire acre to produce just 165 pounds of beef per year. The same land could be used to grow over 20,000 pounds of potatoes every year to feed humans. This would not be too bad if the amount of land that was used to grow cattle-feed crops was low, but 56% of American farmland is used to feed livestock. In the U.S., water shortages are getting worse every year. It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, compared to 2,500 gallons to produce a single pound of meat. The amount of water it takes to produce a cow for consumption is enough to float a destroyer! Oil is one of the world's most precious natural resources, because it is so vital to Global economies. If every person on earth ate as much meat as the average American, the world's known oil reserves would last only 13 years. On the other hand, if human beings no longer ate meat, those oil reserves would last about 260 years. It's hard to believe, but 33% of all raw materials (base products of farming, forestry and mining, including fossil fuels) consumed by the U.S. is devoted to the production of livestock. If everyone in the U.S. became a vegetarian, only 2% of those raw materials would be used to feed the people. The 31% boost industrial power could do great things for our country. Taxes could be cut by more than half, the U.S. could afford free medical care, more jobs would be made in new industries because of increased exports, and the overall standard of living would skyrocket. The destruction of the rainforest can also be attributed to American meat consumption. Rainforest land is virtually worthless to most governments. The rainforest soil is usually too poor for farming, so it is used for cattle ranching. The cattle ranchers buy the land for very low prices and burn the forest to the ground. They graze the cattle on whatever grass grows there. When the soil erodes and the grass won't grow anymore, the rancher buys nearby land and moves on. The cattle destroy the land beyond repair. The small amount of topsoil washes into the ocean very quickly. Trees never grow back on land owned by cattle ranchers. Almost the entire rainforest destruction problem is caused by cattle ranching. Many people "convert" to vegetarianism for health reasons. The most common cause of death in the U.S. is heart attack. Every 45 seconds, a person dies of a heart attack in the U.S. The average American male has a 50% risk of a heart attack. A vegetarian man's risk of having a heart attack is only 4%. It is a common belief that the U.S. Department of Agriculture protects the public by constantly inspecting meat. The reality is that only 1 in 250,000 slaughtered animals is tested for toxic chemical residues. American infants are suffering the most from this poor inspection system. Contamination of breast milk, due to chlorinated hydrogen pesticides in animal products is a huge, but unrecognized problem. The average American mother has a 99% chance of having significant levels of DDT in her breast milk. DDT is a dangerous chemical that is known to cause birth defects. The results of infants that have been exposed to DDT through breast milk may not be noticed for several years. Only about 8% of vegetarian mothers have contaminated breast milk, which can be contributed to milk contamination. Recently, The United Kingdom has put a ban on American Beef Imports, because they contain unhealthy amounts of hormones. For some reason, this news only made the front page in England. The world is saying that American meat is dangerous, but Americans as a whole aren't listening. Of course, I am a vegetarian. People frequently ask me "How can you stand not eating meat?" I tell them about rendering plants, and they suddenly understand my way of thinking. I don't have any problem with finding things to eat. Actually, if you change to a good vegetarian diet, you expose yourself to a much wider selection of food that what you would have normally come across. I am not morally objected to stopping people from eating meat. I just believe that the human race would benefit as a whole if we all stopped or at least cut down the consumption of meat.
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