Dear Editor,
I enjoyed the letter published in the Guardian on Tuesday, May 26 entitled ‘A Day Without Meat Won’t Save the World.’
At least as far as the title goes, this is certainly true. Given the current size of the human population, and the level of resource consumption by affluent nations such as the United States, we may be able to delay but not prevent the environmental, economic and social collapse that our activities are causing.
Raising meat is responsible for an estimated 25 percent of all land use and 50 percent of all water use in the United States.This is not surprising when you realize that the average American resident eats 11 cows, 32 pigs and sheep, 85 turkeys and 2,600 chickens and ducks, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
What is even worse, over 80 percent are raised by corporations in overcrowded, squalid conditions. These animals can only expect to live with continual suffering and premature death. Although we would not wish a similar fate on anyone, these are the conditions under which 1 billion people on our overcrowded planet are trying to survive.
There are 1 billion corporate grown cows on Earth, one per human family, all being raised to satisfy the unhealthy human lust for animal flesh. Americans consume 25-fold as much as the average world citizen. A capitalistic economy is driven by supply and demand. If there is less demand, there will be less supply. No profit-seeking organization can neglect this principle. And all U.S. citizens can do their part to diminish the plight of mammals and birds that are raised for food. How? By decreasing their demand.
Albert Einstein said: ‘Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.’
Pythagoras noted: ‘For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.’
Leonardo da Vinci commented: ‘The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.’
Leo Tolstoy concluded: ‘As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.’
Mahatma Gandhi claimed: ‘The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.’
Thomas Edison said: ‘Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.’
Ben Franklin noted: ‘When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice.’
Do you note a common theme? Our greatest world thinkers agree: For ethical, environmental, humanitarian, health, spiritual and just plain commonsense reasons, we should all eat much less meat.