Common Vegetarian Questions
Animals kill other animals for food, so why shouldn't we?
Most animals who kill for food could not survive if they did not do so. That is not the case for us. We are better off not eating meat. Also, we do not look to other animals for standards in other areas, so why should we in this case?
Eating meat is natural. It's been going on for thousands of years. We have evolved that way.
Actually, we have not evolved to eat meat. Carnivorous animals have curved fangs, claws, and a short digestive tract. Human beings have evolved without claws or fangs. We have flat molars and a long digestive tract better suited to a diet of vegetables, fruits, and grains. Eating meat is hazardous to our health; it contributes to heart disease, cancer, and a host of other health problems.
If everyone switches to vegetables and grains, will there be enough to eat?
We feed so much of the grain we produce to animals in order to fatten them up for consumption that, if we all became vegetarians, we could produce enough food to feed the entire world. In the U.S., animals are fed more than 80 percent of the corn we grow and more than 95 percent of the oats. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people--more than the entire human population on Earth.
Farmers have to treat their animals well, or they won't produce as much milk or lay as many eggs.
Animals on factory farms do not gain weight, lay eggs, and produce milk because they are comfortable, content, or well cared for, but, rather, because they have been manipulated specifically to do these things through genetics, medications, hormones, and management techniques. In addition, animals raised for food today are slaughtered at extremely young ages, before disease and misery have decimated them.
Such huge numbers of animals are raised for food that it is more cost-effective for farmers to absorb some losses than to provide humane conditions.
Don't Humans have to eat meat to stay healthy?
Both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Dietetic Association have endorsed vegetarian diets. Studies have also shown that vegetarians have stronger immune systems than meat-eaters and that meat-eaters are almost twice as likely to die of heart disease, 60 percent more likely to die of cancer, and 30 percent more likely to die of other diseases. The consumption of meat and dairy products has been conclusively linked with diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, clogged arteries, obesity, asthma, and impotence as well.
If everyone turned vegetarian it would be worse for the animals because many of them would not even be born.
Life on the factory farms is so miserable, it is hard to see how we are doing animals a favor by bringing them into existence, confining and stressing them, abusing them, and then slaughtering them.