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I’m a fourteen year old girl, who has been a vegetarian for six solid years. I am not a member of the Jewish community, yet I found this site insightful and interesting.

i am a vegetarian because i believe it si wrong to kill animals. As said in one of the many valid points posted on this topic, even an Apple has living cells, but that is not the same as eating an animal. An apple cannot feel, has not the power fo emotion, yet it is not completely inanimate. Apples were put on the Earth by God for us to eat, not animals. Horses were put on this planet to make us happy. Everything has a purpose, and a Human’s is still undiscovered, as is an animals, but fruit and vegetables etc. are there to be eaten, to spread their seeds and grow, and then be eaten again. Please try to understand my point, even though it is a jumble.

To quote the third comment, the idea of eating meat being spiritual is bullshit. I’m tired of debating die-hard meat-eaters when there is no substantial argument as to why people should eat meat rather than not. What it comes down to is justification. You’re raised eating meat, you’re defensive of how you were raised, thus you’re defensive of your eating of meat. Does mass farming pollute? Yes. Pretty much everything pollutes. The point is that you can produce much more food by growing it without hurting the environment than meat. Do they pollute? Yes. But plants have a slower rate.

I get it. Meat tastes good. I’ve been a vegan 8 months and I still miss the taste of meat. But as far as I’m concerned, the above pro-meat arguments are irrelevant and futile. Meat tastes good but it’s not worth the cost of life, suffering, and environmental damage for a few minutes of it tasting good when there are MUCH better options out there that taste significantly better.

Do things die? Yes. Are things ever going to stop dying? Probably not. The point is that eating meat is unessential, pointless, unethical, and wasteful. Face it.

My first qualm is rather trivial, given the subject. “The Yoga of Eating”?? I’m a practicing householder yogi, spending the greater portion of my free-time meditating, and the tenet of not eating meat in the context of yoga is traditionally two-fold: there’re certain edibles that cause passionate tenancies in the mind which thwart the spiritual progress of a yoga (meat, alcohol, drugs, garlic, onions, stimulants like chocolate and coffee, and excessive dairy), and early termination of life of higher-evolved life-forms for selfish interests. I think he should change the name of his book, because, though a very intelligent conversationalist, he doesn’t quite grasp what yoga is really about (more like a studio “yogi”).

And the whole thing about preoccupation with death is for the foo-foo PETA people. Those of us who’ve moved beyond simply being a rebel-for-a-cause know this argument is at the bottom of the intellectual totem pole, as far as this issue’s concerned.

It’s true that the ecologics (new word!) of industrial meat production is a major issue. It’s big, because it ends up directly effecting us in ways that will cause unavoidable obstacles in our fairly near future: groundwater pollution, over-grazing, poor crop allocation (somewhere like 40-60% of grains produced we feed to animals, who we then in turn intend to eat), and apparently deadly inter-specie transmittable diseases created by farmers trying to save money by feeding ground up dead and/or diseased animals to healthy ones. Mmmmm, meat.

There’re so many other issues that industrial livestock cultivation is the cause of that it’s pointless to banter about it. There’re too many good books on the subject already. What it comes down to is this: There are no significant moral, ethical, social, religious, or ecological ramifications from living a vegan lifestyle. But there are from eating meat. Choose wisely.

As Howard Lyman wrote, “Go try tearing a chunk out of a moose with those canine teeth of yours.”
The fact is the teeth called canines are in name only. But look at our digestive tract. A dogs entire digestive system is 3 times the length of its body, while the humans is 12 times the length of its body. The meat rots inside of us because it takes so long to pass.
And to support the argument about how we cannot eat under cooked meat safely; A dog has stomach acid that is 20 times more acidic than a humans. Ever wonder why your pups puke stained the carpet.

“Death, yes, suffering, no.”

Some of you seem to believe that being slaughtered for food is a source of suffering. Regarding the livestock industry at large, you’d be right on, because of the inhumane treatment of animals before they are slaughtered. But on local, free range farms where animals are treated well until they are put down, the only moment of suffering occurs at the moment of death — and even this is debatable. So you are indeed equating the fact that animals suffer at our hands with the fact that they die at our hands. Death = suffering, and so you are, in fact, objecting to death. Contrarily to many other omnivores in the animal kingdom, our methods for killing our prey are painless. Natural selection can be much, much crueler than your average local farmer. Do you feel that the moment of suffering at the time of death is not justified by the purpose of killing (food)? Do you condemn animals/omnivores in the wild that kill and eat their prey?

Oh wait, you feel as though it is our responsibility as humans blessed with higher consciousness to curb our natural instincts because we can? This is arrogant and elitist, and separates us from the animal kingdom in a way that feels a) naive and b) misguided.

My point: those vegetarians that object to suffering are refusing to acknowledge that death/suffering just ISN’T optional. Your ethical stance is just a pretense for a very personal aversion to meat, which you are entirely entitled to.

Hello meat eaters – thank you for your efforts to justify whether eating meat is the right thing to do or not – and whether humans are meant to eat meat or not.

You meat eaters should continue to eat as much you like – that does not matter as long as you do not enforce that upon others who choose to be vegetarian.

I request my fellow mates that they should at the earliest make a visit to the “Slaughter House” and see for yourself from start to end the animal being killed – and do not put on your head phones while watching – you must hear them as well.

Good luck and thank you everyone who has posted in this forum…

Perhaps you should look into your history before you start spouting off. Early Eskimos never suffered from scurvy and had maybe vegetables or fruits in 2% of their diet. The Early explores that refused to add any form of traditional native foods to their diets DID get scurvy others that adopted the diet did not. Meats high in Vitamin C: In traditional Eskimo diets of old. Would include, Penguin meat, Walrus meat and blubber,and fish. Beluga Whale skin contains as much vitamin C as oranges. May I suggest that you read about the early explorers: Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Scott or Shackleton, or talk to any Anthropology student in a local college or perhaps the professor.

The Eskimos knew that to cook the meat leeched the vitamins out of the meat. So in fact scurvy is prevented by consuming certain raw meats. Of course modern Eskimos have more or less adopted the same diet as the rest of the world, they get their Vitamin C from orange juicelike you and me.

“Whoever said that primates such as Gorillas Chimps etc do not eat meat need to buy an idiots guide to primates….although American TV shows images of chimps swinging from branch to branch with twigs in their mouths, this is not the be all and end all of their behaviour. I suggest that who ever believes such an ignorant view do a little research before using such “evidence” in an ethical/biological debate…which this is by the way!”

I assume this is directed at my comment above, but here is what I actually said:

“Some of our primate relatives have canine teeth, yet have an herbivorous diet.”

‘Some’ would be the operative word there–and no mention of apes at all. The howler monkey would be a good example of a primate with canine teeth and an herbivorous diet.

I apologize for any confusion–the point of that post was simply that canine teeth are not particularly good indicators of diet in and of themselves.

I think its obvious that certain plants were made for human consumption more so than animals. Although commercial bought fruits and veggies were not treated with the respect they deserve, it is far less evil than treating animals like they are conscious-less machines. One needs only look at the human digestive system to learn that humans are herbivores. A banana was obviously made for human consumption… it’s easy to digest, fits perfectly in your hand, it’s healthy, etc etc.

I have never heard a vegan or vegetarian explain their choice by saying that their diet “natural” or “how we were meant to eat.” Why is it that omnivores are often so eager to point to our pointy teeth and explain how natural meat eating is? We live in houses, we wear clothes, we use medicine. These things are all unnatural and yet most of us would agree that there is nothing wrong with them. Out of respect for present company, I won’t go into all of the “natural” things that we all find disgusting. Natural does not mean better.

In any case, the issue here is ethics, not biology. I agree with Isa and others that Mr. Eisenstein missed the boat on why most most of us are vegans or vegetarians. Also, I would argue that whatever is fulfilling to a cow or chicken, ending up dead on Mr. Eisenstein’s plate isn’t a part of it.

There are 16 taxonomical points of comparisons between non-human herbivores and humans. Also, take a look at carnivores, and you will see some real canine teeth. Our canines are not named because they are designed for biting into living animals, snapping their necks, and tearing their throats out to kill them and eat their raw flesh. Carnivores have short digestive tracts, jaws that cannot move from side-to-side (a trait humans share with herbivores), and they are not sickened by meat. Rather, TRUE carnivores need meat to survive. People don’t, and it’s becoming clearer with every medical study (as if we needed more proof) that meat consumption is harmful to our health. That should be evidence enough that we are best suited for a plant-based diet.

And I’ll second commenters above who object to the notion that vegetarians have a thing against death. Far from it. We have the moral capacity to understand the consequences of our decisions. Knowing that meat is not necessary for survival, and understanding how animals are like us emotionally (familial bonding, fear of death, etc.), it is incumbent upon us to respect the rights of other creatures to live, and to not treat them as means to our ends. Commodifying animals for our use is inherenly inhumane.

This is for the idiot who said apes are vegetarian. All apes are omnivores. Baboons are some of the most ferocious hunters around. Even chimpanzees, our closest relatives, are omnivores. Vegetarianism is unnatural for our species.

… to all of those omnivores out there: biologically and comparitive-anatomically speaking, we would be best categorized as frugivores, and most certainly not carnivores or omnivores. However, I agree with the previous posts on the point that we should not let our anatomy be the sole determinant of our ethical choices; the issue is obviously much more complex than that.

Lavajin: excellent points, and well put!

Awesome discussion, all; this is a very interesting debate.

Cows get BSE from cannibalism, sheep get Scrapie, Humans get Kuru (discovered among the fore tribe in New Guinea …

I’m curious as to what Hindu vegetarians have to say about this, since Hindus have been vegetarian for millennia.

I think this whole article misses the point of why a lot of people become vegetarian of vegan, but I see some people already explained this earlier. Let’s just all agree that whatever you eat, it’s always wrong to disrespect nature or any creature and treat like an object without emotions and feelings.

You both say you stopped eating meat basically because of the suffering of the animals. If you go back and read what Charles wrote you will find that he has this statement in his reply to the original No Death No Dinner post. : “And so the problem with today’s meat industry is not that animals die; it is that they are living a hellish life.”
I think that most of us agree, that animals that are mass produced simply to stock meat counters at the local markets are living hellish lives. They suffer, and they are pumped full of drugs, made to eat unnatural things, kept in small pens, and then slaughtered so that someone can have that prime cut of meat for their dinner.

Should we touch on the waste not just of the life but of the physical remains as well? How about the factories themselves? How much pollution is made from this practice from start to finish? The same can be tracked from factories that mass produce veggies. How many recalls have come out this year for veggies that are contaminated? This is becoming a trend it seems.

May I suggest growing your own veggies when possible? This way you can be sure that what you are consuming is free of chemicals. I would suggest the same for buying meat and eggs, if you do not have the space to raise your own, at least try to buy with some sort of consciousness as to where the meat or eggs you are consuming came from, and how the animals are treated.

I am not a vegan, but I respect those who have made the decision to live without meat. I do not feel that consuming meat is wrong, as long as it is done in a responsible way. Just as being a vegan is not wrong as long as it is done in a responsible way.