A vegetarian diet is the acid test of humanitarianism.
Leo Tolstoy

Meat consumption causes the suffering and death of more than 9 billion innocent animals each year in the United States alone.[22] The number of fish and shellfish is probably also in the billions.

Most animals in Western countries are raised on "factory farms." These are facilities designed to produce the maximum number of animals for slaughter at the minimum expense. Animals are crowded together, disfigured, and treated like machines for the most "efficient" (ie, least expensive) conversion of feed into flesh.[1,16]

The humane laws in more than one-half of the states explictly exempt farm animals.[10] Actions which would land one in jail if done to a cat or dog (cutting off a tail, depriving of food and water, or housing in overcrowded and filthy conditions) are thus perfectly acceptable, and common practice, in animal agriculture. The federal Animal Welfare Act also excludes farm animals, unless they are used for research. The Humane Slaughter Act excludes all birds from coverage, although chickens make up more than 98% of the animals slaughtered.

All scientific evidence points to the nutritional adequacy of vegetarian and vegan diets (much of the evidence in fact indicates them to be a lot healthier),[2] so all the pain and suffering and loss of life caused by animal agriculture is unnecessary. When one eats animal products, then, one makes the ethical decision that the pleasure gained from it outweighs the suffering and life of the animal. How is this different from the person mutilating animals for fun or wearing fur for fashion?

Greater health awareness has caused a slight decrease in beef consumption, but chicken consumption has more than compensated. Due to the smaller size of chickens, the number of animals suffering and being slaughtered is exploding, increasing by 2.6 billion in just the last 10 years.[22]

Humans are also mistreated by the industry. Stories of worker abuse in the poultry industry abound. Indeed, fewer than 40% of poultry plants comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act.[11] Workers are often denied the right to visit restrooms at will. One employee of Perdue Farms claims she had seen women urinate and vomit on the (dis)assembly line as a result. Repetitive motion syndrome and hand injuries, caused by the need to cut 75-90 birds per minute, are common place, but get little more than superficial medical care. Lost-time injuries occur at a rate of 36 per 100 workers per year. Case Farms employees report having to work with cuts on their hands and having to buy their own safety equipment. In one extreme case of negligence, 25 workers at Imperial Food Products were killed and 56 injured in a fire, most of them attributed to locked or blocked exits. DeCoster Farms was found guilty of labor violations for keeping 100 foreign workers under slave conditions: forcing employees to stay in company housing when off the job and denying them visitors. DeCoster was also fined for worker safety violations, for not paying overtime to individuals working 80-100 hours per week, for paying below minimum wage, and for hiring children as young as 9 years old. With a largely-immigrant work force without any union, attempts at reform are easily overcome by the industry.[9]

1. Duane Acker and Merle Cunningham, Animal Science and Industry, 5th ed. (Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1998).

2. American Dietetics Association, "Position of The American Dietetics Association: Vegetarian diets," JADA, Nov. 1997, p. 1317-1321.

3. Neal Barnard, "Women and Cancer: Opportunities for Prevention," PCRM Update, Sept/Oct 1991.

4. Neal Barnard et al., "The medical costs attributable to meat consumption," Preventive Medicine, Nov. 1995, p. 646-655.

5. Sharon Begley, "The End of Antibiotics?" Newsweek, Mar 7, 1994.

6. Sharon Begley, "The End of Antibiotics," Newsweek, Mar 28, 1994.

7. Merritt Clifton, "Life on the farm isn't very laid back," Animal People, Oct. 1995.

8. Merritt Clifton, "Hogwash," Animal People, Apr 1996.

9. Merritt Clifton, "The Meat Mob Muscles In," Animal People, June 1997.

10. Merritt Clifton, "In bed with stars," Animal People, Jul/Aug 1998.

11. "A Fresh Look at Chicken Safety," Consumer Reports, Oct 98, p. 26-27.

12. Chen Junshi et al., Diet, Lifestyle, and Mortality in China (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1990).

13. Jack Mabbutt, "A new global assessment of the status and trends of desertification," Environ. Conserv. 11:103-113, 1984.

14. James Mason and Peter Singer, Animal Factories, 2nd ed. (Harmony Books: New York, 1990).

15. Mark Messina and Virginia Messina, The Dietitian's Guide to Vegetarian Diets (Aspen Publishers: Maryland, 1996).

16. Mack North and Donald Bell, Commercial Chicken Production Manual, 4th ed. (Chapman & Hall: New York, 1990).

17. David Pimentel, "Environment and Population: Crises and Policies," Food and Natural Resources (Academic Press: San Diego, 1989), p. 363-389.

18. David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society, Revised (Univ. Press of Colorado: Niwat, CO, 1996).

19. David Pimentel et al., "Soil Erosion and Agricultural Productivity," World Soil Erosion and Conservation (Cambridge Univ. Press: Cambridge, 1993), p. 277-292.

20. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 2nd ed. (New York: Avon Books, 1990).

21. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 1995.

22. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Statistics 1998, 1998.

23. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Clean Water Action Plan, 1998.

24. U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry,.Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging National Problem, Dec 1997.

25. World Watch Institute, "United States Leads World Meat Stampede," Press briefing, July 2, 1998.