Thanksgiving arrives every year with a heated debate over how to best cook that plump and juicy turkey. But the idea of a tofu turkey (also known as a “tofurkey”) has gone from a joke a couple years ago to a reality for many. While vegetarianism has been practiced for over a thousand years in some countries, it is a relatively new concept in the West. And so, with the question cropping up more and more often, should we eat meat?
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It's not sustainable
Sustainable? Really?
Well, let's just think about this one for a moment. Where do most people get their veggies? Well, most people buy them. Either in the grocery store or at a farmer's market. How did those veggies get there?
Okay, but they probably didn't travel that far, right? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Depends on where you bought them. Store bought means they could come from as far away as South America. Bananas certainly don't come from Ohio. Local buying is better, but that's still a carbon footprint. Several of my friends and I "go in" on a cow and a pig. We know where it's raised, we know who raised it, and guess what? It traveled just as far to reach us as the veggies some people I know (who don't grow their own) buy. As an added bonus, it raises money for rural kids to go to college. Do veggies do that?
Considering that over-population is a result of poverty, you would think that anytime you raise a person up to a level where they are self-sustaining, it's better for the earth. Now if only we could do this in places where poverty is the biggest issue facing the region.
So, even in-season, veggies have a carbon footprint. A huge one when they're shipped from other countries.
Now, what's a vegetarian to do when he lives in Vermont and it's January? How is he to get the nutrition he needs to survive? Where is his small carbon footprint? It has morphed into a huge carbon footprint. That's where it went.
You're also not considering the human impact. I don't know about you, but I DO have a huge problem with the treatment of fruit and veggie pickers as being second-class citizens. Or more likely, they're treated as second-class because they are not citizens. Whilst most are documented workers - as in, they're here specifically for the purpose of picking those veggies you so love to tout as being better than meat - the fact remains that they are looked down upon in our great society, and are paid minimal wages for work that you wouldn't be able to take for so little pay. Or do I have this wrong and you're okay with spending 10 hours in a field, bent over, picking cucumbers in 92 degree (F) heat for little more than minimum wage? I wouldn't do it.
In an ideal world, people would grow their own vegetables and eat what is locally available to them. THAT is what is sustainable.
- SocialistBetty
December 25, 2008 9:54PM
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I agree on what is sustainable
It's not just the population but where you live. Since the world has constantly changing seasons we have a warm one when veggies and fruit can be grown and a cold one when they can't. A lot of places in the world don't have conditions to grow their own. With the population of the world their is not enough room to grow enough to provide for all the worlds people without more deforestation in a effort to do so. This would indanger more species of wildlife than are already in trouble. Even animals like the New Calidonian Giant Gecko eat fruit in the season it is plentiful while eating rodents and such when it is not around.
While it has been proven most pigs can become wild and take on the look and traits of true wild ones they would be competing for our crops with us. Man would be killing them one way or another. Other animals that we have basically created would ruin our ecosystems should they be set free never to be eatin' only later to wipe out entire wild species that never had to contend with them before. To fight for the dignified treatment of animals is truely noble. To outlaw their consumption would either ultimately mean their genocide or the natural world as we know it.
While I eat very little meat myself it leaves me with one question. Do animal rights activists grasp the logic of conservation?
- Mcdowelli76
May 29, 2009 11:42PM
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