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Last month, before spring break, University Programs put on
a Vegetarian Food Festival. The food there was quite good,
but I was not as impressed with the speaker. She made some
interesting points about nutrition, but said nothing about
the other reasons to be a vegetarian, which are many. And
even when speaking of nutrition, she only occasionally pointed
out what a healthy diet vegetarianism is. So she really wasn't
much of a vegetarian speaker.
Maybe she should've borrowed a page from the playbook of our
friend Mr. Bowman (aka Moses). She could've told all the carcass
eaters (carceas, pronounced kark-ee-z, meaning not one of
us) that they were all going straight to hell for the sins
they are committing against the animals, the planet, other
people, and themselves.
Anything
that possesses a will of its own, even if it is a very simple
will consisting only of the ability to decide which direction
to turn, should not be killed simply because some people think
their flesh tastes good. It's very annoying to veggies when
people make the inane comment, "well, plants are alive,
why don't you eat them?" as if it weren't much easier
to draw a line between animals and plants than it is to draw
a line between humans and their fellow animals. When the aliens
come and eat all the carceas but not the veggies (because
vegetarians don't taste good to aliens), we're gonna laugh
as they try to persuade them to eat a cow instead.
Even if it were alright to kill animals, it certainly is not
right to make them suffer through the wretched conditions
found on modern mass production farms and force them to die
in the disgusting and dishonorable conditions of an American
slaughterhouse. Remember that when the livestock farmers from
the Alpha Centari system take you away, carceas.
The production of livestock for consumption is also very wasteful
of the Earth's resources. It wastes water, because it takes
a lot of water to grow the food that the animals eat and to
give water to the animals to drink. It would be more efficient
to use the water on food for people to eat. Maybe carceas
should have to drink cow piss, while we veggies can drink
fruit juice. I'll talk to the Centarians about that.
It
also wastes land, causing forests and other natural environments
to be destroyed for grazing and to grow animal feed. You know
the Amazon? Why do you think they're cutting it down, for
the fun of it? One major reason is cattle. So in the name
of Alpha Centari, I claim what little oxygen may be left in
the future for the vegetarian people. Carceas can try breathing
methane, there's plenty of it in cow farts.
It
even wastes fossil fuels because of the difficulty in transporting
the animals. And herbicides and pesticides are sprayed more
heavily on plants grown for animal feed than on those grown
for humans. Those chemicals can get in your water and also
mess up the soil. And they stay in the animals' fat. Bon appetite.
And
just as the inefficiency of animal agriculture contributes
to waste of water, it is also a waste of food itself, contributing
to the massive amount of starvation we have in the world.
There is plenty of food in the world for everyone, if the
"First" World would just stop eating so much of
it and feeding most of the rest to their livestock.
I've
already touched on the cacreas' sin against themselves, the
physical health reasons for being a vegetarian. There are
also arguably spiritual health reasons, but there are too
many reasons to be a vegetarian to list them all.
So
I'll just point out that a lot of this article is a joke,
so don't be too offended. But some of it isn't a joke, so
feel free to be a little bit offended. But don't be mad at
me, I stole all my arguments from various books (except the
parts about Alpha Centari, I stole that from the UFO that
talks to me at night).
But
maybe there should be a student organization for vegetarians.
It could be called Students for a Vegetarian Society (SVS)
and the slogan could be "We're right and you know it!"
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