Vegans - The Vegetable Extreme.

Vegans: The Vegetable Extreme

Eric Walk

English 8

Mr. Bruce

23 October 2002

Vegans are a highly opinionated group of individuals who are against the use of animals for our gain; their main objections are eating, using the byproducts of and conducting research on animals. I don’t understand why they do it. I know very well the common belief; they want to save living things! But, rabbit food is alive too!

Of course we all must have heard, “I don’t like meat or other animal products!” So in that case I have one response: “Right; and you expect me to believe that because…?” In this essay I plan to uncover the reasons that people become vegans.

To understand vegans I have deemed it necessary to understand vegetarianism. To my dismay, being a vegetarian is like we all think it is; you don’t eat meat! But it gets worse. There are three main types of vegetarians: Lacto-vegetarians eat no meat, animal products or eggs but have milk; ovo-vegetarians eat no meat, animal products or milk but eat eggs; and lacto-ovo vegetarians eat no meat and animal products but eat milk and eggs. In addition, there are three “disgrace to vegetarianism” types. Pesco-vegetarians do not eat most meat but eat fish and sea food; Pollo-vegetarians do not eat red meat but eat poultry; and, semi-vegetarians are just trying to cut down on meat.

In contrast to vegetarianism, the vegan will not use animals for personal gain and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, the “carnivegan” will eat mainly meat. On the “carnivegans” website it says, “Humans are meant to eat meat. Our teeth are designed to do so. Incisors do not exist solely for the purpose of taking up space in our mouths. Steak tastes good for a reason.” This just shows you that obviously there are other extremes but the vegan extreme is still the most complex in my mind.

To successfully be a vegan, one must scan every label for a vegan logo or no animal products in the ingredients. This is complicated because an animal product may be listed as its chemical name. Additionally, vegans scan cosmetics and other products with ingredients listed on the label. With respect to clothing, vegans will not wear leather, fur, ivory jewelry and they even reject pearls.

I have done some research on the various reasons why a person may want to become a vegan. Three stood out to me: health benefits, ethics and religion and environmental concern. Only one of ...

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I have done some research on the various reasons why a person may want to become a vegan. Three stood out to me: health benefits, ethics and religion and environmental concern. Only one of these came to mind when I first thought through it: environmental concern, however the best reason that my research produced was a concern for health, especially as it relates to cholesterol and fat. But if that is the reason for going to the dark side, think again. The fact that veggies have less fat is meaningless because plants just store fat as starch which will become fat in a person during digestion if it is not burned as energy. That is to say, even a vegan must work it off. Also you may have heard of “essential amino acids.” These acids can not be produced by the body so one must get them from something else. Most meat and a handful of beans contain the acids.

Next, we have ethics and religion; people just think it is wrong to kill an animal. Plants happen to be god’s creations and also happen to be alive. So, is it not wrong to kill a plant? Just think about the rainforest. Many vegans are environmental advocates who want to “save the rainforest.” When in fact they are the ones eating all the plants. Well, maybe they don’t really eat the rainforest. But it’s the concept that matters.

Vegans also think it is wrong to have a pet seeing that you keep it in a cage as if it is living in “eternal suffering.” Although in my opinion dogs, fish, hamsters and cats seem not to mind captivity. And then there are the religious zealots who claim to be following God’s original diet plan. However, those who have studied the five books of Moses will recall that God changed his mind and permitted men to eat animals. However, God did have restrictions.

This brings me to my next point, environmental concern. Vegans think that the animal products industry is wasteful and should try to save more animals and use previously wasted parts of the animal. First of all the “wasted” parts are probably useless or just no one buys them. Also, how do they justify killing a plant after all, so much of the dead vegetables just rot.

For the piece du resistance, I have found an opposite essay to mine written by vegan “genius” Biz Stone. He claims that his reasoning behind being a vegan is that livestock is tortured and he includes the following vivid description:

But even a dairy cow’s life is an uncomfortable loop of impregnation, birth, and milking for human consumption and profit. She will be kept consistently impregnated and machine milked just about every day until she dies after a hollow life of 4 years—under natural conditions her life span would be 25 years. Her babies will be stolen from her within hours of birth. The boys will become pet food, veal, raised for beef, or auctioned off. The girls are doomed to enslavement in the dairy industry like their mothers. And vegetarians should be aware, 40% of America’s hamburger is made from spent dairy cows.

Six hens are forced into cages so small that their feet usually grow around the wires in factory egg farms. Row upon row of these cages—100,000 birds fill only one warehouse. Their beaks, which contain delicate tissue, are often severed at the tip to avoid pecking. There is no anesthesia involved, just a hot knife or sharp guillotine type of device. The birds are shocked into producing more eggs with a method called forced molting that usually devastates their immune system. At the hatcheries, the baby birds are separated into two groups—male and female. Males cannot produce eggs and cannot grow large enough to produce meat so they are killed en masse by suffocation, gassing, drowning, or they are ground alive for use in animal feed.

To me all of this “torture” of the chickens is absolutely necessary to make it so that we are able to (with our own safety in mind) procure meat and other products from an animal. And the cows are not being tortured or hurt very much because they are just doing the things that they do best: make babies and milk.

To finish I would like to quote Einstein:

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
—Albert Einstein

Einstein, you’re the best, but I’m not too sure about the vegetarian thing because someone may like the idea; but not everyone could handle the lack of meat at this place in time and space. Maybe we should work on that worm hole first. So I am sure that the process of extracting meat from an animal may be a necessary evil, because you just can’t replace a good steak or fillet with tofu. And how do you prepare the stuff anyways…but that’s another story.

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