Reasons Christians and Jews Should Be Vegetarian

Seven Reasons Christians Should Be Vegetarian

“Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight... Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of the crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.”

—Rev. Andrew Linzey

1. Jesus' message is one of love and compassion, yet there is nothing loving or compassionate about factory farms and slaughterhouses, where billions of animals live miserable lives and die violent, bloody deaths.

Jesus mandates kindness, mercy, compassion, and love for all God's creation. He would be appalled by the degree of suffering we inflict on animals to indulge our acquired taste for their flesh.

Animals are sentient creatures, capable of loving us or fearing us. God created every animal with the capacity for pain and suffering. Most people are unaware of the unspeakable mental and physical torture that factory farmed animals suffer their entire lives. Indeed, most people are duped by television commercials of “happy cows” in large, empty pastures under sunny blue skies. The truth, however, is that family farms are now a thing of the past, and on today's factory farms, animals routinely undergo all sorts of painful procedures, being de-horned, de-beaked with a hot iron, branded and castrated without anesthesia. Physical mutilations, such as chopping off toes, tails, etc. are routine husbandry practices in modern factory farms. These painful surgical procedures such as castration and de-horning are performed without anesthesia or a local analgesic on billions of farmed animals each year. That they are feeling pain is evident as the animals scream and cry and squirm in pain.

These animals do not spend their life roaming free in the barnyard, as they once did. Today, virtually all of the meat we eat comes from factory farms in which animals spend their lives suffering atrocious conditions. In the 21st century, eating meat is cruelty towards animals. Ten billion animals live short, unhealthy and unnatural lives of confinement and suffering and are then slaughtered for meat every year in the United States alone. To maximize profits, they are crowded together in the least space possible, to live under the most inhumane conditions and treatment, suffocation, light deprivation. Farmed animals raised in intensive operations cannot perform even the most basic of behaviors, such as turning around, walking, flapping their wings, etc – due to the small size of their cages and severe overcrowding to maximize profit. Furthermore, they are genetically bred, so that most suffer lameness, crippling leg deformities, or bone breaks, because their legs can't keep up with their scientifically enhanced bodies. Finally, they are trucked without food or water, through all weather extremes, to a frightening and hellish death, at times boiled alive. Kosher slaughterhouses are even worse, as the cows have their esophagus ripped out of their throat and are then dumped on the ground, where they stumble and struggle to get up with their insides hanging from their throats.

Male chicks are useless to poultry and egg farms and are sorted and thrown in garbage bags, to die of suffocation or crushed under the weight of hundreds of other chicks.

Veal is created by placing calves in a pen only as big as they are, where they cannot even turn around. Separated from their mother at birth, they are deprived of all sunlight and not allowed to ever walk, thus creating no muscle tone. Since male calves are useless to dairy farms, they are turned into veal. Thus, if you consume dairy, you are supporting veal. All this is out of order in God’s design. God designed chickens to build nests and raise their families; he designed pigs to root in the soil; he designed all animals to breathe fresh air, to play with one another. Besides being horribly abused, animals raised for meat are denied everything God designed them to be and to do.

Jesus said the father notices when a sparrow falls unnoticed to the ground.[1] Luke quotes Jesus as stating that even though sparrows are bought and sold for pennies, “not one of them is forgotten” by God.[2] Do you think he would ever approve of the intense suffering that factory-farmed animals endure? The question isn’t “what did Jesus eat when he was on earth,” but rather, “What would Jesus eat now?”

We are explicitly told that “Whatever you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”[3] Proverbs 12:10 tells us that “good people take care of their animals, but wicked people are cruel to theirs.”[4] A vegetarian diet glorifies God because it spares animals this unimaginable suffering and violence.

2. God made us vegetarian. The Garden of Eden, God's perfect world, was vegetarian. In God’s coming kingdom, the earth will once again return to God’s original design.

When God created Adam and Eve, he specifically outlined their diet as well as that of animals: “I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; but for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food.”[5] He then called this ideal and non-exploitative relationship “good.”[6]

There followed many years of fallen humanity, when people held slaves, waged war, ate animals and committed various other violent acts—all not a part of God’s design. God did not abandon his people because they wouldn’t do things his way. He worked with them and gave them object lessons along the way. When he brought them out of Egyptian slavery, he gave them manna, which was vegetarian. David called manna, “angel’s food”, but the Israelites complained, “If only we could have some meat! In Egypt we used to eat all the fish we wanted, and it cost us nothing. Remember the cucumbers, the watermelons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic we had?... There is nothing at all to eat—nothing but this manna day after day!”[7] God then provided this stiff-necked and hard-hearted people[8] quail, but we are told that, “while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was aroused against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very great plague. So he called the name of that place Kibroth Hattaavah,[9] because there they buried the people who had yielded to craving.”[10]

God had told the people that they would not need to wage war to conquer the promised land, but that he would send the forces of nature to slowly drive the inhabitants of the land out[11]. There are notable examples of times when they actually trusted him and allowed him to conquer their enemies for him. When they chose to fight, God gave them specific instructions on the manner in which to conduct themselves in war. However, this is certainly not God placing his “stamp of approval” on war and their lack of trust in him.

One installed in the land, God declared himself Israel’s King, and gave them a system of government by judges. The people complained that they wanted to be like all other nations, and have a king. Once again, God did not reject them for not doing things his way. He warned them of the ways a king would abuse them, but then chose a king for them—a tall, handsome man, and he even gave him a new heart. Again, this does not indicate that God was pleased or approved of their having a monarchy, as God said they rejected him by asking for a king.

When God himself came to earth in human form, the Pharisees basically told him that “God obviously approves of divorce, because he told us how to do it.”[12] Jesus’ reply was, “Moses gave you permission to divorce your wives because you are so hard to teach. But it was not like that at the time of creation,”[13] and during this encounter he had gone to God’s original design by stating, “In the beginning the Creator made people male and female, and God said, ‘for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will become one.’... No human being must separate, then, what God has joined together.”[14]

In following Christ’s example, shouldn’t Christians be asking, “What was God’s original design for our diets?” rather than pointing to Bible texts where God worked with his rebellious children? God’s ideal and original design is that humanity be vegan.[15] While he worked with rebellious humanity and gave us permission to eat certain kinds of meat killed in a specific manner[16], it is no more evidence that he approves of eating meat than his direction to Israel on war is approval, his giving them a king was approval, his giving them divorce laws was approval.

The prophets tell us that in the peaceable coming kingdom will be non-violent and vegetarian. Even the lion will lie with the lamb. Man an even the animals will return to God’s original design[17] of vegetarianism[18], as there will be no death[19]. Some try to spiritualize the kindgom away, but the Bible teaches that we will be real people[20] doing real things—planting vineyards and trees, eating and drinking[21], building houses[22].

There is nothing non-violent about the senseless torture and slaughter of animals in factory farms. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, who will usher in this new world of nonviolence. There will be no factory farms and slaughterhouses in heaven or on the new earth. When Christians pray, “Your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven”[23]—the one prayer given to us by Jesus—this obligates us to change our lives, to make choices that are as merciful and loving as possible.

4. A vegetarian diet is good for you. We are under obligation to preserve our health, to glorify God in everything we do, and to reach the world with the Gospel.

We are told in that our bodies are “the temple of the Holy Spirit,”[24] and that “if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy.”[25] We don’t have the right to do what we want with “our” bodies[26], because we were bought with a price and belong to him[27]. The rest of that verse tells us that we are to glorify God with our bodies.

A 20-year study conducted at Loma Linda University in California found that vegetarians live an average 10 to 15 years longer than meat eaters. Due to the fact that eating a plant based diet reduces the risks of hypertension and heart disease, cancers (especially lung and colon), type 2 diabetes, obesity, and kidney disease. Think of your responsibility in sharing the gospel both actively and passively, by living a Christlike life. How many souls could you reach in an additional 10-15 years? The sixth commandment states, “thou shalt not kill;”[28] surely it is a sin to shorten our lives by making “our bellies our god.”[29]

John expresses that God is as interested in our physical health as he is our spiritual condition: “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in good health, even as thy soul prospereth.”[30] Indeed, whatever affects the body has a corresponding effect on the mind and soul, because our minds and souls are intricately tied to our physical bodies. You can’t effectively share the gospel with someone who is under the influence of alcohol or drugs. When someone is in extreme pain, their thinking and reasoning and acceptance abilities are greatly affected and hindred. When Daniel and his companions chose a vegetarian diet[31] in Babylonian captivity, God blessed them and in just 10 days “they looked healthier and stronger than all those who had been eating the royal food.”[32]

We live in a world where we are no longer dying from unpreventable causes, but by what are termed “lifestyle illnesses”, such as heart disease and diabetes. Heart disease is the #1 cause of death in the U.S., and diabetes is projected to reach epidemic proportions in the very near future. Meat, dairy products and eggs are high in cholesterol and saturated fats[33], which increases the risk of heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes, but a vegan diet is cholesterol-free and generally low in fat. A full 50 percent of illnesses can be delayed or eliminated by dietary choices. Heart attacks are the number one cause of death in America due to high saturated fat in the bloodstream, as a result of fast food diets. The risk of death from heart attack for the average U.S. man is 50%. However, it is only 15% for vegetarian men, and it goes down to 4% for vegan men. Thus, risk of heart attack is reduced by 90% for those eating a vegan diet. Indeed, even reducing your animal product consumption in half would lower your risk by 45%.

Breast and Prostate Cancer

A woman who eats meat daily is at 3.8 times higher risk of breast cancer than women who eat it less than once a week. Similarly, a woman who eats eggs daily compared to once a week is 2.8 times higher, 3.25 times higher for women who eat butter and cheese 2-4 times a week. The increased risk of ovarian cancer in women who eat eggs 3 or more times per week versus one who eats them less than once a week is 3 times higher. As regarding osteoporosis, the average measurable bone loss of female meat-eaters at age 65 is 35%, whereas it is 18% for female vegetarians at age 65.

Men are certainly not exempt. The increased risk of fatal prostate cancer for men who consume meat, cheese, eggs and milk daily versus sparingly or not at all is 3.6 times higher. Men who consume large amounts of dairy products have a 70% increased risk for prostate cancer.

Asthma

A vegan diet also has many benefits. Dairy products have been shown to cause many health problems in people and especially children. Notmilk.com believes that at least 50% of children in the United States are allergic to dairy and the majority are undiagnosed. Many children outgrow it, but many do not. Dairy products have also been related to an increase in asthma. Caused by a substance in dairy called casein. Casein causes the body to produce histamines which produce mucus. Mucus makes breathing very difficult and causes many people to rely on inhalers and other asthma medications. One study conducted had asthma patients switch to a vegan diet. After 4 months 71% of the asthma patients were doing better and after one year, 92% were doing better.

Vegetarians have 40 percent less cancer mortality and are less likely to suffer from strokes, obesity, appendicitis, osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes, and food poisoning.

Drugs, Hormones and Pesticides

Drugs and hormones are routinely used on farms. Factory farmers routinely add antibiotics to animal feed to prevent the spread of disease and hormones to induce growth. The use of antibiotics in farm animals that are not sick causes an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that jeopardizes human health. Antibiotic resistance has been called one of the world's most pressing public health problems. Antibiotic resistance can cause significant danger and suffering for children and adults who have common infections, once easily treatable with antibiotics.

In addition to drugs and hormones, meat is full of pesticides. Farmed animals are eating pesticide-laden grain, and pesticides then collect in the animals' flesh such that meat contains accumulations of pesticides and other chemicals up to 14 times more concentrated than those in plant foods. Meat supplies 55% of the pesticide residues in the U.S. diet, and 23% are supplied by by dairy products. Compare that to only 6% by vegetables, 4% by fruits and 1% by grains.

The major source of pesticide residues in the western diet are meat, poultry and dairy products. The breast milk of 99% of U.S. non-vegetarian mothers contain significant levels of DDT, whereas only 8% of U.S. vegetarian women have significant levels. The breast milk of non-vegetarian mothers is becoming increasingly contaminated with toxins, while the breastmilk of mothers eating a vegan diet contains only 1-2% of this contamination. Toxins weaken the immune system and contribute to ummune deficiency diseases such as cancer, AIDS and herpes. Cancer is now the #1 cause of infant death.

One alarming way these pesticides in our food supply is affecting us is by causing male sterility. In 1950, only 0.5% of male college students were sterile, but the percentage in 1978 had climbed to 25%. The sperm count of the average American male decreased 30% in the last 30 years. The principle reason for male sterility and sperm count reduction in U.S. males is chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides (including dioxin, DDT, etc.). 94% of chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide residues in the American diet are attributable to meat, dairy products, fish and eggs. Less than 1 out of every quarter million slaughtered animals is tested for toxic chemical residues.

Colon Cancer

Among other health problems, excessive meat consumption is also linked to colon cancer. Americans consume in average double the amount of protein required by the body. This lowers the levels of calcium[34]. The body acquires it from the bones, weakening them and causing stereoclorosis.

Other health problems are a result of extra hormones injected into cows to produce milk, which may be linked to breast and uterus cancer in women and prostate cancer in men. Furthermore, America suffers from a weight problem. According to the Centers of Disease Control, over 34 million people in United States are overweight, due to excess sugar in the diet and an increasingly sedentary life-style. But the consumption of animal fat is among the most important factors that contribute to obesity.

It is not even appetizing to think about the filth and disease in animal products. They are all tainted with feces and bacteria. 80% of pigs have pneumonia at slaughter. 90% of chickens have chicken cancer at slaughter. Ilness and death by salmonella, campylobacter, e. coli, listeria and other bacteriological forms are in most cases transmitted by tainted animal products[35]. This is not even taking into consideration Mad Cow Disease. Furthermore, variants of mad cow disease have been identified in sheep, mink, elk, deer, and cats. Thus, anything with a brain—chicken, fish, pigs, turkeys—are at risk. When people eat infected animals (thus far presumed to be cows), they could develop the human version of the disease, new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD).

God has set in place certain laws of health in motion. They are written by the finger of God on every fibre and muscle of our bodies, and they are just as sure as the law of gravity. It is sinful presumption to live unhealthful lifestyles and then expect God to heal us if we get sick as a result of our own doing. The Spirit of God inspired Solomon to write, “The curse causeless shall not come,”[36] reiterating the foundational law of God’s universe that we reap what we sow[37]. Thus, we are to discipline our bodies and bring them into subjection.[38] In Romans 12:1, Paul implores, “I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mecy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”[39]

4. The earth does not belong to us; it belongs to God. We are God’s stewards and are responsible for preserving his creation. A vegetarian diet uses the resources God has provided in the wisest fashion.

The solemnity with which God views the destruction of the environment is seen in Revelation, which states that God is coming to “destroy them that destroy the earth.”[40] Furthermore, Jesus showed us his attitude towards conservation when he miraculously fed thousands with 5 loaves and a few fishes, but then ordered that they “gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost.”[41]

In the United States alone, 27 million, 400 thousand animals are killed for food each day. That’s more than 1 million, 140 thousand animals each hour of every day, nearly 19,000 per minute! These animals suffer miserably, of course, but they also require staggering amounts of grain, beans, and water. Modern meat production is both wasteful and destructive. Each pound of steak from feedlot-raised steers that you eat comes at the cost of 5 pounds of grain, 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about twenty-five pounds of eroded topsoil. Indeed, over a third of the North American continent is devoted to grazing, and over a half of this country's cropland is dedicated to growing feed for livestock. The water that goes into a 1000 pound steer would float a destroyer. Beef production alone uses more water than is used to grow the nation's entire fruit and vegetable crop[42]. As a result, underground pools of water around the world are drying up. Animal production is the major cause of falling water tables and drying wells across cattle country from western Texas to Nebraska, as the Ogalalla Aquifier, a huge underground lake that took fossil fuels millions of years to create, is consumed. Agricultural runoff has killed millions of fish, and is the main reason why 60% of America's rivers and streams are "impaired". In states with concentrated animal agriculture, the waterways have become rife with pfiesteria bacteria. In addition to killing fish, pfiesteria causes open sores, nausea, memory loss, fatigue and disorientation in humans. Even groundwater, which takes thousands of years to restore, is being contaminated. For example, the aquifer under the San Bernadino Dairy Preserve in southern California contains more nitrates and other pollutants than water coming from sewage treatment plants.

Toxic Waste, Water Waste and Water Contamination

In addition to feeding animals food that could feed millions, they produce billions of gallons of what is basically toxic waste. Thus, meat production around the globe not only wastes the water it uses, it also pollutes the water it does not use. The meat industry causes more water pollution in the United States than all other industries combined because the animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 130 times more excrement than the human population. Every year, factory farms dump 220 billion gallons of animal waste onto farmland and into our waterways.

It takes between 2,500 and 5,200 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. 2,500 gallons of water would meet the total water needs of a family of four for one month! Simply by passing up a few hamburgers, you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle or as much water as it takes to maintain a typical household for an entire month. Similarly, while taking anywhere between 23 to 49 gallons to produce a pound of lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, or apples, it takes 815 gallons of water to produce a pound of chicken, and 1,630 gallons of water to produce a pound of pork[43]. A totally vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year. The amount of water saved by becoming a strict vegetarian is in excess of 1,400,000 gallons per year!

If you thought living near a nuclear reactor would be a nightmare, trying living by a factory farm. A farm producing 18,000 pigs a year can create as much waste as a town of almost 60,000 people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the pollution from animal waste causes respiratory problems, skin infections, nausea, depression, and even death for people who live near factory farms. According to other U.S. studies, as many as 70 percent of all workers employed by hog barns suffer from bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses resulting from the corrosive nature of hog waste.

In December 1997, the Senate Agricultural Committee released a report stating that animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 130 times as much excrement as the human population—5 tons for every person in the United States. A Scripps Howard synopsis of the report (April 24, 1998) stated, "[I]t's untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and disease-bearing organisms. ... It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and sickening people. ... Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated. ... Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick."

Because these animals are injected, fed and sprayed with pesticides and antiboitics, their waste is filled with toxic chemicals. While the excrement produced by U.S. livestock is over 20 times greater than the entire human population, human waste goes to sewage treatment plants. Since there are no sewage systems in U.S. feedlots, the animal excrement is dumped, untreated, into our waters. 90% of all organic water pollution in the U.S. is atributable to the standard American diet.

"No one has the right to use America's rivers and America's waterways, that belong to all the people, as a sewer. The banks of a river may belong to one man or one industry or one State, but the waters which flow between the banks should belong to all the people." -Lyndon B. Johnson, signing the Clean Water Act of 1965

Topsoil Erosion

Not only is twenty times more land is required to feed a meat-eater than to feed a pure vegetarian, but the meat industry uses up topsoil at the alarming rate of 35 pounds in the production of one pound of steak. It has been said that, historically, topsoil depletion has been a cause of the demise of many great civilizations. And in the last 200 years, U.S. agricultural practices have destroyed 1,500 years (or 75%) of the nation's topsoil. Each year an amount of cropland topsoil the size of Connecticut is lost to erosion, 85% of which can be directly associated with livestock raising. Excessive sediment then fills river beds, promotes floods, and clouds rivers and decreases sunlight which lowers oxygen levels and chokes off life in the water (Ervin 1998). It is easy to see how, with clouded streams and no nutritive soil with which to grow crops, those many great civilizations collapsed. Since a vegetarian diet requires only 1.7% to 5% of the farmland needed for a meat-based diet[44], we could take the pressure off our farmland and allow it to be restored through crop rotation and other organic farming methods.

Raising animals for food consumes more than half of all the water used in the United States. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat.

Deforestation

Trees absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. When the trees are gone, life as we know it on earth will also be gone.

The primary cause for deforestation in America is not urban development. In the last 300 years, we have cut down over half of the trees in the United States and exchanged them for vast fields of corn and oats, which are primarily fed to livestock.[45] For each acre of American forest that is cleared to make room for parking lots, roads, houses, and shopping malls, 7 acres of forest are converted into land for grazing livestock and/or growing livestock feed. 260 million acres of U.S. forest land have been cleared to create cropland to produce a meat-based culture. 200 million of those acres could be returned to forest if we stopped using them for animal feed and grazing. Thus, one acre of trees per year are saved every time one individual switches to a vegetarian diet.

In the past 25 years, almost half of the tropical rainforests of Central America have been razed, mostly to raise cattle whose meat is exported to North America. The impact is enormous. Rain forests provide a substantial part of the earth’s oxygen. It is estimated that 90% of the plant and animal species on earth live in the tropics, many still unrecorded by scientists. Every day more of these species are pushed to extinction as a result of Americans' meat-centered diet. The clearing of these forests also leads to a great deal of erosion, increases runoff which causes flooding, takes away the wood peasants often rely upon for fuel, and has been blamed for decreased rainfall. In addition, the earth relies upon these rainforests to cycle carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It is the destruction of these forests and the resultant buildup of greenhouse gasses that is the cause of global warming. By destroying these forests, we cause climactic changes which can kill off countless species, cause widespread droughts, and flood large areas of land my melting polar ice caps.

Global Warming

Carbon dioxide and methane gas are the biggest destroyers of the ozone layer. Cattle give off methane gas as part of their digestive process. Cattle are the largest source of methane gas going into our atmosphere. As the rainforests are burned to create cattle ranches to produce cheap meat for the United States, large amounts of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. Thus, the standard American diet contributes much to the destruction of the ozone layer, through the release of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, while rapidly destroying the trees which could absorb the carbon dioxide.

Methane can trap 20 to 30 times more solar heat than carbon dioxide. Because cows release about 5 to 9 percent of what they eat as methane, livestock production is the greatest “manmade” source of the gas[46].

Depletion of Natural Resources

Raising animals for food requires more than one-third of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in the United States. America's meat addiction is steadily poisoning and depleting our clean water, arable land, and fresh air. In fact, raising animals for food requires more water than all other uses of water combined, causes more water pollution than any other activity, is responsible for 85 percent of U.S. soil erosion, and requires one-third of all raw materials used in this country (with the air pollution that entails). According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hog, chicken, and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.

78 calories of fossil fuels are expended to get one calorie of protein from beef compared to only 2 calories of fossil fuel to get the same protein from soybeans. Growing grains, vegetables and fruit for food uses less than 5% the raw material consumption used in the production of meat.

The energy return ratio (as food energy per fossil energy expended) of the most energy efficient factory farming of meat is 34.5%, while that of the least energy efficient plant food is 328%. Fossil energy is utilized from before a cow is raised until it is eaten. This account for the necessary energy to clear land from its original vegetation, to grow cow feed, to operate slaughterhouses and transportation. Forty pounds of soybeans are produced by the same amount of fossil fuels required to produce one pound of meat. A vegetarian diet would cut our oil imports by 60%[47].

If every human being on the planet ate a meat-centered diet, the world’s known oil reserves would last a mere 13 years. However, if human beings no longer ate meat, they would last 260 years.

A plant-based diet is the single most significant contribution an individual can make to help minimize these ecological disasters. Each person should do all that is in their power to preserve their habitat, but Christians moreso. You don't need to care about humanity (although it would be nice)—you just have to be selfish and think about not only your personal well-being, but of the world you are leaving to future generations, as “We did not inherit this earth from our parents, we are borrowing it from our children”. It would make me sick to think that my children got cancer because of the water that got polluted from the feces of the meat that I ate. I would like to assume that most parents would sacrifice anything, including something as trivial as meat, for the health and happiness of their children.

5. We are told by Christ to feed the hungry, yet by eating meat, we are greedily consuming resources that could feed the hungry of the world.

Adopting a vegetarian diet is kind to animals and humans alike. American cattle alone eat enough grains and vegetables to feed over 5 times the human population of the U.S. 70% of U.S. grain production is fed to livestock. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1 acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. The same acre of land, if used to grow cattle feed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.

During the 2002 World Food Summit, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that 24,000 people die every day as a consequence of chronic, persistent hunger. The Hunger Project estimates that 600 million to 1 billion people live in conditions of poverty so severe that they are unable to obtain enough food to meet their daily requirements. Every 2 seconds, a child dies of starvation. Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer is quoted in E magazine as estimating that reducing meat production by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free up enough grain to feed 60 million people. And if Americans alone reduced their consumption of meat by half, they would free enough food to make up the world's calorie deficit four times over! In a world where people are starving to death by the tens of millions, suffering from malnutrition at even greater numbers, and driven to farming practices that desert their land in order to eke out a subsistence, America's meat consumption not only wastes land, but wastes desperately needed food.

6. We are stewards of God’s money, and meat eating wastes money.

Generally, a tasty yet simple vegetarian diet based on unrefined whole grains (brown rice, whole wheat, oatmeal, etc.), beans, fruits, nuts, and vegetables — typically considered “poor man’s food” is more economical than a meat-based diet. The current cost for a pound of protein from wheat is $1.50, compared to a pound of protein from beefsteak at $15.40. However, it goes far beyond the mere issue of economising.

The U.S government indirectly subsidizes the meat industry. The cost of a common hamburger would be $35 and the cost of one pound of beefsteak would be $89 if the meat industry’s water use was not subsidized by taxpayers.

One form of government subsidies to corporate farms is the offering of tax breaks at both the state and federal level. Due to their significant political sway, corporate farms are able to lobby successfully for numerous types of exemptions. As one example, in 1987 ConAgra and IBP—two of the largest meatpacking firms in the world—approached the Nebraska governor threatening him that if the companies did not receive tax breaks, they would relocate their operations to another state. In 1987, the Nebraska legislature passed a law and was signed by the governor, which according to some accounts was largely drafted by the meatpacking firms, giving a taxpayer subsidy of $13,000 to $23,000 for each new job they created. Moreover, the bill exempted IBP and CongAgra from paying corporate taxes for the next ten years and the executives of the two companies were allowed to pay state income taxes at a maximum rate of 7 percent[48]. At the end of the ten year exemption period, IBP relocated its headquarters to South Dakota. In 2002, under the Nebraska Employment and Investment Growth Act[49] which had been signed years before, it was estimated that the largest farms in Nebraska[50] did not pay taxes on $735 million worth of property (Bauer 2002). In 2001, it is estimated that Nebraska gave $147 million in sales and income tax rebates to qualifying companies[51]. Which companies actually qualified for these sales and income tax rebates is kept secret under the Nebraska statute. By giving companies tax rebates and government subsidies, a community’s tax burden is shifted to home owners, workers, and others who do not qualify for such rebates.

The money saved on healthcare is also significant. According to the Worldwatch Institute, “Dr. Colin Campbell of Cornell University, who headed the China Health Project, conservatively estimates that excessive meat consumption is responsible for between $60 and $120 billion of health care costs each year in the United States alone.”

7. Eating factory-farmed meat is in violation of direct orders from the Holy Spirit.

As pointed out in reason #2, God’s original design and the future kingdom are vegetarian. When God permitted the inclusion of meat in the human diet, he not only limited the kinds of animals that could be eaten[52], but the manner in which these animals were to be slaughtered, being drained of all blood. Blood and fat is what give meat its flavour, yet God gave instruction that they were never to eat blood or fat.[53] These Kosher laws given by God were given “for our good only”[54], not to deprive us![55]

The laws of kosher were not given only to the Jews, as Noah knew which animals were clean and unclean prior to the flood.[56] Animals are, by their very nature, “clean” or “unclean”. Christ’s death on the cross did not change our bodies and how they react to animal foods, nor did the effects of eating animal products on our health and well-being change miraculously. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, again speaking of our bodies as the temple of God, that God says “Come out from amongh them, and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you.”[57]

We know this distinction of clean and unclean remains to the end of earth’s history, because in the last days, “Babylon” is filled with “unclean and hateful” birds,[58] and Isaiah 66:15-17 gives a solemn warning about those who will be destroyed at the Second Coming of Jesus: “The Lord will come with fire. He will ride on the wings of he storm to punish those he is angry with. By fire and sword he will punish all the people of the world whom he finds guilty—and many will be put to death. The Lord says, ‘The end is near for those who purify themselves for pagan worship, who go in procession to sacred gardens, and who eat pork and mice and other disgusting foods.”[59]

Many Christians have accepted the unbiblical doctrine that all God’s instructions and teaching in the Old Testament are done away with. Some call themselves “Spirit-filled Christians” or “New Testament Christians.” However, when the question arose to the exclusively Jewish church led by the apostles as to whether or not gentiles could receive the gospel, one of the few places where the Holy Spirit directly gives an order in the New Testament is disregarded by these “Spirit-lead” Christians: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.”[60]

Conclusion

In essence, our food choices are affecting the land, water, and health of our ecosystems, as money hungry industries exploit natural resources in search for profits. The cattle industry has proven to be energy inefficient because of the quantity of fossil fuels required for its production. It causes deforestation, topsoil erosion, extensive water usage and pollution, along with numerous health hazards. Many of our tax dollars are directed towards this cause through government subsidies. We need to halt deforestation for cattle production, stop subsidizing water for cow feed, control cattle population and increase standards for manure management. We should implement education measures in hospitals for patients suffering from cardiovascular disorders and other health problems related to meat consumption. At the personal level, it is necessary for us to take responsibility for our actions, by paying attention to every bite and being aware of how our decisions affect the planet.

I challenge and implore everyone who reads this article to take the time to watch the film, “Meet Your Meat”[61]. As Jonathan Safran Froer says, “The images are not easy to watch; they make me terribly uncomfortable, and will probably do the same to you. I’m sorry to have to share this material; I wish it didn’t exist to share, but it does. It exists on a mind-blowingly massive scale. My intent is not to shock, or be confrontational. It is only through knowledge that we can be empowered to make right decisions... We study toward the end of living the good life—which is not necessarily the comfortable life, and not necessarily the life that satisfies all of our desires—it is the ethically good life. So, please, resist the inclination to turn away. Please try to understand what happens to the animals that become kosher meat. And if you do find it impossible to watch, what does this tell you about the food you consume, and the industry you perpetuate?”[62]

I strongly believe in each person's right to their own opinions and decisions, but as Jonathan stated above, those opinions and decisions must be made in light of evidence.

There is a movement within Judaism currently toward vegetarianism, primarily for the humane reasons listed in reason #1 of this article; many pierced and tattooed punk rockers are vegan or vegetarian because they know it’s wrong to perpetuate and contribute to animal suffering. How is it that people who don’t know the messiah and those who don’t even believe in God can see that eating factory-farmed meat and dairy are morally wrong, yet Christians who are filled with the Spirit of the compassionate Creator and sustainer of all life[63] cannot? The Bible nowhere speaks against slavery, yet the concensus of Christians in the 21st century is that slavery is wrong. Strong evidence has been given in this article that eating meat and dairy products in the 21st century is wrong.

Ultimately, God never forces his will on us. God offers us life, health and happiness, but as always, Christians have a choice. When we sit down to eat, we can add to the level of violence, misery, and death in the world and contribute to its destruction, or we can respect his creation with a vegetarian diet.

“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey his voice, and that you may cling to him, for he is your life and the length of your days.” Deuteronomy 30:20

[20] Philippians 3:20-21, cf. Luke 24:36-43, Revelation 1:13 TEV

[21] Revelation 22:2, Matthew 26:29, Revelation 2:17

[26] “Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God.” 1 Corinthians 6:19 TEV

[27] 1 Corinthians 6:20. “Acknowledge that the Lord is God. He made us, and we belong to him; we are his people, we are his flock.” Psalm 100:3 TEV. See also Romans 14:8

[33] 50% of the calories in whole milk come from fat!

[35] tainted vegetation is often from cross-contamination from animal products

[37] “Do not deceive yourselves; no one makes a fool of God. You will reap exactly what you plant. If you plant in the field of your natural desires, from it you will gather the harvest of death; if you plant in the field of the Spirit, from the Sporit you will gather the harvest of eternal life.” Galatians 6:7-8 TEV

[42] http://www.emagazine.com/january-february_2002/0102feat1.html, Jim Motavalli, "The Case Against Meat," E Magazine, 8/1 (January-February 2002)

[43] Data from the Soil and Water Division from the University of California Agricultural Extension (Schulbach, et. al. 1978)

[44] Depending on what they eat, 20-60 vegetarians can be fed on the amount of land it takes to feed 1-2 people consuming a meat-based diet

[45] 90% of all oats produced in the U.S. are used as animal feed

[46] according to California-based researcher and chairman of the International Project for Sustainable Energy Paths

[47] We currently import 6,800,000 barrels a day

[50] e.g., ConAgra, Excel, Cargill, and Omaha Steaks

[57] 2 Corinthians 6:11-18. Read the entire passage

[62] Quoted from the video feature, If This Is Kosher... www.goveg.com/jsfkosher.asp