Glad you shared. Here are some reasons people choose to be vegetarian:
Cruelty to animals: Some say killing animals is wrong, that eating meat is inherently wrong. Such arguments would have to extend to include other carnivores and many first nations groups. Some say it is the degree of cruelty on factory farms which makes our culture's meat-eating cruel. Factory farmed animals are raised AND killed in deplorably cruel conditions, which means suffering for years as opposed to a few minutes. There have been several voluntary experiments done by humans who have tried to live in small cages in 24 hour daylight with no privacy or comfort and the bare minimum of food, and they lasted only a week or so before begging for realease. These experiments differed from the chickens' lifestyles in several ways: there was no incessant squacking, they did not live in their own feces, and they had enough room to turn around, stand up and even move about. Factory chickens do not, and they live for several years. Oh, and the people were not in a continual state of pregnancy. For a no-mercy account of factory farm life, read Peter Singer or Jeremy Rifkin.
Human superiority complex: One of my main reasons for abstaining from meat-eating is that factory farming is the enshrinement of human attitudes of superiority. These attitudes, I believe, are what make us view nature as "other", and therefore inferior, exploitable, and expendable. It is why we think we are capable of destroying species and ecosystems and atmospheres without it affecting us and without caring what other life it does affect. I believe that by not supporting the meat industry, we will be that much closer to re-establishing our ties to and respect for this planet and its inhabitants. (I, like many people, do not believe meat eating is wrorng, just that the detached, artificial, farmed way in which we do it, by having others take the responsibility of killing and preparing it, is harmful and destructive.)
Environmental reasons: Cattle ranching is a leading cause of habitat loss in the most biodiverse region on Earth, tropical rain forests. This is why we are losing species at a rate thousands of times more accelerated than in other periods in geologic history. Even compared to other mass extinctions, our current human-caused extinction is 100s of times as rapid. This is largely due to factory farming (as well as because of cash crops.)
Furthermore, soil erosion and greenhouse gas emission (methane from cows, exhaust from shipping, and lack of CO2 munching trees from cleared pasture lands) are all cattle-ranching by-products.
Social justice: Grazing lands for multinational beef-ranchers are usually expropriated peasant lands. So, because of factory farms, subsistence farmers (ie: people who work to feed themselves, unlike the average north american) end up landless, and without a livelihood, dependent on cash crop farms for poor wages, suffering human rights abuses, working longer hours for less than they could make if they were subsistence farming. (Bear in mind that tropical rainforests have a very thin layer of topsoil, so they make very very poor grazing lands. This means the soil is leached of nutrients within a couple of years, so new land needs to be cleared, and subsistence farmlands, which sustain a rich soil base for longer, do not just pop back up overnight. Nor do tropical forests.)
Much of the land which did not come from subsistence farmers could have been used to grow grains and other crop foods for the world's hungry. It is an undeniable fact that the amount of land necessary to raise enough cattle to feed people is many many times larger than would be needed to grow crops to feed the same number of people. Simple logic. Carnivores eat other animals which in turn had to get their food from plants. The amount of energy, food, time, and growth it takes to feed an herbivore is perhaps 10% that of what it takes to feed a carnivore. Why do we in North America feel justified in gorging on meat which has necessarily meant less food for the world? (I have a friend who tried to buy some land from some Mennonite farmers, who are arguably among the most efficient farmers in North America. They owned 3000 acres for 20 people, and planned to use some of it for cattle raising. He wanted to 15 acres of it for 10 people to turn into an organic permaculture vegan farm, and they refused, saying they needed all the land. Do the math. Obviously the Mennonites were counting on the fact that the cattle grazing lands would soon be infertile.)
I, like many people, do not believe that eating meat is inherently wrong. I believe that the methods humans go about obtaining their meat is morally reprehensible, for the reasons mentioned above, among others. I also believe that North Americans consume a ludicrously unhealthy amount of animal products, and hence we are dying of illnesses not encountered in other countries around the world. So whether you choose to be slefish or not, there are plenty of reasons to give veganism a try.
As for the unsatisfying nature of vegan food, I would suggest you are eating at the wrong restaurants, that you are going in with a negative attitude (saying to yourself "I know I won't enjoy this"), that you need to make a few vegan friends and have them cook for you (I know not one single vegan who does not love to cook), and that you are relying on what meat eaters use to supliment their diet, which is obviously not going to make a complete diet in and of itself. If you lived near me I'd invite you to one of the potlucks we have each week. It is always vegan food, though most people there still eat meat other times, but they are learning to appreciate the food, and are reducing their meat intake.
Gun Control: There are more than enough guns in the US (not counting military property) to arm every adult living there, and therefore there are also enough guns for the gids to have some too. In Canada, where gun legislation is stricter, the number of deaths by fire arms is drastically lower. Consider the number of schoolyard killing in the US compared to in Canada. We recently had a killing in Alberta (one of a very few such killings in recent years, unlike the US) Interestingly enough, Alberta is the province in Canada with the most prominent gun culture, and the province with the most anti gun control activists. One can hardly blame these differences between our two countries (which are embarrassingly similar in other ways) on anything other than weaker gun control. Certainly children in the US are exposed to violent games and television more than children in Canada, but this is less true than it used to be, and it is hardly a large enough difference to account for a tenfold increase in gun homicides, and a 50 fold increase (a guess) in schoolyard homicides.
Certainly many different actions need to be taken, but the first step towards preventing gun-murders among children is to take away the weapons. People are less likely to carry out a killing without a gun, and they are at the very least not going to be able to kill as many people. This is a start. Aren't the lives of our children worth the cost of losing that pillar of militant freedom, the right to bear arms?
None.
