Let me just start by saying this is not an attack on vegetarians or their opinions. I have many good friends and family who are vegetarians and I am sure they all have logically thought out their own opinion on all the topics I am going to talk about.
There seems to be a lot of conflicting information on the internet about why humans should not be eating meat. I will go through various topics that seem to get raised by various people.
1. Humans are not omnivores, we are in fact herbivores that have trained our digestive system to handle meat (badly)
I have some problems with this statement. I am yet to find reliable sources of studies done that provide any indication that humans do not consume the minerals, vitamins and proteins in meat. There are plenty of parts of meat we don't consume, but this is the same with most things that we eat, that is why things come out the other end.
To try and tell me that humans are not designed to eat meat because we don't have the same features that carnivores have, i.e. claws etc., seems a bit far fetched. Anyone else got these pointy teeth called incisors and canines??
2. We cook our meat anyway which removes all (or most) of the vitamins from the meat anyway.
Well this is just a big generalisation on "cooking" meat. If you stew everything you lose a lot more minerals out of the meat. Even with stewing for a couple of hours, the sources I have found (
http://www.choose-healthy-food.com/cooking-meat.html) suggest that only 50% of minerals are lost maximum.
The reason we cook our meat is not because we can't digest it, it is because the bacteria that can be found on a piece of meat can be deadly. The technology to cook meat was one of our finest achievements as a species, as it meant we could eat with a much lower risk of serious food poisoning.
3. Animals grown for meat are treated badly while being grown and in abattoirs/slaughterhouses they are not killed humanely or with any respect for the animal.
I think this is definitely a massive factor for vegetarians to choose not to eat meat. I do however think the vast majority of vegetarians are just removing themselves from the problem, rather than finding a solution.
There are now a few organisations that aim to educate the general population about how animals are mistreated for the sake of mass production.
In my view, choosing to eat free range animals that have been killed with respect and minimal pain, is doing the same thing for the animals as choosing not to eat meat (in terms of what is going to happen to these animals)
4. The ethics of eating another sentient being, if we can survive without it, is ethically wrong.
Now this argument in one of the few I don't think anyone can argue against effectively.
Humans are superior so we should eat the animals less superior to us, just because we can? As my mother-in-law would say "mmmmm No"
[EDIT: Added 11:10am 2011-01-20]
5. The energy to produce 1kg of meat is 2-3 times more than 1kg of grain or cereal.
I think this is a very important part of how we should value the cost of eating meat. As our personal environmental affect becomes more of a priority, I hope that this sort of information is more widely known.
For me this is much more about being aware of our environmental cost in general and not just how much meat we eat.
As my cousin loves pointing out, the energy cost of using (new - not recycled) aluminium products is thousands of times more energy intensive than meat. The environmental cost of building your car is probably your lifetime's supply of eating meat.
Some stuff that relates slightly to this section, that annoys me to insanity, is the environmental impact the floods in Queensland are having. Because people have insurance, anything that has touched water is being thrown out and replacements are being claimed. As can be seen on news coverage, a lot of this stuff is new and undamaged goods, including aluminium kitchen sinks etc.
The environmental cost of the way people are behaving and the way that insurance companies are handling this, is ridiculously high.
[FINISHED EDIT]
My conclusions
Vegetarians are on the right track, reduction is the key, but completely forgoing meat doesnt seem to me as the way to fix the problem. One of my philosophies in life is "moderation, moderation, moderation", so I doubt I will ever be a vego or a vegan, but I am willing to cut my meat diet down and pay more for real free range and humanely killed meat (Added: 2011-01-20).
After reading the article above it gives idea about the cost of eating a majority meat diet. Something like twice the energy goes into producing a meat majority diet as opposed to a milk-egg-cereal based one.
I think that reducing meat consumed by the vast majority of people is important. But, halting consumption, unfortunately, isn't going to fix our problems, environmentally or ethically.
We need to step forward slowly, reducing consumption of meat, making sure the meat we do consume comes from animals that have died painlessly and making sure that we are consuming the nutrients our body actually requires.
