Veggie Month
Why go veggie?
What is a veggie?
Vegetarians do not eat any animal flesh, including poultry, game, fish, shellfish or crustacea, or slaughter by-products.
What do veggies eat?
Pretty much the same as everyone else, just without the animal flesh. Try: soups, stews, pies and pasties, casseroles, curries, bangers 'n' mash, roast dinners and gravy, Thai, Chinese and Japanese foods, pasta and pizzas and fry ups!
Meat alternatives are available in every supermarket and just about every restaurant, pub and café has a veggie option, so it couldn't be easier to eat meat-free.
Five good reasons to go veggie
Animal slaughter
In the UK alone, around 1000 million animals are slaughtered for food every year. That's 30 animals every second! All farmed animals die an early, terrifying death in killing factories. The meat industry claims that slaughter today is fast, efficient and painless, but the reality is that animals die in terror and often in pain. Inside slaughterhouses, scared animals may be shouted at, kicked and beaten to hurry them along to the holding pens. They can be so frightened - as they can smell the blood and sense the fear of other animals - that they shake and defecate uncontrollably.
Animals are first 'stunned' with the aim of rendering them unconscious before their throats are cut. But the captive bolt pistol fails if it is incorrectly positioned, resulting in animals still being conscious when they go to the knife. If the electric tongs are applied wrongly they can cause agonising pain and also leave the animal conscious. Sometimes, animals who are left for too long after stunning regain consciousness before being killed. Even when stunning is done 'correctly', some experts believe that animals are simply 'frozen', rather than rendered unconscious.
And fish?
The extreme change in pressure when fish are dragged up from the oceans' depths can rupture their swim bladders, pop out their eyes and push their insides out through their mouths. They die from crushing, from suffocation or from being sliced open on the decks of the ship.
Farmed fish have miserable, unnatural lives in overcrowded underwater pens, and are then clubbed, gassed, suffocated, bled to death or gutted alive.
Animal suffering
The vast majority of meat on supermarket shelves has come from farmed animals who have been fattened in the dirty, cramped conditions of a factory farm - their lives filled with stress and suffering. They are denied fresh air, proper exercise and the freedom to carry out their natural behaviour. The objective of the meat industry is to obtain maximum profit at the expense of the animals' welfare. The more animals are stressed and exploited, the more likely they are to become sick, which has been exemplified in recent years by outbreaks of BSE, foot and mouth disease and bird flu. The illnesses they suffer very often end up affecting the people who eat them.
Don't be fooled by the labels 'free-range' and 'organic' - they are not the luxury environments they are often made out to be. 'Free-range' animals are often still kept in crowded conditions with limited access to the outdoors.
Organic farming is primarily to benefit people who do not want to consume pesticides and chemicals when they eat animal flesh. Organic farms should provide higher welfare standards for the animals, because a low-drug regime invariably means keeping them in better conditions so that they become sick less often. But organically-reared animals, as with all other farmed animals, are still mass-produced, have their offspring taken away from them so that they can be reared for the food chain and die an early terrifying death at the slaughterhouse.
Ultimately, whether the regime is called intensive, free-range, barn, slow-grow, organic or Freedom Foods (where, incidentally, the animals may not even be free range), all farming involves animals suffering, disease and high levels of early mortality. Those animals who survive the growing process will face a premature death in the killing factories. The only way to eliminate cruelty is to stop eating animals.
Health
There is now a huge and growing body of evidence to show that a balanced, varied, plant-based diet is ideal for optimum health.
Many debilitating diseases and certain types of cancer are caused or aggravated by a meat-based diet. According to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians have reduced risk of a number of chronic diseases, including obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, prostate and colon cancer.
I didn't know that!
- Oily fish is not the only source of omega-3 fats. Green vegetables, seeds, nuts, beans and their oils - especially linseeds (flax), soya oil, rapeseed oil and walnuts - are all rich in essential omega-3 fats and they do not contain mercury and other pollutants from the contaminated seas that are often found in fish flesh.
- Most people in the Western world eat around twice as much protein as they actually need. Excessive protein consumption can lead to a number of serious health problems including osteoporosis.
Planet
Animal farming uses much more land, energy and water and has a far bigger effect on climate change than plant-based agriculture. The less we rely on animal products, the better our chances of living a low-carbon lifestyle and protecting the planet.
- Animal farming is responsible for 18 per cent of all global greenhouse gas emissions - more than road and air travel combined.
- It takes 900 litres of water to produce 1kg of wheat compared with 100,000 litres to produce 1kg of beef.
- Seventy per cent of all agricultural land in Britain is used as pasture or for growing animal feed.
Feed the world
One in three people worldwide go hungry and yet half the global food harvest is fed to farmed animals. This includes more than 75% of soya products. Up to ten times as many people could be fed if agricultural resources (land, water, energy) are devoted to feeding people direct instead of passing protein through farmed animals first. The most influential report on the subject, written by the lead United Nations agency, declared that livestock around the world consume far more human edible protein than they produce. Putting animal products at the centre of food policy diminishes our ability to feed the world's human population.