The agriculture industry is a giant mystery for many that have never taken the time to research how a steak gets to the plate of a consumer. Between the many documentaries exposing the industry for its effects on our world such as “Cowspiracy,” “Food, Inc” and “Lucent” humans continue to contaminate the environment and themselves by relying on the slaughter of helpless animals to feed off of.
The agriculture industry as a whole has many negative effects on humans every single day. One of the major effects was discovered in a 2012 study published in “Archives of Internal Medicine,” “Red Meat Consumption and Mortality.” This study was conducted over a 22-year period with a pool of 121,342 individuals. The study examined how increasing meat consumption by one serving size (3 oz. or roughly one small beef patty) a day contributed to earlier death. The additional daily serving size of red meat resulted in a 12 percent greater risk overall of an earlier death. The increased red meat consumption was associated with elevated risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. The increased risk of mortality was 13 percent for unprocessed red meat and 20 percent for processed red meat.
“My family has many health problems and I hate seeing them take pills everyday to get them through the day,” Vivian Yau, world traveler living in Scotland, said. “One of my grandfathers became very sick due the over consumption of meat and had many operations to the point where he basically had no liver anymore and passed away two years ago.”
The many medications/pills that humans consume are because of animal-based foods and how they negatively affect human bodies. It only adds to the list of reasons humans do not need to consume animal based foods. The types of medications/pills would be Lactaid, Tums, diet pills, Pepto-Bismol, Plavix, Lipitor, Crestor and countless others.
The passing of Vivian’s grandfather became a big motivation for her to stick to being vegan. Veganism is a dietary lifestyle in which a person decides to not consume any animal products such as meats, eggs, dairy and fish. According to The Vegetarian Times, 3.2 percent of U.S. adults, or 7.3 million people, follow a vegetarian-based diet. About 0.5 percent, or 1 million, of those are vegans.
There are many reasons people have made the change. Besides the joys eating healthier, there are many more reasons as to why people choose veganism. One of those reasons is because of animal cruelty.
“After watching Gary Yourofsky’s, “Best Speech You Will Ever Hear” on YouTube where he compares animal slaughter to the holocaust, I didn’t want to support that in anyway,” said Yau. The animals are trapped just like the many innocent people trapped in the concentration camps waiting for the death.”
Gary Yourofsky is an animal rights activist and lecturer who challenges people to think about why they are consuming meat and why it is not worth it. He brings up many strong points such as the fact that humans eat meat for four reasons; tradition, habit, taste and convenience. Animals can think and feel, are self aware and are not machines. Yourofsky points out how every advertisement you see regarding food is about meat and that you never see advertisements for vegetables. Even on ice cream containers are pictures of cows and it’s a happy graphic appealing to the consumer but the consumer is not thinking about the horrors a single cow endures to the consumer can eat ice cream. Female cows are injected with semen so they can produce a baby calf and also produce milk until they can’t produce anymore. They are not even given the chance to raise their baby calves. A majority are sent off to be eaten as veal. Once they reach this stage they are sent off to be slaughtered.
Yourofsky also mentions how when we are young, we love animals and would do anything to protect a creature, until we got older and someone came along to tell us differently.
A very powerful documentary called, Lucent graphically depicts the cruelty that these animals are forced the endure. The documentary focuses on Australia’s pig farming industry and the very dark and brutal conditions that pigs and other animals suffer through.
Another one of the main reasons people have decided to become vegan is because of how much the agriculture industry affects our environment. The documentary “Cowspiracy” greatly explains how everyone’s dietary choices have negatively impacted the world we live in today. According to the UN News Centre, raising cattle produces more greenhouse gases than all trucks, boats and planes combined. One hamburger is about 660 gallons of water. That many gallons of water is about what it would take to raise a cow for the burger which means it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. The documentary summarizes that if we all decided to make the change and become vegans or tremendously cut down on meat in-take then we would get our oceans back, wildlife would come back and our ecosystems could return to a much more natural state. Our oceans have been over fished and depleted to the point where scientists predict that we will have fish-less oceans by 2048.
Becoming a vegan can be a challenge but it has been very rewarding for people and has become a very natural lifestyle.
“After being vegan for quite some time I have had much clearer skin,” said Yau. “At one point I had a little eczema on my arm but now it’s completely gone.”
Vivian travels around the world to go to see her favorite bands such as Knuckle Puck, Homesafe and Seaway. While in America, she finds it to be easier to find vegan foods and restaurants. With veganism becoming more and more popular, dining options for vegans have been more available.
“There so many vegan options in America I’m actually so jealous like you guys have four type of non-dairy Ben and Jerry’s,” Yau said. “HipCityVeg is a GREAT place to eat in Philly along with Blackbird, there are lots of Tofurky products, some Whole Foods have a vegan bakery section, you can get sorbet instead of ice creams. V Life in Manhattan is also amazing! Their peanut butter and chocolate cake is to die for.”
