One might say Bruce Friedrich is a controversial figure. In his free time, he regularly protests outside of KFCs and McDonald’s, debates figures like Glenn Beck on national television, and works for a little organization you may have heard about: PETA. Yep, that’s right. Our man of the hour is the Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; well, until recently. Bruce stepped down from this highly esteemed position to teach high school in Baltimore and tour the country on the weekends to continue his lecture circuit. That’s where the University of Florida comes in. As the Vice President of enVeg, a UF organization that spreads awareness about the environmental impacts of the meat industry, I was a bit weary to bring a speaker from PETA. However, the reason we decided to invite him is because before he worked for PETA, Bruce was vegan for political reasons such as global hunger and the environment, not animal rights. In the end, I am glad we brought Bruce to our campus. He ended up speaking to around 80 people on a Saturday night in October, and he opened his lecture with a quote from Socrates: ”The unexamined life is not worth living.” His lecture continued on to revolve around the three best reasons to adopt a vegan diet: the environment, global hunger, and animals (of course).
Vegetarians consume 1/10 of the resources meat-eaters do and use-up about 1/20 of the fossil fuels a meat-filled diet uses. About half of the water in the entire United States goes to feeding livestock. Two hundred and sixty million acres of forest have been chopped down for harvested animals. Where does the degradation stop, and all for a brief palate preference? I have a forestry professor whose class is based on conservation, yet he talks about Checkers burgers in the middle of a lecture. Sometimes I want to raise my hand and say, “You are aware that for every quarter-pound hamburger, 55 square feet of rainforest is clear-cut? And you say you care about saving trees?” It is also irks me when people talk about how “green” they are because they bring reusable shopping bags to Publix where the buy pesticide-laden produce from 3,000 miles away, or because they use LED light bulbs. Yes, these little things help, but if you want to call yourself and environmentalist and actually make a significant impact, stop eating meat. Animal agriculture, according to the World Watch Institute, contributes up to 51% of greenhouse gases. Meat is the catalyst of our climate change crisis. Bruce was very convincing about the environment; he used an example that compared eating meat (the most inefficient process in the world) to making 20 plates of pasta and throwing away all but one. This comparison is based on the fact that to receive just one calorie from meat, it takes 20 calories of plants and grains. So why not just eat the plants?
This wasting of pasta led into the second installment of his lecture: global hunger. In summary, Bruce claimed that by eating meat, we are stealing food out of the mouths of the poor, which is true. It takes up to 15 pounds of grains to make just one pound of beef (the inefficient process again). This grain could be feeding the one billion starving people on our planet instead of fattening up cows and ultimately, fattening up people. Bruce gave the audience some advice inspired by Gandhi; he asked up to picture the face of the world’s poorest person every time you make a decision or act, and ask yourself if that action or decision would benefit them. If not, a conscious being probably wouldn’t want to do it. One hundred million metric tons of grain and corn end up in the bellies of livestock each year while the bellies of the global poor remain emp
ty and bloated. Where are all the people now with their “Save Darfur” t-shirts and their proclamations of aid? Better not be at the nearest Burger King, or I might just call you a hypocrite.
Last, Bruce said if we have compassion for the poor, why don’t we have compassion for the smart, sentient beings that are essentially our evolutionary cousins? Mr. Friedrich pointed out that is it wholly arbitrary what creatures humans decided to eat. He showed a picture of a cat next to a chicken and posed the question of why one is better to consume than the other. Next he showed a dog and a pig. Why do we eat pigs and are horrified by eating dogs? Pigs are actually the fifth smartest animal, yet they know so much torture and pain, and are stuck inside standing in their own feces for months on end. Many livestock’s longest walk is to the slaughterhouse, literally. The actions taken upon animals in slaughterhouses would be felonies if the victims were cats or dogs; however, slaughterhouse owners are exempt from animal cruelty laws, and PETA has yet to find an attorney willing to represent these poor animals. It is hard for me to hear someone call themselves an animal lover if there is bound to be an animal on their plate later. No, we do not need to eat animals to be healthy; meat and dairy actually wreak havoc on our bodies. Vegans are nine times less obese than meat-eaters and have significantly lower chances of cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Anyone willing to take the time to look this information up or to consult a logical and well-informed vegan or vegetarian will find it to be true. All the nay-sayers just want to continue to eat meat like their mom taught them and have not a care. How can one totally ignore our planet, the global poor, and animals that are conscious of the tortures they endure? And like I said before, all of this for a brief palate preference.
