今天凌晨0点，我作了一个重要的决定————要做素食者了，世界上从此又多了一个veggie。你要问我的原因，很复杂，但是节食减肥绝对不在其中。回首三年前，我第一次遇到一个朋友是素食者，给我灌输了很多理论为什么要做素食者，我当时很不以为然，尽管他给我一个一个字打了一封很长的email阐述他的观点，尽管我觉得他说的很有道理，直到昨天。朋友说我是个宿命者，也许吧，以前就认为我命中注定会成为一个素食者，只是不知道要到什么时候。昨天很奇妙的，随意翻着最新一期national geography，一篇题为Minds Of Their Own - Animals are Smarter Than You Think的文章映入我的眼帘，看着一张张可爱动物的照片，尤其是一张照片里一条可爱的小狗无辜的眼神望着镜头，我禁不住流泪，同是地球上的生物，他们这么可爱，我为什么要吃他们呢？以前一直下不了决心，一直在给自己找各种理由，什么美国菜比肉贵，什么不吃肉身体摄入营养会失衡，都是借口。肉食动物吃肉是天性，而人类是能自主选择的。一直以来我就相信真真正正热爱世界的人都是素食主义者，他们为了animal rights，为了保护地球资源，能够下决心从自我做起，不吃肉类，需要怎样大的决心。我要向他们学习，一定坚持下去。

昨晚把2005年9月我的朋友发给我的那封email翻了出来。他当时给我写这封信的时候也是希望我能给越多的人看越好，今天我帖于此，相信他一定会赞成的。这里隐去了他的姓名。

From: xxx

Date: 2005-9-23 1:32

Subject: why vegetarian

To: Betty

Dear Betty,

I was going to give you the solid reasoning why everyone should be vegetarian after the exam, not sure after which one, if you're not ready, just save this for reading later. This certainly ended up being long, and parts of it, especially the animal rights part, aren't exactly light reading. Please don't shoot the messenger here, I'm just relaying information since it would be good to know it, even though the horrible situation isn't something that anyone would be happy to read about. Take your time, and don't worry about reading everything or replying to this.

So, the main reasons would fall in three categories:

1) Animal Rights

2) Ecology and Resource Usage (and by extension, human rights/equality)

3) Health

I have them in this order since it's my order of reasoning, but points 2 and 3 make more pleasant reading, so if you're feeling weak to your stomach or something, jump over the animal rights part.

1. Animal Rights

From the animal right point-of-view, the main problem is the treatment of animals. Certainly it can be argued that killing is simply wrong, but this can be effectively countered with the naturalness of hunting for food. However, other beasts in nature do not hold their prey in captivity all their lives, feed them, and effectively, take away their natural possibilites of life. They simply try to catch them and kill them. Even more importantly, the conditions in which modern farm animals are kept is simply appalling, and it is difficult to find any instances in history where a human would have been as badly tortured for even short times as millions of cows, pigs, chicken, etc are every day all around the world. My personal final straw as a meat-eater was talking to a butcher in Finland, he explained in all gory detail their day to day work, which is far too disgusting to be repeated. Suffice to say none of his colleagues are able to do their work if sober, all have to be drunk all the time. Some cases are sometimes presented at the site of Peta: www.peta.org, but I wouldn't recommend watching those, they'll turn anyone's stomach upside down. I simply believe that if I pay for some activity, it would have to be something I support and could see myself doing. Certainly not something I can't even bear to look at.

If the maltreatment was limited to the short time before the death of each animal, that might be somewhat bearable, but unfortunately even that is not true. Let's for instance consider the life of a dairy cow, from birth to death. For the first 3 days (*) of her life, she lives rather normally like any calf, feeding off her mother. After that, it is considered that too much precious milk is being wasted on whom it is actually intended, and the calf may not see her mother again. Instead they are fed with largely soya, which would be very useful as human nourishment also, sometimes with all kinds of waste which has led to things like the mad cow disease. And antibiotics, lots of them, to prevent the cows from getting sick. Traces of them are found in milk, and this slowly leads to them losing effectiveness and people having more likelihood of running into incurable diseases in the future. Once the calf is grown, they want to start milking it. Of course like any mammal, a cow only produces milk for its baby, hence they are forced to give birth (in effect, raped), every year or so. With various styles of selection, the modern dairy cows produce over 30 times as much milk as a cow would in nature, the genetically modified ones in the US over 300 times as much. This leads to the fact that their own feet can't sometimes hold them up, and with the cycle of milking and childbirths, few cows survive longer than 5 years (natural lifespan is around 20 years). And through these years, they are most commonly held in such close captivity, attached from their heads to their places, that they cannot even lay down to sleep, far less take a walk. Those who do survive are then killed for meat, since their milk production is thereafter too slow.

And what separates humans from other animals anyway? Tiny differences in DNA? Byt the regular definition of species, it can be denoted that humans are a different species from other animals, but when considering at an individual level, what would be the important thing that would mean a human would have more value than a given other animal? An often cited point is intelligence, but certain chimpanzees have higher IQ's than certain people, and they can learn even to speak via sign language. And are the less capable people worth less than the more so? If not, why would a member of another species be less worthy because of its lack of talents? (Although it's likely to have many talents humans don't have.)

(*) This is the case in the UK, in other western countries the situation is similar, although the number of days varies. I don't know the situation in China.

2. Ecology and Resource Usage

It was actually 300 times as much water used by an omnivore in comparison to a vegan, vegetarians (those who use dairy products) use 50 times as much. This and the limited farming area on this planet mean that if as many people as currently (not to speak of growing populations) eat meat, there will not be enough food for all the people. It was counted that if the Chinese people were to eat as much meat as the Americans do, all the farmable area of the world would have to be used to feed the Chinese - ie. no-one else would eat anything. Since the population grows every day, the only way to get food for everyone, unless of course something radically new is invented for the production of food, is for the people to be vegan. This was the reasoning my mother quoted to eating vegan whenever it's not too inconvenient: she doesn't feel she's worth more than the Chinese people - not any less either, but since all cannot have that benefit, there's no reason why she should, since the benefit means taking away basic nourishment from some others.

3. Health

I don't have documents here to quote, but the largest study ever made on the vegan diet shows that vegans live on average 6-7 years longer than omnivores, have far less heart-disease, and a little less of practically every other disease out there. And they recover from sickness quicker. A large American study shows that omnivores are three times as likely to to suffer from Alzheimer's disease and various forms of dementia as the vegetarians are. Subjectively I can say that of all those I've heard of who have turned vegan, about three quarters claim to be healthier since (got rid of asthma, flu is more rare, etc), the rest are like me, no health problems before and none since. Haven't heard of anyone getting worse. Some doctors in Taiwan suggest vegan diet to practically all their patients, and say that that alone has cured many. When it comes to milk, suffice to say it contains 59 hormons for turning a calf into a healthy and strong cow, for humans they have adverse effects, and even with all the coca-colas out there, I cannot think of anything less natural for an adult human being to be drinking than milk of a different species. No other animal does that.

Anyhow, that should be enough for anyone to be determined, if not, well, ask away...

Take care!

xxx