Week 4 Post 9

We turn to vegetarianism in order to respect the world that we live in. People turn to vegetarianism because they put themselves in the lives of a cow that is to be slaughtered to make a hamburger. They refuse to eat things with a face because they themselves have a face and how would we like it if there was something larger then ourselves raising and slaughtering us for food. There is also the environmental question of how much acreage is needed for one hamburger. How much methane is put into the atmosphere for the double double sitting in front of you. It is a ethical question, as well as a question of environmental consciousness.

A few arguments against vegetarianism might be that we cannot get the amount of nutrients we need from eating just plants. This however is not true. As long as we are smart about what we eat, we can get all of the nutrients and amino acids necessary for life. Another argument is that if everyone eats nothing but plants, the demand for crops will increase therefore increasing the need for agricultural land thus hurting our environment. Personally, I think that the world could not survive on all of one or all of the other. We must find a way to live sustainably within nature. We have a role as top predators and while we need to minimize that role to smaller then it is now, we will always need to be the top predators for the sake of all species. We have over stepped our bounds, but we cannot forget our role as the top of the food chain.