Did you know In the U.S alone, roughly 660,00 animals are killed every hour just for their meat? Eating meat is so natural to so many of us that we are often unaware of where our meat comes from, the immense suffering the animals go through for our taste buds, what the meat is doing to our body and ultimately how eating meat effects our environment and therefore our future.

A vegetarian diet can be very beneficial to your health. Studies show that reducing the amount of meat you eat, or dropping the intake of meat all together can reduce the risks of heart disease, cancer, strokes and, obesity. One study found that obesity levels among vegetarians was only 1/4 that of non-vegetarians. Yves Veggie cuisine is a company that makes vegan alternatives. Their products compared to ordinary meat products consist of a much lower fat content, calories, saturated fats, and cholesterol. The meatless products are also more than often higher in protein levels.


Ever wonder where your meat comes from or how it is treated? The cows and pigs that are used to provide our bacon, hamburgers, hotdogs, and many other meat products are often raised in very poor conditions, with very inadequate veterinarian care. They are fed unnatural diets to keep them large resulting in a number of painful health problems. When the animals do become sick, they are fed a high dosage of drugs just to keep them living long enough to reach the slaughter house. The animals are than crammed onto a truck for their transport to the slaughter house, often given very little, if any food or water. Around 1 million pigs die each year before ever reaching the slaughter house just from the transport. Once they reach the slaughter house cows are shot in the head with a stun gun, but due to the fast moving pace of the lines the cows are put in, they are too often missed by the stun gun and are much alive and feel ever bit of their brutal death. The same horrible cruelty is inflicted on pigs, often unharmed by the stun gun, pigs are much too aware of the pain when they reach the scalding tanks designed to soften their skin and remove their fur. A typical slaughterhouse kills up to 1,100 pigs every hour.

Birds are treated no better, if not much worse. 8 billion chickens are killed for their flesh each year, and 280 million hens are used for their eggs. According to PETA.org, “More chickens are raised and killed for food than all other land animals combined, yet not a single federal law protects chickens from abuse—even though two-thirds of Americans say that they would support such a law.” Turkeys have it no easier. After being raised without space, or proper food roughly 2000 turkeys are brutally grabbed and thrown onto a single truck often resulting in many broken bones. The birds are then on their way to the slaughterhouse without any water or food regardless the weather conditions. Once at the slaughter house the turkeys are hung upside down and put through a “stunning tank” which does not kill them but simply immobilize them, the turkeys who manage to dodge the tank are only met by a more cruel fate of having their throats slit while still conscious, and if they manage to live through that, they are scalded alive in the tank of hot water designed to remove their feathers.

If you won’t do it for yourself or the animals being harmed consider the environment, and the future of our earth. More than 70 percent of the grain and cereals that we grow in this country are fed to farmed animals because it takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just one pound of meat. It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein, and It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. What do you think that does for our environment, and our future? There are people starving all over the world, and we chose to grow massive amounts of grain and feed it to our animals, only to slaughter them and eat them rather than feed the millions of people hungry in our world, and spare the innocent animals.

A lot of people argue that it is natural and we have been eating meat for centuries. But if we have come so far, and have created artificial meat, just as delicious and healthier why wouldn’t we move forward? Why is it that we are still barbaric enough to brutally murder living creatures just because we can. It is no longer a necessity to stay alive. It is nothing but brutality and murder. Meat is murder, and you can stop it.