Less Meat, Anyone?

Humans have acquired a taste for meat. Yet, we truly do not need to eat the flesh of our animal friends to be healthy. We could do with less; and perhaps none at all.

Dairy Cows also end up being slaughtered for our human meat-eating habits. Their lifespan is no greater than six years on an industrial farm, which is significantly less than the 15 to 20 years that a cow would live in its natural state. Photo by Wikipedia

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”
—Leo Tolstoy, Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

Tolstoy, the great Russian writer and pacifist, is right and his words hit me hard, like a punch to the head, landing where my conscience resides. My mind says they are true; my brain tells me they are true. Likewise my whole being vibrates with these venerable notable words of truth. I know they are true and as true as true can be.

It is also true, a lesser truth, that I have reduced, in the last 10 years, the amount of meat I eat. Yes, I have changed my eating habits, but I can do more. Go further toward that end goal. This is a strong feeling. Bear in mind, I am not here to judge anyone who eats meat and enjoys it. No, not at all. I am here to openly and honestly discuss our collective eating habits and whether we might feel it is a time to change them, even a little.

You see, I have had concerns for a long while. Ethical concerns around the way farm animals are raised and treated; health concerns of ingesting meat, filled with antibiotics and growth hormones and who knows what else; and health concerns for our Earth, when animal agriculture results in severe deforestation and habitat loss. And so much use of our Earth’s resources dedicated to death and destruction to satiate our strange appetites and habits, many of which are not at all healthy.

Again, I agree with Tolstoy on the spiritual and moral reasons why humans ought not consume the flesh of another animal. Take dairy cows, which only reach six years of age while on an industrialized farm, first used to provide milk and then slaughtered for meat, typically by six years of age. Animals raised for beef live even less. “Cattle raised for beef will typically be slaughtered by 2-4 years old,” says Tracy Keeling for Sentient Media.¹

This is disturbing, to say the least. We should not be a part of this. I think many of us feel this way, have a deep desire to at least reduce the amount of meat we eat, with the hope we might be able to give it up altogether. I do not eat much meat, but I, for one, feel very conflicted that I still eat any meat, that I consume the flesh of an animal.

The numbers are staggering. Humans consume 350 million tons of meat each year. If you do a quick calculation, that works out to almost 40 kg of meat that each person in the world consumes. This includes babies and people who do not eat meat, so the amount is actually higher for carnivores and omnivores.² Most humans on Earth eat meat and meat consumption is growing. Such is the current reality.³ At the same time about 22 percent of people in the world say they are vegetarian, the majority living in India (39 percent)⁴, which tends to skew the stats, given India’s population of 1.4 billion persons. A vegetarian diet is followed by 4.0 percent of Americans, about 7.6 percent of Canadians and 10 percent of people in the U.K.⁵

What such statistics tell me is that while people here in industrialized nations are taking a greater interest in plant-based diets, which is good, eating meat remains important for most people. I think for the most part it is a plain old habit. And we all know habits are hard to break.

Yet, our habits often clash with our convictions. I love animals and know it is wrong to eat a fellow animal; moreover, I have no illnesses that require me to not consume fibre and thus eat meat. This is my view. One day I will meet my goal. As you might meet yours. You also might want to stop eating meat. For now, I know it does not have to be all-or-nothing, at least at the beginning. Give up meat one day a week, perhaps on Mondays, as Paul McCartney suggests in this video. McCartney has been a vegetarian for decades.

That being said, who here has reduced their intake of meat? And what were the results of changed eating habits? In my case, I feel and look better, with improved skin and greater energy and moral well-being.

This is going to be one of my shorter posts, because there is already a lot of information and knowledge on why we need to give up a habit that is unhealthy all around. I have given you some food for thought, something to consider, on why we humans ought to reconsider our eating habits. And, yes, these are habit we have acquired, most of us from our families while young, when we did not have any choice, any say in the matter. People, however, can change habits. We have agency, notes Isaac Bashevis Singer [1904-1991], the 1978 Nobel Laureate in literature, who was a vegetarian for the last 35 years of his life. Singer was steadfast in his reasons for forswearing the consumption of meat:

Whether the mass of people accept the vegetarian interpretation of religion or not really doesn’t matter. At least not in my life. I accept it implicitly. Of course, it would be wonderful if the world adopted vegetarianism, on religious grounds or any other. But this is not likely. I am a skeptic, it’s true, but I’m also realistic. In any event, what the people in general do will not affect me. I will continue to be a vegetarian even if the whole world started to eat meat.

This is my protest against the conduct of the world. To be a vegetarian is to disagree—to disagree with the course of things today. Nuclear power, starvation, cruelty—we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it’s a strong one.

—Preface in Food for the Spirit: Vegetarianism and the World Religions, by Steven Rosen

A protest for justice, I would add. I will end here with a hauntingly beautiful song that I found on YouTube. It is called “All the Same,” by Katie White. She captures beautifully the way I feel.

White writes about this song:

This song was written to demonstrate how humans and animals are fundamentally the same in the ways that matter, the ability to feel hope, fear and pain. It also highlights how we are all innately animal lovers, but are conditioned to think the difference between us and them is so great that it warrants how we treat them.

The differences are human-made—nothing more; nothing less—mainly to enable and keep going the idea that there is a hierarchy, a pyramid of importance and superiority, with humans on top. Let’s be up front and honest about it. Let’s admit that we eat meat because we have a habit of eating the flesh of our non-human animal companions, and have gotten used to it and the taste of meat. Can we learn new habits, change the way we eat? I think we can. I say this not in judgment, but in encouragement.

Merci et à bientôt
Born at 315 ppm
Now at 425 ppm

1. Sentient Media (November 22, 2023): “Dairy cows usually live to be six years of age at most, when they can no longer produce milk, and are usually sold to beef producers for slaughter. The dairy industry usually drives cows to maximize milk production, so meat produced from dairy cows is often used in cheaper meat products.

“While the connection between the dairy and beef industries may not be immediately intuitive, the two are inseparably connected. U.S. Department of Agriculture figures show that dairy cows made up 9.1 percent of the federally inspected commercial cattle slaughter in 2022. Some “downed cows” are killed while still on dairy farms however, before they can be sent to slaughter and sold for human consumption.”

2. World Population Review: Hong Kong comes in first with an annual amount of 136 kg per person; the U.S. is second at 128 kg pet person, and right behind is Australia at 121 kg per person. In Canada (13), we eat on average 90 kg of meat per person. A list of countries and their meat consumption can be found here.

3. The World Counts: “The production of meat has doubled in the 30 years from 1988 to 2018 and increased four-fold since the mid 1960s. And production is expected to continue to grow. By 2050, global meat consumption is projected to reach between 460 million and a staggering 570 million tons. 570 million tons would mean a consumption of meat twice as high as in 2008.”

4. Pew Survey (2021): “The vast majority of Indian adults (81%) follow some restrictions on meat in their diet, including refraining from eating certain meats, not eating meat on certain days, or both. However, most Indians do not abstain from meat altogether – only 39% of Indian adults describe themselves as “vegetarian,” according to a new Pew Research Center survey. (While there are many ways to define “vegetarian” in India, the survey left the definition up to the respondent.)”

5. Wikipedia: “The concept of vegetarianism to indicate 'vegetarian diet' is first mentioned by the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras of Samos around 500 BCE. Followers of several religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism have also advocated vegetarianism, believing that humans should not inflict pain on other animals.^[2]