Heidenescher: Vegetarianism is about more than animal rights

As much as I love Morrissey and his music, I have to admit, he’s batshit crazy. He is one of those vegans that puts a very intimidating face on the movement.

The former lead singer of the Smiths has even gone far enough to say that eating meat is equivalent to rape, violence and murder — comparing it to the Holocaust. WHAT ON EARTH?

His, and thousands of other veg-heads’ premise, is that the killing of animals for food is wrong because it is an inhumane way to treat animals; they argue that animals have rights too.

I would not be the first to volunteer to kill animals, but Morrissey and the sad, tortured, dying animals are not what convinced me to stop eating meat.

Instead, I realized that meat-eating is a transgression against the environment and other human beings.

For my New Year’s Resolution this year, I gave up meat and seafood.

About a month in, I was really suffering. Out at dinner, people were enjoying succulent meaty platters and I was wallowing in a cardboard-y vegetable plate. I was ready to cave.

My desire for meat seemed insurmountable at the time.

To help, I put my wants in relation to the problems that meat causes — what I found shocked me into never eating meat again.

For every pound of chicken produced 4.5 pounds of chicken feed is needed. This is inefficiency at its finest. Think about the millions of people around the world that don’t even get to eat three meals a day. Now compare that to the poultry in America that are fed to the point of obesity.

According to the USDA, it is estimated that Americans will eat about 105 pounds of poultry per person in 2015. If you do math, 105 pounds multiplied by 300 million Americans, that is 31.5 billion pounds of poultry. 31.5 billion pounds of poultry required 4.5 pounds of feed per pound produced, which means it will take about 141.75 billion pounds of food to feed the amount of poultry we consume.

141.75 billion pounds of food sounds like it could feed a lot more people around the world who live in poverty. That is only the number for poultry, not even considering beef or pork.

Not only are we using these crops inefficiently, we are also misusing the land that it grows on.

In Ohio, over 50 percent of land is devoted to agriculture. A majority of the crops produced are soybeans and corn — which are used for animal feed, corn syrup and ethanol.

In order to produce billions of pounds of crops, lots of soil and fertilizer is needed. The crops over time erode the soil and the fertilizers find their way into our waterways.

The fertilizers used are often rich in phosphorous, and when it rains the fertilizer will run-off into the rivers and lakes. In Lake Erie too much phosphorous has caused harmful algal blooms of microcystis, which caused Toledo to shut off its water supply for three days in 2014.

In addition to an abundant amount of runoff, there is also an exorbitant amount of actual animal feces that find its way into waterways. Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), also known as feedlots, raise animals for slaughter in confined spaces. Because these animals eat billions of pounds of food, they also produce billions of pounds of waste in the form of feces and methane. The feces are stored in “poo-lagoons” and when it rains, some of that excrement pollutes rivers and lakes. The methane produced also functions as a greenhouse gas.

My research only began there, too. I still have not found any good reason to resume eating meat or seafood. And now, the sight of the food doesn’t even draw me in. I don’t miss the hamburgers that cause algal blooms, I don’t miss the chicken nuggets that make others starve, and I don’t miss the fish that swim around in floating feces. I can’t unlearn these facts — and meat hasn’t looked appetizing since.

Maybe Morrissey isn’t as crazy as his outward gesticulations appear. In an open letter to Al Gore he wrote, “Animal agriculture severely affects the world’s freshwater supply and is a major contributor to global greenhouse-gas emissions, deforestation, loss of biodiversity and air and water pollution, among many other harmful effects.”

Now I wouldn’t say that meat-eating is murder — but it’s not exactly ethical either. Eating meat causes irreparable environmental damage and diminishes food options for other human beings.

The cycle of damage is far-reaching, but the solution is simple. Eat less meat.

Joe Heidenescher is a third-year majoring in English, and he is the features editor for The Independent Collegian.