A Vegan lifestyle is better than a meat-eating one

Thank you Con for starting this debate. I hope to have an interesting and civil dialogue with you. Introduction At first I was unsure if I wanted to take part in this debate. This is because the word "better" was not clearly defined. By better one could mean that an omnivore diet has tastier food, is more convenient, and for that reason it should be considered "better." However, I'm going to interpret the word better to mean that a vegan lifestyle is superior to an omnivore one for various reasons. With that said, let me begin.Definition of veganism according to the Vegan Society: Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose. [1]Veganism is Kinder Towards Animals This, I think, is pretty obvious. In order for animal products to be produced, animals must be exploited. In modern animal agriculture we confine animals for their entire lives and make them miserable. They are denied proper veterinary care, free space to move around and exercise, appropriate social interaction with members of their species, and anesthesia during the process of castration and other mutilations. Once these animals reach market weight, they are sent to a slaughterhouse where they are hung upside down and have their throat slit. In 2013, a USDA inspector at a chicken slaughterhouse pointed out that: "[Workers] are literally throwing the birds into the shackles, often breaking their legs as they do it... They are working so fast, they sometimes get just one leg in the shackles. When that happens, the chickens aren't hanging right... They don't get killed, and they go into the scald tank alive." [2]In "Modern Meat: A Brutal Harvest," a 2001 article from the Washington Post, a worker at a slaughterhouse for cattle describes the disturbing reality of insufficient stunning: "It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For 20 years, his post was ‘second-legger,’ a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour. "The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too often they weren’t. "They blink. They make noises,’ he said softly. ‘The head moves, the eyes are wide and looking around.’ "Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. "They die,’ said Moreno, ‘piece by piece.’ [3]To help put what I have said into perspective, I will link a short documentary by Mercy For Animals that demonstrates some of the things I have been talking about: Viewing animals as commodities for us to use for our pleasure and convenience is inhumane and disrespectful. If we think it's morally wrong to ignore the suffering of human beings, then we should also think it's morally wrong to ignore the suffering of nonhuman animals that we use for food. Veganism is Better For The Environment Animal production is a major contributor to climate change. In November of 2006 the United Nations came out with a report called " Livestock's Long Shadow" where they explained that animal production was a bigger contributor to climate change than all of the Earth's cars, trucks, buses, airplanes, and trains combined. The ICPP, which is an intergovernmental panel on climate change, has also said:"Please eat less meat -- meat is a very carbon intensive commodity... this is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it." [4] According to a study in the UK, dropping meat, dairy and eggs from your diet saves 50% more carbon emissions than driving a Prius. This study showed that an average 2,000 kcal high-meat diet has 2.5 times as many greenhouse gas emissions as an average vegan diet. [5] The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has also said that raising animals for food--including land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops for farmed animals--now uses a staggering 30% of the Earth's land mass. According to Greenpeace, nearly 80% of land deforested in the Amazon is now used as cattle pasture. [6] Veganism is A Superior Alternative To Fighting World Hunger In the U.S. we feed more than 70% of grain and soybeans to animals, [7] and in doing so we waste most of the food value of the grains that we're feeding them. If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million. [8] Depending on the species, the animals may return to us somewhere between 1/10th and 1/3rd of the food value of the grains and soybeans that we put into them. So we are just wasting huge amounts of food in order to produce the large amount of animal products. It would be better and more practical if we fed our grains and soybeans to people, instead of feeding them to billions of land animals. One acre of land can yield 30,000 pounds of carrots, 40,000 pounds of potatoes or 50,000 pounds of tomatoes. However, one acre of land can yield only 250 pounds of meat, which means that a meat, dairy and egg diet is an unsuccessful way to combat world hunger, and that a vegan diet is a superior alternative. This is why Food For Life Global, the world's largest feed the hungry organization, only serves plant based food. As well as Everybody Gets Fed, Earth Save and Plenty. A Well Planned Vegan Diet is Healthy According to the American Dietetic Association, America's largest organization of health care professions: "appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes." [9]Conclusion If we take animal welfare, the environment and world hunger into account, and ask ourselves which lifestyle is most beneficial, it seems like a vegan lifestyle is the better choice. In this paper I have provided various reasons for thinking that, and so I believe we are committed to the idea that veganism is superior. The resolution is upheld.Sources in comments