A vegetarian diet is more ethical than a meat-eating diet

No need for apologies. I hear you, school absolutely does suck. I'm glad we can find some common ground though. Let me clarify my position a little. Personally, I don't think eating animal flesh is wrong in itself. I think if a person doesn't cause an animal pain before slaughter, kills it swiftly, and this action doesn't hurt any other person, there is nothing unethical about the consumption of the meat. I see 3 problems with the ethics of eating meat: Factory farming causes great pain for the entire life of the animals involved. 99% of the animals we eat are raised and slaughtered on a factory farm. Meat production in mass quantities causes ecological problems. Three-quarters of the world's agricultural land is devoted to raising livestock, either for grazing or for growing feed. Meat production causes us to have less food. Meat returns a fraction of the food we put into it. A study in 2011 found that if we ate less meat, the world food supply could double. On the health issue, this isn't directly related to ethics. What I'm saying about health is that a person (in a rich country at least) can be JUST as healthy without eating meat. So, eating meat is a preference rather than a necessity. I do agree that more tests need to be conducted about a balanced meat and vegetable diet, rather than extremes. You mention people in poor countries who rely on meat for survival, such as Eskimos and tribes in Africa. These people are not the worst offenders. If they continued their practices, we'd be fine. They can't afford factory-farmed meat and they don't produce animals an a massive scale. What they do is NOT unethical. But the reality is that the poor don't consume or produce much meat in comparison to rich countries. Over 80% of meat eaten in the world is consumed by people in the richest half of world countries. We in rich countries are the main offenders. The average American eats around 280 lbs of meat per year (more than recommended for health), the average person from Sierra Leone or the Republic of Congo eats only 10 lbs of meat. Why should Americans eat more meat than recommended while people from other countries have little food at all? It is the excess of rich countries like America that is unethical, not the small tribes of the world. Let's address the issue of eating plants, which sometimes share 15% of our DNA. Who says we shouldn't discriminate between different forms of life when choosing what to eat? After all, we must eat something that is alive. Everything that is alive shares some of our DNA. If we didn't discriminate between different forms of life, we would starve. Let's look at it this way. Humans share 99% of there DNA between each other, humans are obviously not ethical to eat. Bacteria shares around 2% DNA with us, we kill and eat bacteria constantly, every day. But that's OK, because it is unavoidable and bacteria doesn't feel pain. A plant shares a little more DNA with us, around 15%. They are not much more like us than bacteria, plants also don't feel pain. However, a cow shares more than 5 times the DNA with us than a rice plant, 80% similar to ours. It is proven that cows feel pain. Isaiah 1:11-17 (NIV) 11 “The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?” says the Lord. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings,of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. 12 When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? 13 Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations— I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. 14 Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. 15 When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! 16 Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. 17 Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” God may have called for sacrifices of animals at one time, but it was always more important to “defend the oppressed.” After the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, animal sacrifices became obsolete. This matches the message of compassion Jesus brought. Excuse me, but I don't understand how I did not refute the statement that if we all ate plants only, we'd have an oxygen shortage. Less plants are killed by a vegetarian diet than a meat diet. This is a fact, it is not disputable. It takes 41 tons of plant protein to produce 7 pounds of animal protein. Most of the plants we grow are fed to animals, who inefficiently convert it to animal protein, losing 83% of the protein in the process. 3/4 of the world's agricultural land is used for livestock production, which provides less food for us than plants. http://www.news.cornell.edu... Again, I don't think eating meat is unethical in itself. Two-hundred years ago, I don't think it was unethical at all. It is the processes of the modern meat industry that cause undue animal and human suffering. It is the 99% of the modern meat industry that is unethical. Sources http://www.theatlantic.com... http://www.huffingtonpost.ca... http://www.huffingtonpost.ca... http://www.census.gov... http://vegetarian.procon.org...