My beef with beef

Today, I have been a vegetarian for 75 days.

Well, Pesca Vegetarian, I suppose (I eat fish VERY rarely), but you get the idea.

Having eaten meat for all of my life, many have asked my why (the hell) I had chosen such a path. "Never eat meat?!" they cried. "Impossible! Unthinkable! It can't be done!" they shout, their beloved bacon clutched desperately to their chests. I used to be one of those people, you know? Ask my friend, Dale. I used to give her every excuse in the book: "You're crazy!", "Meat is too tasty", "I'm a rower and I need the real protein", "I'm not a left-wing tree-hugger or animal rights activist", blah blah blah ad infinitum, ad naseum.


Then one day (December 31st, making it a New Year's resolution - the first I've ever been faithful to) I just decided "to hell with it". And so here I am.

There are a few reasons one would become a vege-muncher. 

1) Ecology


"Earth and Water", as the Persian messenger famously said to King Leonidas, and the meat industry takes far too much of both.

According to some of the statistics that I have read (and the many that were blasted everywhere by my friend and chief inspiration for going vegetarian, Kayla), it takes a ridiculous amount of water to get meat on your plate. it takes a startling 50 times more water to produce one calorie of energy from beef as it does from potatoes. Since the water is vastly subsidised by the government, and with things like public land grazing and low water costs, the meat industry is still a viable one, but you have to ask yourself "for how long?". Meat may still be relatively cheap, but we are paying a price above and beyond the Rands and cents listed on the packaging: we are paying with our planet. When I think about how precious water is (especially living here in Grahamstown, land of the brown water that may or may not give you Alzheimer's one day), I just cannot, as a rational and logical man, justify this wastage. Vast swathes of forest and land are being cleared to keep up with demand, with beef imports from Central and South America (the so-called "lungs of the planet") on the rise. A World Rainforest Movement report found that 90% of deforestation occurs as a result of unsustainable agricultural practices. Beef farming itself is destructive to top-soil, and degrades land and aquatic systems, causing eutrophication. Beef production also uses up far too much fossil fuels.

Logical?

2) Health

Since processed meat is basically doused in antibiotics and boiled in ammonia (and then reflavoured), meat has been shown to reduce the efficacy of antibiotics. Simply by eating meat, we are risking new strains of diseases that are immune to our medicines. Meat is linked to certain kinds of cancer (of the colon, for example), and has a lot of cholesterol in it. Besides, watch the video below, which basically summarises points 1(wastefulness) and 2 (health) of this post. Personally, I was disgusted.

I can personally vouch for the health side of things: since becoming vegetarian, I've lost 11kg and a belt size. I've never felt better. I would love to tell you how difficult it has been - to say that it has been an endless struggle, that I've starved, and so on - but that would be untrue. For me, it was as easy as clicking "Vegetarian" on the Meal Server. The hardest part has been remembering to not buy meat pies at the BP convenience store after a particularly big night out.


3) Humanitarianism

Personally, I'm not taken by the animal cruelty argument. I can see the sense and reasoning behind it, and agree that many abattoirs and slaughterhouses are needlessly cruel, but hey, I grew up on a farm. From a young age I became desensitised to animal slaughter. My cousins and I hunted animals and birds, and at my grandparents' house, there was always dead sheep hanging from a hook behind the old tree in the corner of the garden, just waiting for the Sunday braai. My sisters and I would always dare each other to touch its protruding severed windpipe or bulging eyes. I'll never forget the harsh, cloying metallic smell of blood, like copper and dirt mixed together. An earthly smell.
We were never under any illusions as kids as to where our food came from. I saw the death; the meat we ate was never disguised by distance and plastic wrapping and cleanliness. It was brutal, and noisy. I think now that I'm old enough to think critically and for myself , and make my own grand life decisions, I can see the complicity in a meat diet. Just because we don't see the dying, it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

4) People

Now, I hate to be shallow, but when you see the list of notable vegetarians who have come before us, then maybe you start to think that we meat-eaters are perhaps doing something wrong. Sir Paul McCartney, Christian Bale, George Bernard Shaw, J.M. Coetzee and Xavier Rudd are on that list. But let's ignore the current, modern faces, and look back (oh, let's also ignore that Pamela Anderson is on that list. Ignore Hitler as well - it's disputed anyway).

Confucius. Byron. Voltaire. Einstein. Aristotle. Plato. Pythagoras. Socrates. Da Vinci. Virgil. Gandhi.

Much closer to home (Gtown) I can easily admit that meeting the other vegetarians (who seem to excel in whatever they do) are an inspiration in themselves. And, if you're religious (I'm not), the list even notes Jesus, John the Baptist, and Saint Matthew. It goes on and on, naming sports personalities, artists, writers and spiritual figures.
Being a vegetarian won't make you these people, but hell, it can't hurt your chances either.

Now, don't take this as a tirade against meat-eaters. I think we should have the freedom to choose for ourselves what kinds of lifestyles we lead. However, my advice is this: think critically about the impact your decisions make. As my dad always told me, "every action has a consequence, even if you can't see it". Think about these things, and try to think beyond the immediate selfishness of a carnivorous diet.