*Some facts may be controversial*

Health

Being a vegetarian is one of the most healthy diets you can go on. You are no longer getting some of the antibiotics and hormones that most of the large meat producing companies use to make their animals fatter. Without eating livestock, this pandemic and many other pandemics could have been avoided. This pandemic was started at a wet market. Other pandemics like the swine flu have been started by pigs. Vegetarians tend to outlive meat eaters by about 6 years. Vegetarians also tend to have a lower BMI due to a fiber-rich diet and eating lower energy foods like fruits and vegetables. Being a vegetarian also reduces your chances of getting some of the most deadly diseases like cancer and heart disease, some of the leading killers on earth. Cancer kills about 9.5 million people a year. A lot of people say that meat substitutes are disgusting and that vegetarians can never get enough protein but there are many companies that are working to make better meat substitutes. One example is Beyond Meat. Beyond Meat is a company that is working to make meat substitutes that have a good amount of protein and taste like the real thing. They make burgers, sausages and meatballs that have a good amount of protein.

The Environment

This might sound weird, but livestock farting and belching is one of the leading causes of methane. Methane is an extremely dangerous greenhouse gas, 28 times as harmful as carbon dioxide at warming the earth. Animal agriculture is responsible for 66% of agricultural greenhouse gas production in the United States. It is also responsible for 80% of the Amazon rain forest's deforestation because the land has been cleared for cattle. Beef production accounts for 20 times the amount of land that is used for other high protein foods like beans and lentils. Over fishing is also really bad for the environment. The fishing tech that large companies use is very harmful. They drag a large net along the bottom of the ocean trapping whatever comes in their path inside the net. It doesn’t matter whether or not it is an endangered species. They dig through their catches to find the fish that they need to make their sushi or whatever they need it for. I will give you a visual example: imagine a plate of sushi. Now imagine everything that was killed to get that sushi piling onto your plate. Your plate would have to be 5 feet wide. Some companies go fishing solely to feed other livestock that is just going to be killed off anyway. About 5.6 billion pounds of fish, no matter the species, is used to feed livestock per year.

Slaughtering is inhumane

At farms, all cows do is eat. They are put in inhumanely small stables and are force-fed until they are fat enough to go to the slaughter house. The keeping of chickens is also very cruel. Farms have bred two different kinds of chickens: Layer Chickens to lay eggs and Broiler chickens to kill off. Farms have no use for male Layer Chickens so they kill them off at birth using homicidal techniques like leaving them to suffocate in a small box letting the weak ones die at the bottom quickly and the stronger ones slowly die at the top. Once the Broiler chickens go through an inhumane process of dying they are left to sit in a tub of dung filled water so they soak up the water and get big enough to sell for a high price.

Other Reasons

If large livestock companies shut down then world hunger would also lower. About 40% of grain production is used to feed livestock. If even a small percentage of that grain were used to feed humans then world hunger would be reduced. Becoming vegetarian would also help the economy. The US spends about $1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion dollars) a year on 5 different diseases (cardiovascular disease and stroke, obesity, osteoporosis, cancer, and diabetes) that can be traced back to eating meat. After retiring the average meat eating couple will need a staggering $260,000 to pay for their medical care. Some of the skin on meats can contain toxins traced to pesticides and other fat-soluble toxins.

This is a desperate plea to save a warming planet. To save humankind and make a healthier planet and species.

Credits

Top 10 Reasons for Going Veggie

Jonathan Safran Foer and his book Eating animals

Farm Sanctuary - The Environment