I would like to respond to the comment made by Jen Craig in the “Animal rights group promoting vegetarian diet” article that appeared Monday in the Lantern. I major in evolution and ecology at Ohio State and am a practicing vegan.
After reading the PETA article in the paper, I feel the relief that I always do when I hear of another large-scale effort to educate clearly confused people about what producing the daintily-wrapped meat consumers purchase from the grocery store actually involves. It seems, because the meat industry keeps its secrets fairly well hid from the public, few people question the morality of hurting millions of animals because they do not understand the atrocities that go on. For instance, Jen Craig can not seem to distinguish between killing plant life and killing an animal.
Animals are sentient beings, Jen, which means that they comprehend and feel pain. Have you ever seen a cow that does not struggle and cry out for its life as it is forced into the killing pen? I have not. The same goes for all animals. They love life and fear pain.
On the other hand, plants have no central nervous system. As far as science has been able to ascertain, plants cannot comprehend sensations like pain. A good indication of this is that plants do not try to run away when the harvest machines come to cut them down. Another difference is that producing meat and other animal products takes a huge amount of our resources — water, grains, lands — which could be more productive for more people if they were not funneled into the more than 18 billion livestock on the earth. By eating a vegan diet, which is totally plant based and which supplies a human with all nutritional requirements, this earth could produce enough food to feed all 6 billion humans.
How it stands now though is that we wealthy Americans get to eat our steaks because they taste good. We can afford to waste our resources so extravagantly, while people everywhere starve and do not have fresh water. I would encourage anyone to research into what myself and PETA claims. It is every consumer’s duty to be educated on the products we buy, because by purchasing meats, you are keeping millions of animals in pain and misery. There is a plethora of information out there, and the truth will indeed shock you.
Sarah ClarkOSU Student
