Argumentative Essay On Vegetarianism

Register to read the introduction… While most Americans don't realize it, the consumption of meat inspires a wasteful misuse of the earth's valuable resources, leaving an irreparable scar on the earth and squandering sources of food that could be used to feed the hungry. 20 billion livestock occupy the earth, three times the number of human beings (Motavalli): in the U.S. alone livestock outnumber people 25 to one. The amount of room required to raise all these animals is massive (Corliss). In South America, about 70 thousand acres of rainforest are destroyed every day to make land for cattle to graze (Hurley 40), and the use of the land is so inefficient that it is estimated that a single vegetarian will save an acre of trees every year. In addition, the large number of animals bred for food produce excrement at a rate of 87,000 pounds per second, or about 20 tons of manure per year for every U.S. household, all of which is eventually routed to rivers and streams. The problem is so bad that the Environmental Protection Agency has stated that animal excrement "pollutes American waterways more than all other industrial sources combined" (qtd. in …show more content…
Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992. As a widely accepted moral standard, the Bible is an excellent addition to the foundation of any ethical argument, and vegetarianism is no exception. The verse Genesis 1:29 offers God's opinion on what mankind should eat, a list in which meat is glaringly absent. This strengthens the argument against meat for many people who defend the practice as the divine right of those created in God's image, and refutes the argument that His original intention was for man to eat meat. This significantly strengthens vegetarianism's moral argument: whether one is of a Judeo-Christian faith or not it is difficult to argue the moral quality of the Holy