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See directions for signing petition below.
Slight Correction to Sandra Day O'Connor
The undersigned affirm a slight correction to Sandra Day O'Connor. While tobacco does cause more deaths than suicides, fire, alcohol and car crashes combined, it is not the number 1 health risk. That distinction belongs to animal flesh. Yes, tobacco is addictive. Less known is the addictive quality of animal flesh, whose uric acid (pre urine) contains trioxypurine, more harmful than dioxypurine (caffeine). Both cause arthritis.
Other Ingredients in Animal Flesh
1) Colon bacteria, E. coli
2) Uric acid
3) Female hormones given so animals will gain water weight before being killed
4) Homocysteine which causes heart disease
5) Cholesterol which clogs arteries causing heart attacks and strokes
6) Worms, tiny in fish, trichinella in pork
7) Waste of other animals called wastelage mixed animal food
8) Adrenalin hormone secreted in massive amounts by animals in transit and in slaughterhouses, a long protein enzyme not all of whose links are destroyed by cooking
9) Other chemicals in the environment concentrate at the top of the food chain such as mercury, chromium, polychlorinated biphenols\
10) Insecticides in higher concentration than any othe food
11) antibiotics in such concentrations that animals build resistance to them
12) Disease organisms like salmonella, listeria, toxoplasmosis,
brucellosis, ptomaine
13) Preservatives and food coloring agents
14) Biochemicals such as methylcholanthrene and malanaldehyde created when meat is heated at high temperatures
15) Excess protein causing kidney damage. (Carnivores have kidneys five times larger than those of frugivorous humans.)
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More people are going meatless by Bonnie Erbe
Syndicated column that appeared at Meatout time March 2000
We Americans love our dogs and cats but make an artificial distinction between fidos and felines and other domesticated animals such as Bessie and Miss Piggy.
Can you imagine how horrified we'd be if every time we watched a fellow American chomp down on a McDonald's hamburger it were made of cat, dog or hamster meat? What if Burger King started selling Beagle Burgers or Fido Franks?
Wouldn't millions of us take to the streets in horror just as millions of Americans ourists are revolted during a first visit to France or Belgium upon discovering that French and Belgian restaurants find it perfectly normal to serve horse meat?
Because of the revulsion this writer has come to feel for eating animal flesh, she looked forward with eagerness to The Great American Meatout Monday.
The meatout was launched 15 years ago to provide American consumers a one-day respite, organizers said, from the "meat industry's relentless propaganda in schools, food markets and the mass media."
Skipping one day of meat consumption is good. Skipping a lifetime of it is better. Not only for the farm animals, but for human animals as well. Vegetarianism boosts heart health and cuts our death rate from heart disease, stroke and cancer. It lowers our death rate, too, from salmonella poisoning, E. coli and Campylobacteria, which take 9,000 lives each year and sicken millions more.
Then there are the moral reasons to kick the meat habit. Take veal, one of the most cruelly produced of all meats, as well as one of the most harmful to humans.
Would you knowingly serve your family sulfa drugs, clenbuterol, penicillin, tetracycline or drug resistant strains of bacteria for dinner?
Most of us would answer no. Yet these and countless other substances are now commonly found in veal. The harsh conditions in veal factories result in severe calf diseases. By depriving veal calves of their mother's milk, fresh air, exercise, adequate nutrition and proper veterinary care, veal factories are a breeding ground for stress and infectious diseases.
The life of a veal calf is one of pure misery, illness and stress. According o the Humane Farming Association, as soon as he is born, the veal calf is taken from his mother and chained in a 22-inch by 58-inch crate where he spends his whole life without being able to move, walk, turn around or lie down.
If he develops any muscles, his "meat" becomes less tender and less "tasty" for humans. Then, to grow the light-colored meat sold as "milk-fed" veal, calves are deliberately kept anemic and denied all solid food. As a result, the calves suffer from chronic diarrhea, respiratory and intestinal diseases.
If people knew dogs were being treated this way, most of them would have fits. Yet they're perfectly willing to go to fancy Italian restaurants and pay top dollar for a veal dinner.
That is only because most Americans are blissfully ignorant of how that tender piece of veal on their plate was produced. If Americans were properly informed of the cruelties perpetrated on these innocent creatures, more would be righteously incensed.
But even outrageous cruelties aside, I've never been able to understand people's seemingly conflicting abilities to love and treat as family certain types of animals (i.e. dogs, cats, etc.) while eating other animals (cattle, chickens, etc.).
They are able to completely disassociate themselves from the meat in their mouths and the horrors those other poor animals, who are just as lovable as the pets they keep at home, went through to be processed into food.
The good news is, more and more Americans are seeing the causal relationship. According to the Great American Meatout, more than 30 million of us have explored a meatless diet. National beef and veal consumption have dropped by 25 and 70 percent respectively in the last few years.
And these trends will continue, because vegetarianism is even more popular among teen-agers. I knew there was something about this generation I really liked a lot.
Bonnie Erbe, host of the PBS program "To the Contrary," writes for Scripps Howard News Service. Her article appeared in papers across the country.
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