Why Eating Meat is Best For the Environment.

Yesterday, Dave reminded me of an infamous rant by Maddox that I sent out to people.  The gist is that a vegetarian diet is not by any means "guiltless," despite restaurants using terms like "Guiltless Grill" to describe dishes that don't use animal products.  In fact, it's quite the opposite: a non-meat diet may damage the environment more than an entirely-meat diet.



Why?  Because crop cultivation results in the deaths of hundreds of millions of field animals each year.  We're talking about rabbits, mice, snakes, voles, groundhogs, etd.  These animals get torn apart by plowing and harvesting machines - while they are still alive.



Unlike most of his rants, Maddox actually linked to some halfway credible research to back up his argument.  One Oregon State University professor says in this piece that the best diet -- the one that would result in the least amount of harm to the fewest number of animals -- would be a diet made up entirely of free-range cattle meat.  That way, there would be no cultivation of crops...and all the animals killed would be used for food. 



Just a little something for the vegetarians, animal rights activists, and do-no-harm philosophers to think about. 

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