Vegetarianism – a commitment of UU Faith 

Kathleen I. Bryant

Good morning!  My name is Kathleen Bryant.  I am 12 years old, and a committed vegetarian.  I am going to talk about four reasons to be vegetarian.  First will be the animals;  second the amazing effects on your health;  third, our planet;   fourth, your spiritual health.

Around the age of 3, most toddlers develop a great attachment to and fascination for the great variety of animals.  Usually, it’s a very significant part of their lives for a while.  This love and attachment for animals is recognized in many books and movies.  Some, like Charlotte’s Web, Babe, and the recent Chicken Run, struggle with the role of these animals, as part of the human diet, and realize, like the toddlers, that these animals should be treated like fellow creatures.

The great Unitarian philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”  And slaughterhouses are appropriately named.  During the course of this service, 660,000 animals will be killed in America for meat.

Rather than talk about the horrid, inhumane deaths of these animals, let’s look at how they lived.  Actually largely free-roaming cows are pretty well off.  But for chickens, pigs, and veal calves, the horrific conditions of their actual lives make the awful conditions in “Chicken Run” look like a vacation in the Bahamas.

These animals are raised in a box.  They are fed from a trough in front of their noses and their waste just falls through their wire cages.  They have no freedom of movement and their legs deteriorate due to this.  They are pumped full of hormones to make them grow fatter and faster, and this further overwhelms their weak limbs.

A while back a turkey chick fell off a truck in my neighborhood and it was rescued, but even on a healthy diet, able to walk around, it had been genetically engineered to grow so big that its legs weren’t able to support it.

These chickens, pigs, and calves never lived on the happy farm of our imagination.  They never wandered around a yard, pecking at things or being chased by a playful dog.  They never learned about "chicken romance.”  They never felt the sunshine. We are protected from their terrible lives and deaths because meat from these animals comes to us in a neat Styrofoam box, wrapped in plastic.   This is sadly appropriate, because the animal from which the meat came, lived and died in a box.

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Many people around the world tried at least a beefless diet during the recent “Mad Cow” disease scare.  Even aside from this awful disease, the result of forcing vegetarian cows to become cannibals, there are many health reasons not to eat meat.

If you replace that big protein and cholesterol bomb with fruits vegetables and grains, you are emphasizing the foods richest in the variety of nutrients you need … carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and protein.  There are many studies indicating that vegetables not only prevent health problems, but they can cure them, too!

The freshness of vegetables and fruits is quite plain to you.  You can easily judge lettuce, or a banana, or bread by its appearance:  if it looks good, it probably is.   But meat spoils very quickly, and becomes harmful long before it turns gray and smells bad.  Removing the meat from your diet frees your body from a daily struggle against the parasites brought to your system by spoiling meat.

Heart disease is the number one killer in present day America.  In fact, half  of the Americans today will die of it.  But a vegetarian diet cuts your chance of dying of heart disease by two thirds!  And cutting out eggs and other dairy gets rid of it almost altogether.  If you do without animal-based foods you probably will not die from circulatory problems no matter what your family background.  Vegetarians also have lower risk of all kinds of cancer, our second biggest killer.  Although eating vegetables can’t really help you with car accidents, you have a very good chance of living much longer.

A good thing about changing your diet is that you are thinking about what you eat – not just eating what’s in front of you because it’s easy, or because it is “what people eat.”  If “you are what you eat,” you should choose what you will eat, so you can be what you want to be.

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Many people are concerned about disappearing wilderness areas which provide much of the oxygen we breathe.  In Brazil and Southeast Asia, people are clearing millions of acres for cattle grazing, because it is profitable.  If individuals here choose not eat meat, they can discourage this worldwide destruction by reducing the #### pounds of meat imported into the US every year.  Every time McDonald’s sells a half-pound burger, they clear the space the size of my bedroom in rainforest.  The land freed by my family alone becoming vegetarian is enough to feed this entire room if you were all vegetarians.

And, slaughterhouses are America’s number one river polluter.  They use huge amounts of water, and generate an enormous amount of damaging run-off due to the chemical cleaners they use.  They also they generate tons and tons of animal waste.

So, a vegetarian diet saves, not only the animals that would have lived an awful life and slaughterhouse death, but saves habitat for wild animals that are threatened by ranching and pollution.   In a world where good land is becoming scarce, and there is still much wilderness we'd like to preserve, it only makes sense to "eat less land" at the table.

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Many people think that if they became vegetarian they would miss the variety of their current diet.  This is a big mistake, because the diet of most vegetarians is much more diverse than the normal suburban diet. Look at me for instance. I have Kids living on my block who would reject even a taste of Thai food. Or Indian, or tofu, or mangos even! I eat these all the time!  Who’s got the restricted diet here?

Most of my young non-vegetarian friends think that the world of food outside their knowledge is not fun and exciting and adventurous; they think of it as suspicious.  Many of them live on a diet of eight or nine different dishes. I have had 89 different kinds of food in the last week.

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Most world religions, including Islam, Judaism, and Catholicism, have dietary restrictions as part of individual worship.  Several Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian sects require or strongly encourage vegetarianism.  Many people we hold as examples of spiritual enlightenment or intellectual genius – PythAGoras, Gautama Buddha, Socrates, possibly Jesus, Leonardo da Vinci, George Bernard Shaw, and Mahatma Gandhi, not to mention some recent musical geniuses, Paul McCartney and Weird Al Yankovic – they’re all vegetarians!

All of these people saw in vegetarianism what Albert Einstein did when he said  – “It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of humankind”

You can choose to not sit at a table and consume the suffering of fellow creatures.  Think of how clear your mind will be once you do not live by violence!

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I plan to remain a UU all of my life.  I also plan to remain a committed vegetarian. Perhaps more than 1 of every 100 Americans is a vegetarian.  Less than one in a thousand Americans is a Unitarian Universalist.  My daddy says I have to be patient, but I hope that one day in my lifetime, our commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every soul, our wish for peace, and our respect for the interdependent web of life will show us that vegetarianism is a commitment of the UU faith. I hope it will become necessary part of our religion.