Dear Editor:
The New Year provides us with an opportunity to consider how we can improve our lives and make the world a better place for all. A simple but powerful approach toward this goal is through our food choices. By shifting to a plant-based diet, we benefit our health, preserve the environment and reduce animal suffering.
According to the American Dietetic Association, studies have shown that vegetarians and vegans have a lower risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, diabetes mellitus, gallstones, heart disease, hypertension, kidney stones, obesity, osteoporosis and stroke. Because livestock animals are injected, fed and sprayed with antibiotics and pesticides, their waste is filled with toxic chemicals. Much of it is washed by rains, untreated, into our waters; 90 percent of the organic water pollution in the U.S. is attributable to animal agriculture.
The Animal Welfare Act does not apply to animals used for food. Over 90 percent of farmed animals in the U.S. are raised on factory farms in intensive confinement. The animals spend their entire lives in tiny cages and stalls where they are often unable to even turn around or lie down. They live on concrete, slatted metal or wire mesh floors. They are forced to live in their own and other animal’s wastes.
Indeed, the new millennium provides every one of us a great opportunity to examine the impacts of our diet, our health, the planet and the billions of animals tormented and killed for food. On the first day of the New Year let’s turn over a new leaf, kick the meat habit and get a new lease on life.
Alison Gottlieb