American Defiance

One widely held view that surrounds the American society that I do not follow is the eating of animals. I became a vegetarian five years ago for what started out to be ethical reasons and soon blossomed into moral, health, and environmental reasons. I started my journey as a vegetarian while my cousin was going through chemo and she said to me, “Why would I eat animals when I know how they feel. They don’t get any say in what happens to them, so why would I want to wish that on any living species?” What she said struck a nerve in me, and I began my research on the mass meat industry and quickly learned how disgusting and inhumane it truly was. Then, once I became a vegetarian, I soon learned about all the health benefits from cutting out meat, especially red meat, had for your body and that as long as you got the necessary nutrients there was no reason to take an innocent life. Finally, as I was looking into more about vegetarianism I learned how the mass meat industry destroys the Earth by all the pollution created from these factory farms. My belief that animals should not be eaten and don’t have to be started out as just a strong gut feeling and moral understanding yet quickly was backed by scientific data showing me why it is a good choice all together. I know that not everyone agrees with the moral standing to this conviction but you can’t refute facts that state that the meat industry is harming our arties and lands. I don’t see any reason why there should be meat eating, there are no benefits to it and only down falls. In a very southern state it’s hard to get these points across because the argument made back at you is “Well, it taste good and it’s already dead so it doesn’t matter” when in reality one vegetarian can save the life of over a hundred animals every year. I very strongly belief that this should be a social norm due to not only the data backing it but also for ethical reasons that there is no reason to hurt and kill these animal just to make a profit.