Voice Mail: Stand up for animals
As we stroll through the aisles of a grocery store or sit down to eat at a favorite restaurant, few of us question the safety of the food we’re purchasing. But a recent investigation inside a southern California slaughter plant may forever change the way we think about where our food comes from.
On Sunday, February 17, 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the largest meat recall in our nation’s history: 143 million pounds of beef. This recall stemmed from an undercover video taken inside Hallmark Meat Packing Company, a dairy cow slaughter plant in Chino, California. The video, released a few weeks before the recall was announced, reveals workers torturing crippled cows and violently coercing these sick and injured animals to stand for slaughter. Although there’s a loophole, generally speaking, federal regulations prohibit “downed” cows from entering the human food chain due to the increased risk of spreading disease, including mad cow disease.
It’s likely that much of the recalled meat has already been consumed. Some of it has even been served to schoolchildren—including those attending Montgomery County Public Schools—through the USDA’s National School Lunch Program. As alarming as this record beef recall may be, there’s a bigger concern that begs our attention: our standard food choices.
The traditional American diet, heavy with meat, milk, cheese, and eggs, is dangerously high in artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat. As rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and other life-threatening conditions skyrocket in the U.S., many researchers and medical experts are coming to the same conclusion: A vegetarian diet can help protect our health and even reverse some diseases, including the most common one: heart disease. According to the American Dietetic Association, vegetarians reportedly have lower body mass indices than non-vegetarians as well as lower rates of coronary artery disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and various cancers.
Thankfully, the protein, iron, and calcium our bodies need to stay healthy and strong are all readily available in a large variety of plant-based foods. Try calcium-fortified soy or rice milk on your cereal, heat up protein-packed veggie burger for lunch, or make an iron-rich spinach burrito for dinner.
Choosing vegetarian foods not only helps protect our health, but it also protects animals. Each year in the U.S., more than 10 billion birds, pigs, and cows are killed for is to eat. Most of these animals are forced to spend their lives on factory farms, where they’re crammed inside cages, stalls, or pens, and are deprived of almost everything natural to them. The suffering they endure is incomprehensible—from the moment they’re born until the moment they’re slaughtered, these intelligent and social animals are treated as mere meat-, milk-, and egg-producing machines. With virtually no laws to protect them, farmed animals can be, and routinely are, subjected to practices so cruel, it would lead to prosecution if those same abuses were inflicted upon the dogs and cats with whom we share our homes
Thankfully, each of us can stand up for animals every time we sit down to eat, simply by choosing vegetarian foods. As a growing number of people are opting for healthier and more humane diets, restaurants and grocery stores everywhere, including in Takoma Park and all around the nation’s capital, are catering to the increasing demand for vegetarian fare. Get started today by visiting VegDC.com.
— Erica Meier, Takoma Park, MD
Erica Meier is the executive director of Compassion Over Killing, a Takoma Park-based nonprofit organization focused on exposing cruelty to farmed animals and promoting a vegetarian diet. www.COK.net.