Everyone has their own different reasons, but all share in the many benefits. Vegetarianism makes sense to a lot of people. It entails more than just “eating like a rabbit”, it is a healthy way of life. Contrary to popular opinion, iron and protien can be found in foods other than meat and dairy products! Vegetarians eat much more than lettuce, actually their diet is most likely more rounded than a non-vegetarian/meat lover. They have their own Basic 4 food groups: grains and cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetables, and nuts and seeds. These foods eaten in the right combinations can provide vegetarians with enough of all vitamins and minerals necessary to be healthy and alive.

Another reason why vegetarianism makes sense–biologically humans are not carnivores. Believe it or not, humans are designed to eat plant foods. Our body is not suited for a diet of meat, like other carnivorous animals are. Our teeth are flat, not pointed and sharp; also our digestive tract is much longer than that of carnivores. Meat-eating animals have a very short digestive system, designed to move the meat through their bodies as quickly as possible.

Vegetarianism is probaby the safest way to eat. Think once about all of the chemicals, hormones, and additives put into meat. Then think about the bacteria and disease that always accompanies meat. By eliminating meat from their diets, vegetarians also eliminate any of the potential disease associate with it.

Historically, the Scriptures have been used to justify slavery, child abuse, spousal abuse, and polygamy, so we must be careful not to misuse them to justify animal cruelty.

According to the book of Genesis, God created animals, including human beings, on the sixth day. In Genesis 1:28, God says: “Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Immediately after, in Genesis 1:29, God states: “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.” Whatever the word that is translated as “dominion” means, it does not mean that we have a right to eat animals. In fact, most theologians recognize that this word is more accurately translated as “stewardship” and that the meaning of this text is that humans are supposed to be stewards and guardians, protecting and respecting the beings with whom we share the gift of creation.

Theologian Rev. Andrew Linzey states, “We need a concept of ourselves in the universe not as the master species but as the servant species–as the one given responsibility for the whole and the good of the whole. We must move from the idea that animals were given to us and made for us to the idea that we were made for creation, to serve it and ensure its continuance. This actually is little more than the theology of Genesis Chapter Two. The garden is made beautiful and abounds with life: Humans are created specifically to take care of it.”

Genesis 9, the text often cited as justification for eating animals, is recognized by most theologians as either a very temporary post-flood concession (all vegetation had been destroyed) or as a concession to human sinfulness (Genesis 9 is also used to justify slavery). St. Jerome wrote: “As to the argument that in God’s second blessing (Gen 9:3), permission was given to eat flesh–a permission not given in the first blessing (Gen 1:29)–let him know that just as permission to put away a wife was, according to the words of the Savior, not given from the beginning, but was granted to the human race by Moses because of the hardness of our hearts (Mt 19), so also in like manner the eating of flesh was unknown until the Flood …”

No matter how one views God’s original intent, the complete disdain afforded animals who are turned into food is absolutely heretical. The fact is that human beings are playing God with animals, genetically breeding them to grow so quickly that their hearts, lungs, and limbs can often not keep up. God’s creatures have their bodies mutilated without painkillers, their natural deisres totally thwarted, and their every need and desire entirely ignored. At the end of their miserable lives, they are trucked through all weather extremes, without food or water, to a violent, bloody, totally ignoble death. Humans are playing God with animals, and ethical people should have no part in it.

The scientific definition for vegetarianism is “Way of living with avoiding every form of killing animals”. However, today this definition has changed a bit. Basically every vegetarian eats no meat, but there are differences. Ovo-lacto-pisce vegetarians eat no meat, but fish and ovo-lacto vegetarians eat no fish and no meat. That is the most common form. Lacto vegetarians eat additional no eggs and Ovo vegetarians eat besides meat and fish no milk and milk products. Vegans avoid every animal ingredient and also leather, fur and so on. Most vegetarian who became one for ethical or moral reasons avoid also leather and fur without being a complete vegan.

Our position:

Not everybody from us is vegetarian, but we all believe that animals should not be tortured unnecessary, if there exist “necessary” torture at all. We all are against animal tests and vivisection, animal transports and mass livestock breeding and we advocate the welfare of animals. Some oppose every form of killing animals, be it for meat, for fun (fishing) or for fur and leather. Others avoid also animal ingredients, because they believe that even livestock breeding is torture. Even since not everybody from us lives exactly this position, we distribute these arguments, because at least everybody supports the position.

Argument: Alone I cannot save animals at all!

Counterargument: Oh yes, you can! One example: the average American eats up to his 75th year about 11 cattle, 3 lambs and sheep, 23 pork, 45 turkeys, 1100 chickens and 862 pounds of fish. Even if some people guaranteed eat less than that, a lot of animals still would be saved. Certainly every American family had for Thanksgiving a turkey. If every family member would agree not to have a turkey, you would save at least one animal.

Argument: But the animals get slaughtered anyway.

Counterargument: Sure, the animals who lay in the freezer in the grocery store are dead, but as everybody knows the demand for something regulates the supply. If nobody would buy meat, no animals would have to be slaughtered to fill up the freezer.

Argument: For certain occasions it is just tradition to eat meat.

Counterargument: A lot of families in Europe eat for Christmas a goose or for New Year’s Eve a carp or trout. Or in the USA every Thanksgiving thousand of turkeys get eaten. But still in the beginning of this century it was there “tradition” too that women had no right to vote and even the slavery is not too long ago. In Europe they did cut out the tongues from liars and in the middle of the 18th century a lot of red-haired women were accused to be witches and therefore burned. Some years ago it was still legal in Spain to throw one time a year for a religious ceremony a goat out of a church tower! It is forbidden today, but in some areas still practiced. Want somebody seriously claim that these traditions are worth it to keep? So why not renounce the goose or the turkey?

Argument: But animals eat other animals too!

Counterargument: So you want to compare yourself with predacious animals like lions and tigers? “Unfortunately” our ancestors are the anthropoid apes that are mostly plain plant eater what means vegetarians. We have neither the tooth nor the claws to tear an animal into pieces. No, more the opposite because our teeth are for the grind of wheat and other plants really predestined.

It is scientifically proved that the length of the intestines is decisive for the digestion. Our relatively long intestines of plant eaters are as unfit for the digestion of fast rot meat as the short intestines of tigers for the digestion of a grain bar. Another fact is that animals hunt their animals by themselves. Would you still eat cows if you would have to see in their eyes and then stab the cow with a knife and listen to the death screams while the blood squirt out of the sore?

Besides that it makes us wonder that exactly the people for who the humans are on a higher level than the animals compare themselves with predacious animals and therefore go down to the same level again. If the humans are different from animals due to the intelligence (?), why should not he realize that meat is not necessary for the daily life and abandon it? Every human is a free personality that can think and act independently upon a certain age. Eating meat just because some animals do is not a good example for the cultural and social development of the humans. On the one hand some people try to justify their meat diet with being more progressive, developed etc., but on the other hand they want refering to the animal world, because they do it the same way. Some animals wallow in the mud or others eat worms. Just because they do, we do not have to do it too!

Furthermore do not eat all animals other animals. The dominating part consists of herbivores, that means they are living vegetarian. And even carnivores only eat herbivores anew, without them they could not even exist. The other way around it would be possible.

We want to add that carnivores have no other opportunity than eating meat. First, because their environment may not supply enough plants and second, because their digestive system is not made for it and they could not digest the nutrients of the plants. If people say the human is an omnivore that might be true. He can eat everything, but he does not have to. Humans developed in a way that does not need animal ingredients. More to that in the next counterargument.

Argument: Humans always ate meat!

Counterargument: Like already disapproved above our ancestors are the (mostly) vegetarian anthropoid apes. Most people talk about the time when the humans hunted mammoths. But such an animal got caught only once in a while and a hunt could take up to some month. Besides was it sometimes, especially in the winter and some regions just not possible to find always plants. That is also one of the reasons for the low life expectation of 20 to 25 years. Do you call that desirable? Today the technique and science is so far that we have again the possibility to live without meat. The evolution does not stop and who wants to develop backwards and hunt again with a bearskin?

It was an invention of humans to catch animals, to tame and domesticate them, to breed them, so that there is always plenty of meat available. But it was also an invention to build hothouses in which plants can grow every time of the year. Or the grow of more productive types of grain and the invention of the “three fields economy” (Dreifelderwirtschaft) and later the mechanical cultivation helped to get higher returns from the same field. Like we have learned to digest meat and to make it eatable we have learned to produce vegetable food in a way that they are everywhere in the world available and consists enough nutrients.

Stop eating meat and change to pure vegetable food would not be a retrogression, on the contrary it would be a part of the culturell development of the humans. Humans passed laws for the protection of animals that say that it is illegal to superfluously maltreat an animal. If we are capable of living vegetarian, is not the killing of an animal superfluously maltreatment? By the way, the “Animal Welfare Act” of the United States Department of Agriculture, passed by the US Congress “specifically excludes animals raised for food or fiber.” That means it is a protection against our vegetarian counterargument that it would be illegal to maltreat animals. They just said, if you kill an “animal for food or fiber” it is not illegal to maltreat them. But if you beat your pet? Where is the justice?

Argument: I do not kill the animals by myself!

Counterargument: Ordered murder is just as bad. If oyu pay a person money to kill a human the person will be persecuted as the murderer him- or herself. So why this should not be applicable for animals? The point is: If a meat eater excuses his or her eating habits with the argument that he/her did not kill the animal itself and this could it the animal, the argument cannot be accepted. It is not about who killed the animal but that the animal was killed in the first place. Another counterquestion would be: Could you kill the animals yourself? Meaning not the skills but the crossing of a moral line. Anybody that could not kill a sweet little rabbit this confesses indirectly that there must be something wrong morally. Plus to be honest: Anybody that would not have a problem with that seems suspect to us.