I'm often frustrated by the claims of vegans about meat and am further appalled by their bad logic. Often vegans fail to acknowledge multiple causes and solutions to the issues they present, simplifying their logic to eating meat makes you sick, and not eating meat solves the problems. Without attacking Veganism itself, I'll point out some of gaps in logic below:
Eating meat is bad for you
This is a miserable argument because it refuses to take into account American over-eating. Yes, if people stuff their faces with huge, frequent portions of meat, they will have horrible problems with their organ systems, including cholesterol increases and rising body fat percentages. If people eat modest portions of meat once every other day, there are no horrible health impacts and you have access to a fantastic source of raw materials necessary for your body. Except for fish. Fish is great for you. Eat lots of fish. Fish is still a form of meat.
The counterargument to this is claiming that eating meat dumps massive amounts of harmful chemicals, antibiotics, and even concentrated amounts of chemicals into your body. This is typically paired with slideshows of animals in horrible conditions, fifteen to a cage in a room full of five hundred cages, all full of chickens with two heads. Everyone seems to recognize this, but I'll give you a hint. The solution is not veganism.
If you want to combat or even just avoid the mass farming of meat (including fish farms), buy free-range and organic meat. Animals raised by the standards of these two labels grow up in much better conditions and are not stuffed full of growth hormones and antibiotics. The price tag will help you keep in step with the portions suggested above. The meat tastes better, it's much healthier, and you are supporting a fight against polluted meat raised in miserable conditions. Better than depriving the growing industry from a source of income by not eating meat at all.
This is a huge issue, especially when it comes to fish, as fish farming programs typically do not address the dangerous buildup of chemicals in their stocks. Buying wild fish will help encourage the strength of those programs and their ability to ensure the continued protection of their territories. Clean waters, for example, are necessary for the raising of healthy fish. Supporting the budding wild fish industry will both encourage competitors to clean up their acts and may even begin the expansion of the industry into over fished areas. Wouldn't it be great if a company decided to clean up an area like the Chesapeake Bay for the purpose of raising a healthy fish and shellfish population? Supporting the wild fish industry will ultimately help rejuvenate rich coastal areas, under the protection of companies with the health of the area in the interests of their consumers.
Also, if the chemical/antibiotics /hormone issue is the reason you switched to veganism, you'd better buy organic plants. Otherwise, you're still likely to have pesticides and antibiotics dumped into your system, as well as the issue of genetically modified organisms to confront.
The Doozy
Eating meat is immoral and/or unnatural. What a terrible argument to put on a brochure. The argument from immorality is underplayed by vegans- it would certainly take up the entire brochure, and follows a long train of logic that many people would find conflict with. In short, most mainstream modern religions don't support the argument from veganism.
The argument from unnaturalism has always bugged me. At eight, I would open my mouth and point frantically at my canine teeth in response. Humans are omnivores. Meat tastes particularly good to us because it helped us to keep our populations high, as it is a source of much sought after fats, proteins and certain vitamins. You just couldn't get that from plants when we were evolving. We're conditioned to eat meat by our very genetics. And you know what we ate most of the time? That's right. Plants. We ate plants most of the time, supplemented by scavenged meat, at a rate above our ancestors, the chimpanzees. Probably in the proportions suggested in part one. And it kept us alive.
In Short
The right types of meat, in the right proportions, are a fantastic asset to your health. Humans have been conditioned by the process of evolution to benefit from meat in these proportions. If you want to make a difference in the meat industry, don't boycott it. Support the industries that address your concerns, and you'll help them grow to confront the industries to which you are opposed.
