Veganism: Guardian style piece

It’s a race against time for the human race, as we continually destroy our planet by producing food that kills us.

Whether earth allows us to survive the next thirty years, whether the human caused climate change catastrophe is reversed: above all else, this is reliant upon our consumption of meat and dairy. A tasty meat-based diet doesn’t justify the annual 136 million-acre rainforest destruction, or the 2.7 acres of land needed to feed just one meat eater for the year.

Veganism is blossoming, adaptations to chain restaurants and high street brands making the lifestyle more accessible. It’s uncertain as to how many people are ditching meat and dairy, but recent findings suggest that this could be nearing 3.5 million in the UK, animal welfare the key motivator for dietary shift.

However, our eating habits are more impactful than we are told, and a lot about our diets is hidden by both government and marketing sources, leaving the powerless at the starting block.

If we want to save not just our own health but the planet, we must decrease the demand for and consumption of animal produce. This starts with the exposure to truth.

In 2014, the World Health Organisation explored 800 studies from 10 different countries and unveiled that processed meats such as sausages, deli cuts and bacon are a group one carcinogen, just as responsible in causing living tissue cancer cells as cigarettes, asbestos and plutonium. It was then revealed that red meats were a group two carcinogen, just fractionally less severe. Despite this, the largest cancer charity in the US, the ‘American Cancer Society’ promotes dishes such as bacon wrapped shrimp on its ‘eat healthy’ page, as contradictory as it would be for a lung cancer charity to boast a ‘roll your own cigarette’ guide.

Strange as it may seem, there is a simple explanation for this. Without sponsors, funding would slow and such charities would cease to exist.

The American Cancer Society is taking money from Tyson: one of the world’s largest meat producers, and ‘Yum’ brand: owner of Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell. Likewise, Cancer Research UK is partnered with Roadchef, Tesco and Zizzi. Cancer organisations are receiving cash from the very industries that are causing the problem in the first place. But revealing nutritional truth would cost them their funding and jobs, cause lawsuits and quite frankly end the financial race they wish to win.

Where does this leaves the industries in charge of treating the sick? The NHS, as well as the American medicine institution are in the business of assisting ill patients, not the business of preventing people from becoming unwell.

Private hospitals make money from stents, gastric operations, bypasses. The government benefits from the living taxes we pay. The pharmaceutical industry generates profit from the prescription of medication. Medicine manipulates the symptoms of conditions, it doesn’t treat the underlying cause.

Without the consumption of animal produce, good health of the population would increase, our planet and environment would thank us, but businesses and government alike would lose billions of pounds. They regulate what we are exposed to. They win this race.

In America, government takes more than $200 million a year from the pharmaceutical and animal agriculture industries, funding their resources which allow for the imprisonment of vegan and environmental activists that oppose them. These industries are working incredibly hard and spending extortionate amounts of money to criminalise groups for simply exposing facilities that mistreat livestock. According to the FBI, activists are the number one domestic terrorism threat, as they expose ‘business secret’. This would cause a decline in the amount of money higher powers make.

Just recently the Iceland supermarket Christmas advertisement was banned from broadcast for its ‘political persuasion’, a cartoon revealing the effects of the production of palm oil, an ingredient responsible for the loss of 26 million acres of rainforest per year. This in comparison to the 136 million acres lost due to our demand for meat and dairy, is minimal. If this was revealed also, the money-making game would halt.

In continuing our habits, we will witness fishless oceans by the year 2048. Our seafood consumption pulls 28 billion creatures out of the ocean annually. The demand for 90 million tonnes of fish means that for every pound caught, there is up to 5 pounds of bykill, including endangered sea turtles and sharks.

Animal agriculture consumes: one third of all freshwater, occupies 45% of land, causes 91% of amazon destruction and is the leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones and habitat demolition. You simply cannot class yourself an environmentalist if you consume animal produce. The only way to sustainably and ethically live on this planet with seven billion plus people is to consume an entirely plant-based diet.

Imagine your own race against those who control us, becoming: Pescatarian will earn you a bronze medal, vegetarian worthy of silver and vegan gold. We can win.