Vegetarism

Vegetarianism is not just what you eat or even what you believe. It’s “who you are,” it is a totalizing identity. A vegetarian is an expression of one’s ethical orientation. When thinking of a vegetarian, one does not envision a person just like everyone else except that he or she does not eat meat. A person who has a certain philosophical outlook, whose choice not to eat meat is a reflection of a deeper belief system in which killing animals for human ends is considered unethical, is associated with the term. Humans make an ignorant choice when they decide to harm the environment, animals, and themselves, through the consumption of other living beings. To become a vegetarian, is to better the world as a whole. The most important reason to become a vegetarian is to end the suffering inflicted on innocent animals.

The most important reason to become a vegetarian is to end the unfair cruelty subjected on animals. Ninety-six percent of Americans think animals deserve legal protection (Foer). More than 99% of animals are raised on factory farms (Foer). The ethic for the treatment of animals forbids cruelty to animals, that is, deliberate, sadistic, useless, unnecessary infliction of pain, suffering, and neglect on animals (Rollin 5). Speciesism is the view that any or all human animals, no nonhumans, should get moral protection. A difference drawn between animals and some humans cannot be made to justify only using animals for food, only a preference for members of our own species. Peter Singer wrote Animal Liberation in 1975, which became the touchstone of animal liberation movement. In Animal Liberation, he writes:
“The racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race The sexist violates the principle of equality by favoring the interests of his own sex. Similarly, the speciesist allows the interests of his own...