Tile: Becoming a Vegan Background Information and

Tile: Becoming a vegan Background information and literature on being a vegan Justification of the problem Why the issue of becoming a vegan is relevant in the contemporary socisty.

An interview with a student who is a vegan and noting down of the factual firsthand experience of a vegan Environmental Reasons for being vegan Outline reasons from the student and other sources on how eating meat diets hurt the environment Becoming a vegan The notion of becoming a vegan and leaving out all the animal meat in our diet is by and large becoming an essential and almost an inevitable trend in the near future if the current trends are anything to go by.

There are various people, famous and infamous, who have condemned the act of killing animals for their meat. One such figure is Leo Tolstoy who is widely quoted to have emphasized that "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral." (The Vegan Wolf, 2004).

Justification of the problem However, there are more than just the moral angle to it and a reason that closer to our livelihoods and whether one cares for the morals or not, they must and will ultimately get into real touch with it; the environment. The habitat has been one of the biggest loser in the race for the meat production.

Case study Having had an interview with Luis Diaz, a business major in my class who works with habitat for humanity, there are various insightful aspects that came out directly pointing at how and why the vegan lifestyle works widely to conserve the environment. These below were the outstanding issues that were noted and that go a large extent to indicate the significance of the environmental conservation through adopting the vegan lifestyle.

Environmental Reasons for being vegan It was clear that there is widespread destruction of tropical rainforests and other types of vegetation in order to plant food for the feeding of animals to be slaughtered or even just to create room for the grazing animals to be slaughtered. This clearing of trees destroys the water catchment regions that would regulate the global warming, complete the water cycle, absorb carbon dioxide from the environment and provide man with medicine and food among other provisions.

Vegetarian diet will also go a long way in reduction of the overall environmental pollution. It is worth noting that millions of acres are continually sprayed with pesticides in the process of producing food for the animals meant for slaughter. In the process of such massive faming, millions of acres are also degraded through erosion occasioned b y overgrazing and farmland plundering in order to fatten slaughter animals.

This trend has seen the rise in levels of toxic substances found in fish in our rivers, lakes, oceans and other water bodies. Another outstanding factor is the conservation of the fossil fuel by adopting the vegetarian diet. It is estimated that it takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of beef protein, while 1 calorie of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of soybeans protein, a proof that the vegetarian diet goes a long way to conserve the non-renewable sources of energy (Richard Ryder, 2013).

It is apparent that it takes more water to produce meat, from the beginning to the end where it is presented on the table. This is not the case with production of the plant protein where the use of water is cut down significantly, just in the fields where they may be irrigated.

The vegetarian diet also goes a long way in conserving soil since the top soil is better taken care of by the nitrogen fixing legumes that produce protein at the end, over and above the planting of feeds for the animals headed for slaughter. This is a proof that production of animal protein puts more strain upon the soil and the environment at large as.