Vegetarian Society of Hawaii

On a low fat vegetarian diet 90% of adult-onset diabetics can reduce or entirely eliminate their insulin injections Tens of millions of Americans suffer from osteoporosis and kidney failure due to excess animal protein consumption. Meat-eating women have levels of chemical pollution in their breast milk 35 times higher than in the breast milk of pure vegetarians.

VEGETARIANS ARE ECOLOGICAL

75% of our food-growing topsoil in the United States has eroded, almost all of it off farmland and grazing land used for animal agriculture. One acre of land growing broccoli will supply ten times as much protein as an acre of land producing beef. If acreage now being used for grazing cattle and raising feed grains were growing trees or fiber plants to burn for energy, we would have no need to import foreign oil. More than half of the water used for all purposes in the United States is used for livestock production. Water pollution from feedlots and feed grain field runoff (manure, topsoil, pesticides, fertilizer, etc.) contaminates more streams and rivers than do all the wastes from all U.S. cities and industries combined.

VEGETARIANS ARE COMPASSIONATE

In the United States ten billion animals are killed for food every year. Veal calves are chained in crates to prevent movement and fed iron-deficient food to make them anemic in order to keep their flesh pale. Egg-laying hens are painfully de-beaked, then raised in cages so small that they are unable to stretch their wings. Fishing depletes fish populations, disrupting vital food chains and forcing marine mammals and sea birds to extinction through starvation. Vegans do not eat animal products and therefore do not contribute to the suffering and needless death of animals raised for food.