Collegiate Times

This is a response to the columns “You cannot be a meat-eater, an environmentalist” (CT, April 20), as well as “Before eating meat, look into animals’ eyes” (CT, April 21). I should begin by saying I agree with the former author about our huge problems in relation to land and water degradation as well as intense energy resources that go into our food flow and waste stream. Yesterday’s Earth Day serves as a good time to bring attention to these issues. The author made many valuable points about the harms of industrial agriculture. These are serious problems that need to be solved; one need not look any further than our Chesapeake Bay, once the most thriving estuary in the world, to see the impacts of farming and industry on our environment.

But we part ways fellow environmentalist. I eat meat, and I am definitely still one of many impassioned youth that would be labeled as an “environmentalist.” I prefer “concerned citizen,” worried about future generations and the womb of tomorrow, but I see the inextricable bond between human and all species within our environment.

I believe our food system needs to be reformulated for the sake of efficiency and common sense. I think vegetarianism and veganism are great lifestyles and I know many such people, but as we head onward into this new millennium with our ever changing ethos, we are finding out being a “ocavore” — the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2007 word of the year meaning eating local — is perhaps the easiest, most effective and beneficial dietary lifestyle.

That can definitely include meat, eggs and fresh dairy products. It is much, much more sustainable to support a local farmer at the farmers market than buying products at the grocery store to whatever degree you can afford to supplement your diet. Ideas such as the 100-mile diet, a study Virginia Tech partook in, are feasible, yet still difficult at this time. But the idea is anything you buy local isn’t traveling the average 1500 miles before hitting your table for supper, as well as having a larger chance of being free of pesticides and from a small farmer or an endangered species slowly on the ascent.

Regional agriculture will increase as transportation costs increase, efficiencies of scale implement themselves, and people continue to learn about the benefits of supporting regional economies.

It can easily be argued meat from the farmers market is more sustainable than soy-based products that many, though not all, vegetarians and vegans ingest. The last time I checked, soy was putting a mighty hefty dent in the Amazon rainforest and other forested environments alongside increased cattle production. The statement “every time we consume meat, eggs or dairy foods, we contribute to ecological devastation” is capricious and untrue.

In response to looking animals in the eyes, I personally believe any omnivore should gut and cut an animal at some point so they do appreciate the gift of life in a very real way.

In the end it’s a personal choice, and educating ourselves about what we’re putting into our bodies is becoming ever more important as toxins bioaccumulate and spread in our industrialized world. It’s a problem ranging from mercury in fish, one in five women of childbearing age undergoing some level of neurological development problem with their fetus, to pesticides on fruits and vegetables to hormones and a slew of pharmaceuticals making a synergistic stew of our water. We need to realize we live in a closed system and educate ourselves about what our future and our children’s future will become, something we are still very active players in.

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A version of this article appeared in the Apr 23 issue of the Collegiate Times.