Vegetarians are often stereotyped as hippy, tree-huggers fighting for a cause. But these days, vegetarianism has taken on a whole new life. It is definitely more of a common practice these days. This is evident by looking at restaurant menus with vegetarian friendly sections, whole food markets are taking off, new lines of food products have been introduced which offer vegetarian "sausage," "burgers," and "chicken nuggets." This is a big change that has occurred within the last ten years. The question one should ask is why is there such a following of this practice now. Several factors can answer this question including religious practices, its conduciveness with a low fat, healthy diet, and also for animal rights and environmental benefits.
The way a vegetarian diet is better for the environment than a meat based diet is because raising livestock is far more detrimental to the environment than raising grains, fruits, and vegetables. Vast acres of trees are cut down to make room for cattle. In fact that is what has happened to much of the rain forests in South America. Not only does livestock farming take up a lot of space, but the animals also consume tons of grain a .
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year. If the grain used to feed livestock were used for people, it would feed "five times the population that the meat would" (Collins, 2002). Another issue is, pound for pound, raising meat uses more water than non-meat products. Water is actually a bigger issue than that when it comes to livestock farming. There are major concerns with the contamination of water systems from large livestock farms" runoff. The manure is seeping into the soil and getting into the water causing harmful effects due to the presence of methane and ammonia. It may seem strange that manure, which is a fertilizer, is able to contaminate soil and water. It only becomes a problem because "there is usually far more manure than local fields can absorb" (Editorial Desk, 2002).
