Mars Presentation Slides: Is Eating Meat Ethical?

Title

Mars Presentation Slides: Is Eating Meat Ethical?

Rights

Michigan Animal Rights Society

University of Michigan

PETA

Creator

Michigan Animal Rights Society

Date

03.25.2011

Description

Presentation slides used during a meeting on March 25th, 2011 by the Michigan Animal Rights Society- a student organization at the University of Michigan for animal rights activists. The slides provide an ethical, scientific, and philosophical exploration of applying action with personal ethics through a refusal to consume food products that come from animals. Moreover, the slides focus on the environmental benefits of veganism and how the physical and emotional pain that animals endure has many similarities to human emotions.

Format

PDF

Publisher

Michigan Animal Rights Society

Contributor

University of Michigan

PETA

Subject

Animal Rights

Veganism

Environmentalism

Factory Farming

Animal Welfare

PETA

Michigan Animal Rights Society

extracted text

Aligning Ethics & Action:
1) the environment;
2) concern for animals.

97 percent of Americans
believe that animals deserve
legal protection from abuse.
Gallup, May 2008
Gallup, May 2003

“The unexamined
life is not worth
living.”
—Socrates

Aligning Ethics & Action 1:
the environment

Resource Use

The Global Food Crisis

Example:
Soybean Production

Aligning Ethics & Action 2:
concern for animals

Animal Rights—The Science
“[Other] animals,
like humans,
manifestly feel
pleasure and pain,
happiness, and
misery.”
—Charles Darwin

Animal Rights: The Science

Animal Rights: The Science

Animal Rights: The Science
From PETATV.com

Animal Rights: The Science

Animal Rights: The Science

Integrity: Would you kill them yourself?

What does “integrity” mean?
“It’s staggering when think about it.
Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in
one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.”
—Sir Paul McCartney

Aligning Ethics & Action:
1) the environment;
2) concern for animals.

Thank You!

Facebook.com/OfficialPETA
Facebook.com/BruceGFriedrich
© Susan Ocean

Environment
Eating animals is
“one of the most
significant
contributors to the
most serious
environmental
problems, at every
scale from local to
global.”

Environment
Eating animals
contributes to
“problems of land
degradation,
climate change
and air pollution,
water shortage and
water pollution,
and loss of
biodiversity.”

Environment
Eating animals
causes 40 percent
more greenhouse
gasses than all SUVs,
18-wheelers, jumbo
jets, and other
vehicles combined.

Humane Meat?

Integrity: Would you kill them yourself?

If you care about
(a) the environment or
(b) cruelty to animals,
the only ethical diet is
a vegetarian one.

Thank You!

Facebook.com/OfficialPETA
Facebook.com/BruceGFriedrich
© Susan Ocean

Going vegetarian is “the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint”
[emphasis in original].
—Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook

“A major shift toward plant-based diets is
imperative if we are to have even a chance
of preventing catastrophe …”
—Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chair,
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, Nobel Peace Prize winner

If you oppose gluttony
or cruelty to animals,
the only ethical diet
is a vegetarian one.

Thank You!

Facebook.com/OfficialPETA
Facebook.com/BruceGFriedrich
© Susan Ocean

[Misc. additional slides
follow, for Q&A use]

United Nations Report
The different methodologies
do not invalidate the
conclusions of Livestock’s Long
Shadow, including the
conclusion that livestock
production contributes 18
percent to total global climate
change in both direct and
indirect ways. Gerber told the
Columbia Journalism Review,
“We stand entirely behind the
18 percent figure.”

Global Poverty
“Meat production is an inefficient use of
grain―the grain is used more efficiently when
consumed directly by humans. Continued
growth in meat output is dependent on feeding
grain to animals, creating competition for
grain between affluent
meat eaters and the
world’s poor.”
―WorldWatch Institute

Health
According to the American Dietetic Association
(2010):
•Vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes,
high blood pressure, cancer, and obesity than meat-eaters.
•Vegetarian and vegan diets are appropriate for all life
stages, including infancy and pregnancy.

Health
According to the American Dietetic Association
(2010):
•Vegetarian diets have health benefits in the prevention
and treatment of certain diseases.
Obesity Rates: Meat-eaters
Vegetarians
20%
Vegans
3%

65%

Fish
“I never eat anyone
I know personally.
I wouldn't deliberately eat a grouper any
more than I’d eat a cocker spaniel.
They're so good-natured, so curious. You
know,
fish are sensitive, they have personalities,
they hurt when
they’re wounded.”

Hunting

© 2011 Jupiterimages Corporation