The Final Count Down

Our final assignment is to, in no more then 3 pages (doublespaced), attempt to finish either of he following statements:
I am morally obliged to be a vegetarian because...
I am not morally obliged to be a vegetarian because...

This seems a daunting task since I usually attempt to argue against others to "stir the pot" of ideas and provide counter arguments. Since I have been doing this for most of my life I am not quite good at coming up with my own ideas, and especially not arguing for or against them. It is here that I will write most if not all of my thoughts and ponderings so be prepared for useless thoughts that will hopefully become some form of communicable idea.

So here begins the brainstorming process, I will decide on what vegetarianism constitutes.

Vegetarianism is eating (not consuming for later reasons) only plant based products as a primary source of food. Eggs, and dairy products are acceptable. I presently practice a semi-vegetarian lifestyle, eating poultry, eggs, fish and consuming milk and other dairy products, but I hope to shift to pescatarinism.
-> The lacto-ovo vegetarian does not eat the flesh of animals, but does eat both eggs and dairy such as milk and cheese from cows or goats. The ovo-vegetarian eats eggs but not meat. The lacto-vegetarian is similar to the lacto-ovo-vegetarian, but excludes eggs from his diet. A vegan not only excludes meat, but also all dairy products, eggs and foods which contain any product from animals, even gelatin. Pescatarians eat eggs and fish, but no beef, pork or poultry, while a semi-vegetarian generally follows a vegetarian lifestyle, but occasionally eats animal flesh.

i do this mainly because I have decided that, since I survived in Japan for 12 days without red meat, I think I can live without it. I am still iffy on ham... I love it so, but I consider it red meat due to it's porcine origin. Soon, I hope to exclude poultry (mainly chickens) from my diet. Looking at that statement  I feel this could be a moral shift towards vegetarianism  but then I  evaluated if there was a deeper reason why I a doing this, and I found none other then the potential dislike of Taenia solium and Taenia saginata, two tapeworms that have cute scolecies, yet... who wants tapeworms. I do care for life, but I unfortunately can't ever see myself picketing by a farm. I'm too passive to be an activist. It does give me a little sense of moral light to say "I am not eating this meat, therefore some animal somewhere doesn't need to die.

In Botany we discussed Food chains and looking at an example of energy efficiency. If we act as a primary consumer (eating plants) we would be able to support about 12 times the population as where we act as secondary consumers (eating meat from grazers, ruminants, insects etc) as energy is not conserved, only about 10% of the total energy is transferred between each level, so eating a cow yields more energy then a lion (assuming both were the same size) which is probably why we don't eat lion meat, because it would cause extinction of lions to feed all of the people of the earth.

This makes me wonder how many cows go into one hamburger... I don't exactly want to think about that... the cows probably form one huge burger tree from which burger pods are released, and the burgers can be plucked from the tree by McDonalds farmers who then slice the burgers into smaller, edible patties. So it seems that all the meat is put into one big vat and turned into burgers, so many cows make one burger!

Hello there! I'm just a drifter looking for a new home!
(Taenia Saginata, the beef tapeworm! Hope I didn't gross people out!)