Why Turn Vegetarian?: Week 5, Post 2-

This expert lecture created by PETA has ten reasons why it is a good decision to become a Vegetarian. Becoming a Vegetarian has numerous health effects as I have read in the past before I ever enrolled in this class. Reason number two is probably the most important reason I have heard that it is good to eat a vegetarian style diet. Meat can cause heart disease. However, I never knew that heart disease started when you are a child. Reason number five is just plain old disgusting. I never heard that every package of chicken has a little bit of POOP in it, talk about nasty. Reason number seven had a different impact on me when I first heard it.
Throughout this entire expert lecture film they show clips of animals suffering and portray them in a light that implies that they experience life as a human does, with feelings and thought processes. Reason number seven says that you shouldn't eat meat because it isn't fair. They go on to say that “no living creature wants to see their family slaughtered.” This struck a chord with me for a number of reasons mostly because this implies that they have a family structure as humans do. It’s true there are offspring but I’m not so sure they think of families the way humans do. However, I have a cat named “kitty” and I can tell that she gets depressed sometimes and other times he is happy. She knows who we are and she remembers us when we have been gone, even for a few weeks to months. It is interesting to me that when my brother Joel comes home from college she meows to him because she misses him. I know this is why she does that because she doesn't do it to just anybody, only those she really knows. Back to my point, I believe that animals do have feelings and thought processes but I’m not quite certain that all animals have them. I have not come to a conclusion on whether or not I think it is morally right or wrong to use animals as means of survival by eating them. The jury is still out as far as I am concerned.