Perhaps if Jeremy Oehlert is so concerned with the environment, he should take a timeout from playing Gandhi and actually take an environmental science class. If he did, he would realize that the 250,000 pounds of excrement produced by livestock is used to fertilize his beloved wheat, without which we would all die. The fact is, these livestock are an important part of an ecosystem obviously too complex for Oehlert to wrap his psycho-analogical brain around. If we remove the livestock, the entire ecosystem might fail. He does succeed in pointing out the sad truth of how many resources are put into meat processing, but we are, in fact, carnivores, just as much as any other meat-eating animal on this planet.

Some animals, like humans, have sharp incisors in their mouths for the specific purpose of chewing meat. Many animals can’t live without it and humans shouldn’t. Vegetarians are far from having a clean bill of health. Most have to take supplements and still suffer from diseases like iron deficiency anemia. In America, 1.4 million jobs are created by the beef industry alone, an industry that pumps $175 billion into our economy annually. If dead things were buried whole, as he suggests, their rotting carcasses would poison the soil, get into the water and kill us all. On top of that, we would have nowhere to bury our dead once the water contamination killed them because the ground would be filled with livestock. If you choose to be a vegetarian for personal reasons, I support that in the same way you should support people who choose to eat meat.

Animals are a resource, and we should use them wisely.

Ashley Dickinson

Sophomore

Mechanical Engineering