Has the End of Meat Arrived?

The last few years have seen a movement towards plant-focused diets. After eating vegan for 26 years, this is welcome news to us! While this slow-growing trend away from meat and dairy products is moving in the right direction, it's getting a rocket fuel boost from the COVID 19 pandemic. 

More people than ever are seeing the correlation between our industrial animal farming practices and the spread of disease as well as the negative effects on our environment and world hunger. 

Jonathan Safran Foer's article in the New York Times titled "The End of Meat is Here" offers a well-written and researched article suggesting the end of meat has indeed arrived. This is the most articulate, compelling, and data-driven essay we've seen in a decade.  Although it is an opinion piece, he includes many links to the data he references. You can find the entire article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/opinion/coronavirus-meat-vegetarianism.html?searchResultPosition=1

We've collected several quotes for you that highlight messages in Foer's essay. Feel free to use them, referencing the source article above. We've also created easy to share social media images for you. 

"If cows were a country, they would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world."

From the research director at Project Drawdown: Eating a plant-based diet is "the most important contribution every individual can make to reversing global warming.”

"We cannot protect against pandemics while continuing to eat meat regularly. Further, the C.D.C. reports that three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic."(infectious diseases transferred from animals to humans)

"Most American adults eat roughly twice the recommended intake of protein — including vegetarians, who consume 70 percent more than they need."

"There are fewer American farmers today than there were during the Civil War, despite America’s population being nearly 11 times greater. Transitioning toward plant-based foods and sustainable farming practices would create many more jobs than it would end."

"A 2015 study found that a vegetarian diet is $750 a year cheaper than a meat-based diet."

The US government annually provides "$38-billion-plus in props and bailouts" for the meat and dairy industry. 

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Written by Your Vegan Family 

Stacy and Markus live an adventurous vegan lifestyle and write articles about their experiences cooking global vegan cuisine, creating businesses, raising vegan kids, and traveling through more than 65 countries. They earned degrees in molecular biology and acupuncture, consulted over decades for healthcare companies and individuals, created businesses in Asian medicine and cultural immersion, and taught yoga in myriad venues.

We’ve learned a lot from eating a plant-based diet for 25 years and are eager to share more with you. Learn more on our About Us page.