Give a wolf a break today:

Go "Veggie"

If you eat a veggie burger instead of a hamburger, are you helping a wolf, an eagle, a wild horse? Yes! If you adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet, you give a break to wild animals.

A vegetarian eats no animal flesh - whether fish, fowl, or mammal. A vegan eats no animal flesh and no animal products, such as dairy or eggs. The Guidelines accompanying the national Sierra Club policy on wildlife (adopted 1994) recommend "encouragement for humans to eat lower on the food chain in order to better conserve habitats and avoid pollution problems." When cattle and other animals are raised for food, they often take over land that was once wildlife habitat. Even though crops such as grains or vegetables also take over wildlife habitats, these crops generally need less acreage than "livestock" to provide food for a given number of people. Cycling grain through animals rather than letting people eat the grain directly is wasteful of land. Consider: Only 2% of U.S. corn is eaten by people while "livestock" eats 77%. "Livestock" eats 38% of the world grain supply. (Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, Erik Marcus, McBooks Press, 1998).

In the West, much of the land wasted for meat production is public land. Grazing rights are sold at ridiculously low prices to ranchers; thus taxpayers are forced to subsidize the meat industry.

Our taxes also pay for water projects, barbed wire fences and persecution of wild animals for the "welfare ranchers." Meanwhile, the overgrazing of their cattle degrades public land. The Western ranchers (some of whom are actually large corporations) have successfully lobbied the federal government to use our taxes, through Wildlife Services, to trap, burn, poison and otherwise brutally kill wild animals they target (often inaccurately) as a menace to cattle or sheep. And the industry also vehemently opposes reintroduction of natural predators, such as wolves. The Sierra Club wildlife policy states: "The U.S. Animal Damage Control Program should be terminated." (Ed. Note: now Wildlife Services)

But the West isn't the only problem area. Throughout the U.S., there are 'factory farms' where hogs, chickens and other animals are jammed into huge factory-style buildings. The animals never see sun, breathe fresh air or move outside their tiny cages or pens. It's not unusual for an operation to include 100,000 chickens or 12,000 pigs. The manure and chemical runoff from these businesses pollute our water. Pfiesteria, a toxic microbe that has caused human illness and massive fish kills in East Coast waterways, has been linked to water pollution from excess nutrients from animal waste and farm runoff. Example: In 1997 about 30,000 fish died in several tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay, implicating nutrient runoff from the factory poultry farms on the Delmarva peninsula which raise over 600 million birds a year. Example: in 1997, pfiesteria killed about 450,000 fish in North Carolina after 22 million gallons of hog waste - twice the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill - entered into the New River.

Factory farms also cause air pollution. Example: One chicken factory in Ohio has emitted about 2,500 pounds of dust, chicken feathers, manure and skin particles a day from 700 fans which don't have filters or scrubbers. Foul odor from the manure lagoons (which often leak) contributes to the misery of neighbors. (Wildlife Tracks, Humane Society of the U.S., Winter, 1998).

What about fish? Again, corporate greed is doing much damage. Massive factory ships capture huge numbers of sea animals in nets, which run for miles and ensnare the target fish along with many other kinds of fish, marine mammals and other water creatures. All 17 of the world's major fishing areas reached and exceeded their natural limits in the early 1990s (flyer from EarthSave, 1509 Seabright Ave. Suite B1, Santa Cruz CA 95062; information@earthsave.org)

As overfishing diminishes species after species, commercial fishing operations turn to creatures lower on the food chain to fill their nets, thus further cutting into the food supply for endangered ocean species.

If the trend continues, experts predict that marine food webs will collapse in 30 to 40 years. (William K. Stevens, "Man Moves Down the Marine Food Chain, Creating Havoc" The New York Times, Feb. 10, 1998, p. F3 as cited in 101 Reasons Why I'm A Vegetarian, Pamela Rice, 1998, VivaVegie Society, Inc., POB 294, Prince St. Station, NYC 10012) An example of modern commercial fishing severely disrupting an eco-system comes from the oyster beds in Chesapeake Bay. Natural filtration systems, the oyster beds could filter the water in the bay in just a week a hundred years ago. Now, the oysters are so depleted, the remaining oysters take more than a year to filter the bay. (Cheryl Lyn Dybas, "Oystering in the Chesapeake Bay," The Washington Post, Jan. 14, 1998, p. H1, cited in 101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian). 

And fish farming is not kind to the environment either. In describing fish farming, Sierra, the national magazine of Sierra Club, reports that some of Norway's farmed fish escaped their pens and carried a parasite into the wild fish population, resulting in the chemical dosing of entire rivers. in addition, " ..farms present a raft of potential problems for the immediate environment. Oxygen depletion and the production of nitrogen can cause excessive plankton blooms, and accumulations of uneaten feed and of fecal matter can smother the seabed. Overcrowding causes stress, which makes outbreaks of disease more likely...The control of disease in close-quartered farmed fish has traditionally been achieved with costly antibiotics" (Nancy Lord, Sierra, Nov./Dec., 1994, pp. 65,73)

A plant-based diet (vegetables, fruits, grains, beans, nuts, etc.) is generally healthier than a diet which includes animal flesh or animal products. One of the many reasons for this is that pesticides on food accumulates mostly in animal fat, so a diet with no animal fat is a diet with relatively little pesticide residue. (Paul Rauber, Sierra, Nov./Dec. 1994, p.4-5). A plant-based diet also is better able to feed a greater number of people since it is more land and energy efficient than cycling nutrients through animals.

Finally, many people see a plant-based diet as more compassionate since it saves a tremendous number of cows, pigs, sheep, chickens and other animals from a miserable life and terrifying death. John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club more than 100 years ago, had this to say:

"Surely a better time must be drawing nigh when
God-like human beings will become truly humane
and learn to put their animal fellow mortals in their
hearts instead of on their backs or in their stomachs."

For more information:

  • Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter Biodiversity/Vegetarian Outreach Committee: Linda DeStefano at 315-488-2140 (linpar@acmgfcu.net)

  • Waste of the West: Public Lands Ranching, Lynn Jacobs, POB 5784, Tucson, AZ 85703, 1991.

  • Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating, Erik Marcus, McBooks Press, I.D. Booth Building, 520 N. Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850, 1-888-266-5711, 1998. www.mcbooks.com $16.95 + $4.00 S&H

  • Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, 5100 Wisconsin Ave., NW, Suite 404, Washington, DC 20016 produces Good Medicine magazine, Vegetarian Starter Kit, colorful poster of the new four food groups and various other resources. (202) 686-2210 (pcrm@pcrm.org) www.pcrm.org.

  • Ecological Cooking: Recipes to Save the Planet, Joanne Stepaniak & Kathy Hecker, 
    1-800-695-2241 $5.50 + $6.50 shipping.

  • North American Vegetarian Society, P.O.B.. 72, Dolgeville, NY 13329 produces Vegetarian Voice magazine, organizes vegetarian gatherings, loans videos, and more.

  • Vegpledge, Earthsave International, 1509 Seabright Ave., Suite B1, Santa Cruz, CA 95062 or at 1-800-362-3648

  • Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the West, George Wuerthner and Mollie Yoneko Matteson , (2002), Amazon.com, new $30.60, used $22.95. This is coffee table paperback 

  • Viva Vegie Society produces "101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian" $3 postpaid, P.O. Box 294, Prince St. Station, New York, NY 10012, (212) 871-9304, www.vivavegie.org (pamela@vivavegie.org) 

Updated Fall, 2004
This flyer was produced by the
Biodiversity/Vegetarian Outreach Committee
of the Sierra Club At/antic Chapter.