Reasons why I'm a vegetarian

My sister-in-law told me yesterday about National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), an event in which those of us who would like to be more disciplined in our blogging make a concerted effort to post every day for a month. For March, the theme for NaBloPoMo is lists, so I'm going to attempt to keep up on this. At the moment, I'm rather doubtful that I'll hit all 31 days of March, but it's worth a shot.

My first list is of reasons why I'm a vegetarian (a question I get asked occasionally):

1. Meat production consumes more energy than is produced in the resulting food, and Americans consume a disproportionately large amount of meat versus citizens of other countries -- which means that eating meat, particularly in the quantities that Americans generally do, is at least as large of a concern when attempting to cut energy use as initiatives like greater fuel efficiency in cars and appliances.
2. In fact, meat production produces more greenhouse gases than all forms of transport combined, and large-scale meat producers are also some of the worst environmental polluters (http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/49/meat-is-methane)
3. The American meat industry has historically employed undocumented immigrant workers, who endure treacherous work conditions in animal processing plants and have little or no leverage to do anything about it because they need the wages that they earn and limited English language skills constrain their employment options
4. The American meat industry also relies on the mass production of livestock, a large proportion of which are eating diets that are unhealthy for them (e.g. cows eating corn instead of grass, which their multiple stomachs are meant to process) and/or live in what for humans would be considered condemnable housing (extreme crowding, no proper sanitation) and/or are pumped with antibiotics to combat the consequences of their living conditions and with painful growth hormones to make them as large and profitable as possible.
5. As a byproduct of the mass production of livestock and the pumping of tenement-dwelling, unhealthy animals with antibiotics and other chemicals, our meat is less healthy and at times potentially dangerous to us. Recently, the USDA announced the largest meat recall in US history due to the processing of very sick and physically abused cows into low-grade ground beef, much of which was used by government school lunch programs(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/business/18recall.html?sq=meat%20recall&st=nyt&adxnnl=1&scp=10&adxnnlx=1204383678-0s8hi9Ot/KykNEAQ4DBDdw)
6. In addition to avoiding negative health effects, a nice benefit of eating a vegetarian diet is that if done correctly, it is quite often healthier than a meat-centric omnivore diet, particularly for the heart. This is in sharp contrast to the broadly held perception that vegetarians are emaciated and lacking vital nutrients -- and pleasurable eating experiences. I've had the best meals of my life since I stopped eating meat and started diversifying my diet beyond the same old meat options. (http://www.vegetarian-nutrition.info/updates/vegetarian_diets_health_benefits.php)
7. In America, meat is meat is meat -- so if you eat any meat, you end up eating all meat, without regard for its origins. Eating meat only rarely, and only when you know that it comes from a good local & sustainable farm, is a difficult option to exercise.