Thankful for a Gentle Thanksgiving

I do find Thanksgiving a bit of a challenging holiday because I like being with my non-veg family, but I also find the turkey thing awfully sad. According to the National Turkey Federation, 46 million turkeys are killed and consumed on Thanksgiving. That’s a lot of unnecessary deaths.

But instead of writing about those deaths and the woes of being a vegan among non-vegatarians/vegans I thought it would be better to write about why it’s super awesome to be weird and vegan for Thanksgiving. The following is my list of gratitude for celebrating a Gentle Thanksgiving. It is a holiday of thanks after all!

1.     Turkey Trots! According to Active.com there are 316 turkey trots held in the USA every year. They are great ways to connect with your family and community members and get the happy running endorphins. You can also spread the word of a plant-based diet by wearing a Pro-veg shirt. Some ideas: http://store.nomeatathlete.com or make your own cool design with fabric markers and paint.

2.     Family, friends, and other really kind-hearted people.

3.     Protecting the Environment. According to a recent study by Cornell University, it requires a 13: 1 ratio of energy input to food output to produce turkey meat. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat It’s empowering to think that by being veg for thanksgiving, we’re saving more energy than we would by switching a traditional light bulb with a fluorescent one.

4.      Getting to try different plant strong/vegan meals and the people who oh-so-nicely wrote them down. One of my favorite holiday traditions is Dr. Mcdougall’s stuffed pumpkin recipe: so good! http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2005nl/oct/051000recipes.htm

5.     Feeling Energetic! Plant foods, particularly low fat starches such as mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, whole-wheat stuffing, rice, and corn make you feel full but not sluggish like turkey or other animal foods. Oil-free plant foods improve your blood flow giving your skin a warm welcoming glow. You’ll be feeling energetic even right after your thanksgiving dinner. And you won’t feel like you gained ten pounds in one meal!

6.     Living Turkeys. These sassy and love-able ladies live at the Farm Sanctuary in Poughquag, NY.

Turkeys have been known to be as intelligent as dogs and can form long-lasting and affectionate relationships with other turkeys.

7.     Farm Sanctuaries. Farm Sanctuaries are really magical places. I always think of them as peaceful places that represent the way the world can look like if we let it. Most of them have Thanksgiving celebrations where they feed turkeys pumpkin pie J

8.     Being optimistic about ending world hunger. 40% of the world’s grain is being fed to animals instead of people. By going vegetarian/vegan it’s a vote towards using that grain to help the near 1 billion people who are currently hungry in the world.

9.     The ingeniousness that goes behind making veggie turkey sculptures.

10. Lists of gratitude.

Behind the "Local" Label

From talking with other individuals who buy local when they can, they’ll often say this when I say that I don’t eat animals: “Well, I only eat animals and animal products if they are local and I know the animals lived happy lives.”

I was always curious about this response, I didn’t really know if local animals lived happy lives; from the Ben and Jerry’s pictures, they sure looked happy.

Last summer, I got to find out. I was staying in Vermont with a friend and we had decided to go to Shelburne Farms, one of the most popular local food spots in Vermont. Their cheese is promoted all over my University.

It was beautiful; there were peaceful picturesque fields and chickens roaming around in the front. In the main “petting” area, there were some goats, sheep, and a mother cow and her calf who were separated by a fence. There was a young woman there who was answering questions and letting the little calf suck her fingers.

She was very nice and clearly cared about the animals. Because I had read up on factory farming and animal rights, I asked what they did to the male cows once the mother gave birth. I thought that it might be different here in this seemingly idealist place than in the factory farms that I had read about. 

I was wrong. She explained that they had to separate the calves from their mothers right away because if the calf suckled, they would form a bond that would be hard to break. She said that this was the hardest part of farming life because the mother and calf would cry out to each other. She said it was even harder than shooting the excess female cows right through the head with a bullet. And the male cows…she wasn’t sure what happened to them, but she guessed that they were shipped off to become veal.

When calves are turned into veal it means they are kept in tight areas where they can’t move and they can’t develop properly. They are killed when they are only two years old.

The thing that stood out to me the most was that at the end of this explanation she said, “I wish it weren’t this way, but that’s just the way things are.” The thing is I don’t think, that’s the way things have to be. The woman who worked at Shelburne seemed as equally compassionate towards animals as any vegan I’ve ever met.

I think we don’t realize that we have more power than we think we do. Every movement starts by one person feeling that something is wrong, like the woman who works at Shelburne farms and then living and looking at the world differently. I don't think we should let our inner instinct of taking care of other beings be over shadowed by the "way things are."I think the challenge of life is not causing the least amount of harm but aiming to achieve the greatest amount of compassion. 

I do like supporting local farmers and going to farmer’s markets. I do not think that we should close off our aim of compassion just because something is labeled as “local.”

The GMO Debate

A few times, I’ve been asked what I think about GMOs. It’s hard to form a concrete opinion on them because in terms of their environmental and human health impact, there aren’t many concrete findings, unlike with a plant-based diet.

Here are the basics:

•   GMOs stand for “Genetically Modified Organisms”
•   GMOs are crops that have been modified by inserting or deleting a particular gene to produce plants, animals, and microorganisms that have desirable traits.
• Humans have been modifying crops for about 8,000 years before the introduction of “genes” from selecting which plants to plant. Traditionally, farmers chose the plants from the wild that were most resistant to pests, disease, and changing weather patterns.
•  GMOs and what you might call “traditional” farming methods result in plants that would not exist without human interference.
•   As of 2012, 170 million hectares of land are planted with GMOs from 28 different countries.
•  Most of the GMOs being planted in the U.S. (the largest planter of GMOs) are corn and soy used for animal consumption (yet another reason to support a vegan lifestyle!)

Here are some risks:

•  Genes may cross into species that are not meant to be modified in such a way, like herbicide-resistant weeds.
• They could threaten biodiversity by competing or breeding with wild species.
• They may harm birds, insects, or other innocent species that may consume them.
•  There is a risk that allergy-producing genes will be inserted into unrelated stuff like genes from a peanut being inserted into a tomato.
•  Small-scale farmers are often overstepped by the dominance of a few large seed companies.

 Here are some benefits:

•  GMOs are more resistant to pests, disease, and severe weather than non-GMOs, so it decreases the risk of complete crop failure.
•  GMOs have a longer shelf life so they can by transported farther distances without spoiling.
•  GMOs could reduce the need to use pesticides and other chemicals, which may harm the environment and the farmer.

Overall, I don’t think going out of our way to avoid GMOs is really the most efficient economically, or helpful in terms of environmental protection, health benefits, or ethics.

I think the best way to at the least limit your GMO intake and take care of your health, environment, and ethics is to adopt a whole foods plant based diet. This means eating plants that are as close to their grown form as possible.

That way, you’ll avoid the GMOs that are fed to animals, since the majority of GMOs grown in the world are soy and corn used for animal feed. From my searching on the inter-webs, it seems that GMO-free foods aren’t necessarily healthy since there can be GMO-free cookies and candy. It seems to me that, health wise it’s better to buy a possible GMO apple than a GMO-free candy bar.

Environmentally, GMOs aren’t that good as mentioned by the cons above. Relatively speaking however, I think a vegan diet has a far greater positive impact on the environment than simply avoiding GMOs.

If we eat one less pound of beef a year, we save the same amount of water as we would as not showering for six months. By choosing a plant-based diet, we are also voting with our dollar to reduce the amount of land used for GMO animal feed and animals by eliminating animal products. This is significant since animal feed and farmed animals currently account for the loss of 30% of earth’s usable land mass. I don’t think choosing GMO-free is as far reaching as choosing veganism or as empowering!

And ethically speaking, GMO free foods say nothing about the way animals are being treated. It’s guaranteed to be at least somewhat humane by simply skiping the whole killing process altogether.

In conclusion, I think you can be a super healthy ethical environmentalist by being vegan without having to feel like you have to spend the extra bucks for GMO-free foods. If you can buy GMOs and it’s not that expensive, then definitely go for it! But if not, it’s still super to just go vegan/vegetarian!

Work Cited

Henning, B. (2011). Standing in livestock's long shadow: The ethics of eating meat on a small planet. Ethics and the environment, 16(2), 63. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DA- SORT&inPS=true&prodId=AONE&userGroupName=vol_b92b&tabID=T002&searchId=R1&re sultistType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPos ition=1&contentSet=GALE|A271975593&&docId=GALE|A271975593&docType=GALE&role =

McClean, Margrate R. "The Future of Food: An Introduction to the Ethical Issues in Genetically Modified Foods." The Future of Food: Lethal and ethical changes. Santa Clara University. California, Santa Clara. 15 Apr 2005. Lecture. http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/medical/conference/presentations/genetically-modified-foods.html

Top ten facts about biotech/gm crops in 2012 a new overview of biotech crops in 2012. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/44/infographic/default.asp

Woolf, A., Cheney, I., Ellis, C., & Miller, J. (2007). King corn [DVD].