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For many years, Pamela Rice, president of the Vivavegie Society in New York City, has produced the pamphlet 101 Reasons Why I’m a Vegetarian, known to all who have read it as "The Mighty Convincer." The pamphlet offers in bite-sized pieces the many human health, animal welfare/rights, and environmental reasons why people are choosing a meatless diet.

1  There are many subsidies to the meat industry, but the biggest break, by far, comes in the fact that the Animal Welfare Act does not apply to food animals. Consequently, what once at best might have been described as animal husbandry is now nothing more than factory production. With virtually no laws to protect them, cruelty and abuse of farm animals are institutional. If farmers were forced by law to give their animals spacious environments, clean surroundings, fresh air and sunlight--if it weren't legal to simply administer drugs to animals who would otherwise die from the conditions they live in--cheap fast food could never exist. Ultimately, low prices have kept demand high and allowed the industry to grow. Virtually all of the now over 8 billion animals slaughtered for food in the United States every year are the product of a swift-moving assembly-line system, incorporating dangerous, unprecedented and unsustainable methods of efficiency. Farming in the United States has been allowed over the last generation to grow into a grim corporate monstrosity, the scale of which is hard to comprehend or even to believe.

2 When the Clean Water Act went into effect in 1972, it was decided that agriculture, specifically, should be exempt. According to the EPA, of the 60 percent of rivers and streams considered "impaired," agricultural runoff is identified as the primary pollution source. Incredibly, five tons of solid manure--not including dead animals, used bedding and residual organic material--is produced annually for every U.S. citizen (see #22).

3 After reviewing 4,500 scientific studies and papers on the relationship between cancer and lifestyle, a team of 15 scientists sponsored by two leading cancer research institutions advised that those interested in reducing their risk of many types of cancer consume a diet that is mostly fruits, vegetables, cereals and legumes. They declared that up to 40 percent of cancers are preventable, with diet, physical activity and body weight appearing to have a measurable bearing on risk. In 1996 the American Cancer Society released similar guidelines, including the recommendation that red meat be excluded entirely from the diet.