Past Episodes:
Episode 1 voting and you: -chris
Episode 2 police and protests: -tony
Episode 3 Guest Preacher: -Alyssa Kopf
Episode 4 John Hickenlooper and the CCMEP: -tony
Episode 5 The Peace Candidate: Guest Preacher, Sunny Dawn Freeman Genz
Episode 6 Stomping on Haiti: Guest Preacher, Gary Swing
Episode 7 Advice to an 18 year old: -tony
Episode 8 Deep in the Heart of a Red State: -librarytroll
Episode 9 Statement on Ward Churchill: -Breakdown Book Collective
Episode 10 9/11: The Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century?: - Gary Swing
Episode 11 Don't Have a Cow, Man - Gary Swing
Episode 12 When Clinton Lied, Yugoslavia Died - Gary Swing
Episode 13 Why I support Ron Paul (and Hitler) - Tony Shawcross

Please note, the views the Soapbox Preachers are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of denverevolution. Any facts presented have not been confirmed by denverevolution.
Also, our sincerest apologies to Gary for not getting his soapbox up sooner.
If you're interested in preaching from the soapbox, please send to c(at)denverevolution(dot)org

Episode 11: Don't Have a Cow, Man: Guest Preacher, Gary Swing, January, 2006

The Denver Post sponsors a petting zoo at the National Western Stock Show where children can meet their meat. It would be more appropriate and educational for the Denver Post to sponsor a slaughtering zoo where people could meet friendly, harmless animals before they personally kill, dismember, cook and eat them. That would be as much fun as shooting monkeys in a barrel!

About ten billion animals are needlessly slaughtered for food each year in the United States, ending their lives of callously imposed suffering and misery. Factory farming means intense crowding of animals in cages or stalls with unsanitary conditions, methodical mutilation, and total disruption of natural behavior of animals who are pumped full of hormones, antibiotics and drugs. The National Western Stock Show celebrates this institutionalized culture of cruelty and killing. Cattle, pigs, chickens, and goats are not the property of humans. Psychoanalyst Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's book The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals demonstrates that the animals people raise for meat, eggs, dairy products and clothing are sensitive, intelligent and self aware.

Livestock agriculture is not just a Holocaust of brutality. It also inflicts an enormous environmental impact. Here is some food for thought to digest with your next hamburger.

According to the Vegetarian Society of Colorado (www.vsc.org), livestock agriculture is the leading cause of water pollution, dumping billions of tons of manure into the U.S. water supply each year. This industry uses more than half the land area of the United States and hundreds of billions of gallons of water every day. The U.S. uses more than twice as much energy per capita for food production as less industrialized nations use for all purposes.

Raising livestock causes billions of tons of topsoil erosion each year. About half of the United States' total available agricultural soil has eroded in the past 150 years. Over 300 million acres of public land is used for livestock grazing in the U.S., subsidized by taxpayers. Conversion of land to cattle grazing is the primary cause of deforestation, with 50 to 100 acres of rainforest lost per minute worldwide.

Agriculture accounts for 40% of water consumption in the U.S., with about 80% of that being used for animal products. By comparison, all personal water consumption by private individuals amounts to just 5% of water use.

Livestock agriculture contributes to global warming through both deforestation and methane production. Methane is more than 21 times as potent as carbon dioxide for trapping the heat from sunlight. Livestock agriculture is the number one source of methane, producing more 100 million tons of emissions worldwide per year.

Sixteen pounds of grain are needed to produce one pound of beef. In many Third World nations, grain that could feed starving people is instead fed to livestock for export.

The Earth can neither sustain its current human population, nor can it sustain the U.S. population with its current energy-intensive economy and meat-based diet. Population pressures and depletion of non-renewable resources will force a rapid reduction in the world's human population during the 21st century.

There is much at steak. The best thing you can do for the environment is to become a vegetarian - or preferably, a vegan. Don't have a cow, man! Eat mor chikpeaz.

Gary Swing
http://www.geocities.com/bushcheney1984
bushcheney1984(at)yahoo(dot)com

Gary Swing has been a vegetarian since 1986.


**Would you like to preach from the soapbox?**
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