Response to Stacy’s Comment

Stacy asked how going vegetarian helps to save resources in the meat industry.
No, meat packaging companies do not tally the number of meat-eaters, but their industry works just like any other—they rely on number of sales and the economic interest in their product to decide how they use their resources in production of the meat.
Also, you mentioned that the number of meat received by grocery stores would remain the same, and since less people are buying it, then more would go bad and more waste would be created. This is false logic as well because the grocery stores are also an capital-based business. The stores monitor the amount of meat that they sell regularly, and if their meat is going bad, obviously they would not buy as much of it in the next order. If the meat is wasted in the grocery store, then that is a signal to buy less meat from the industry, and when less meat is purchased from the industry, then the overall production rate goes down and fewer resources are used up.

Also, for a little more detail about how vegetarianism reduces the use of non-renewable resources, the article by Heather Mansfield at http://www.change.org/actions/view/save_energy_resources_eat_less_meat provides some great information. Consider a few of Mansfield’s key points:
- The U.S. population eats more meat than any other country, utilizing massive amounts of water and energy for the production of that meat.
- The overwhelming number of livestock kept for the meat industry is taking a considerable toll of global warming, due to the amounts of methane gas emitted by the livestock.
- The use of the land is also dominated by livestock production, using 70% of our agricultural land and resources and 30% of the entire planet’s land and resources.

If you would like more information, I have found that http://www.britishmeat.com/49.htm is a helpful site as well.