ovegetarians consuming 12% to 14%, and vegans consuming only 10% to 12%(Messina 59). While vegetarians consume less total protein, they do consumeadequate amounts to maintain a healthy balance, as demonstrated by modernnutritional science. Excess protein, and in particular excess animalprotein, is linked to the increased risk for osteoporosis, kidney stoneformation, kidney disease, and an increase in blood cholesterollevels(Messina 59). The nutritional benefits of a vegetarian diet very clearly appearto be beneficial to human health. But a vegetarian diet can also be healthyto the lives of our planet's other inhabitants, the very animals that arebeing eaten. Due to the increased demand for food, livestock farmers havehad to keep up by devising new and more efficient ways to raise moreanimals, giving way to the industrialization of meat farming. As JohnRobbins accurately writes, "the raising of chickens in the United Statestoday is not, however, a process which overflows with compassion for theseanimals" (52). Chickens, as we grew up believing, were farmyard animalsthat would root around in the soil for their food, and were deeply attunedto the cycles of nature, as evidenced by the rooster crowing at the breakof day. But the industrialization of chicken farming in the past fortyyears has changed all this, and the days of the barnyard chicken are over,replaced instead with what Robbins refers to as "the assembly-line chicken"(52). But the poultry farmers are not alone in its industrialization. Thebeef, turkey, pork and other meat industries have also had to adapt theirmethods of "production" in order to keep up with the demands of omnivores.This includes the use of growth hormones in the animals to produce moreeggs and fatter animals, which are then passed on to their human consumers.John Robbins describes some of the products used in today's pork industryin his book Diet For A New America:"... will also be given products li...
