4 - Wednesday, August 3, 1994 - North Shore News Revenge of the cows Bob Hunter STRICTLY PERSONAL IT’S BEEN eight months sirice ’ye eaten any meat. When my wife and I decided to get serious about becoming vege- tarians, it required a fair amount of grinding of the teeth, bracing of the shoulders and decp breathing. I expected it to be an ordeal. The principles involved were clear enough. | mean, at what level do you want to enter the debate? There's the ethical side, to do with not wanting to be part of the horrendously cruel agribusiness farming system. in Canada, some 400 million animals are killed every year, in most cases after having endured appallingly crowded living condi- tions. Apart from the cruelty, which can be remedied by treating the ani- mals well,.there’s the moral issue of killing and eating anything. And then there’s the human health question. For us, all three were factors, but it was certainly the health issue that gave us the strongest push. I'd worked in a slaughterhouse as a young man, and still munaged to carry on eating meat through my adult life until now, so obviously I was impervious to the ethical and moral arguments. But when you enter the fifth decade of your life, you begin to pay attention to details of bodily maintenance that could be ignored 1993 before because death seemed so far away. As your own personal expiry date approaches, you realize that, barring accident, itis pretty much up to you whether you will be departing from this world sooner or later, If you want to make it later, there are a few obvious things you can do, like eaercise, quit smoking, take vitamins, stay out of the sun and don't drink excessis ely. Until very recently, it hasn't been anywhere near so obvious that the other thing you ought to do is cut meat out of your diet. The medical debate over the health problems posed by a meat diet has been raging below the sur- face of the media for years. By that, 1 mean coverage has been just about zilch. The meat industry has, indeed, -faced some tough scrutiny and criti- cism, but nothing on a scale that the tobacco drug lords have faced. That is, until the results of a recent British study were released. And even now, press reports have been shockingly brief. For some reason, probably the usual media unwillingness to rock the boat, the story has been played down. The Globe & Mail saw fit to run two paragraphs. The Vancouver Sun’s Nicholas Read devoted a col- umn to it, but that was buried deep inside. Yet it is arguably one of the biggest pieces of news of the year. In case you somehow missed it, let me bring you up to speed. The ultra-conservative British Medical Association has released a report stating categorically that vegetari- ans live longer than meat-eaters. According to the Si's Read, vegetarians are 40% less likely to die of heart discase or cancer-than meat-eaters, In its brief mention of the sub- ject. the Globe used different fig- ures, quoting from the British Medical Journal, as quoted, in turn, by the Medical Tribune News. The lower figures still give veg- etarians a 28% lower risk of dying of heart disease, and a 39% lower risk of dying of cancer. I haven’t been able to find a copy of the orig- S CUTLASS CIE ALL THIS FOR ONLY $13,975 Alloy wheels, air bag, power locks, power windows, cruise control, AM/FM cassette & air ir conditioning inal report yet, but whichever fig- ures you use, they are astounding. They are based on 12 years of col- lecting data on 5,015 British meat- eaters and 6,115 non-meat-caters, It was at thoroughly controlled study that took into account the effects of living conditions, social status, weight, job hazards and smoking, and still ended up point- ing the finger at meat. What is bizarre about the British study is that its authors said they were “unable to pinpoint exactly what in the vegetarian diet con- tributed to increased longevity.” Good grief. it's nota question of what’s in a vegetarian diet. it's a matter of whal’s nor in it! And what's notin itis meat, period. Scientists only make idiots of themselves when they refuse to face the implications of their work. What they should be asking now is what is it about meat that kills? The irony of people dying from consuming the flesh of the animals they have slaughtered is like some interspecies retribution horror tale. Call it The Revenge of the Cows, According to Arthur Upton, director of the National Cancer Institute in the U.S., “up to 50%" of all forms of cancer are caused by diet. Yet only 1% of that organiza- tion’s budget is dedicated to doing anything about it. According to John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, “there is not a single population in the world with a high meat intake which does not have a high rate of colon cancer.” Bowel cancer deaths and heart disease deaths increase as per capita meat consumption increases, he says. There is also a distinct correla- tion between meat-eating and breast cancer. One study in California showed that men who eat meat have 3.6 times the incidence of prostate cancer as men who ate those foods sparingly, or not at all, Oh, and by the way, I'm feeling great. Haven't felt better in years. Doing cold turkey on meat has turned out to be surprisingly easy. Hardly any withdrawal, J just keep thinking I don’t want to drive a steak (sic) through my heart or impale myself on one cither. 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