101 REASONS WHY I AM A VEGETARIAN
Pam Rice interviewed by Claudette Vaughan

Most people have probably two or three reasons – perhaps several – for adopting a plant-based diet. Pam Rice can provide us with 101 – and every one challenges conventional views on what we humans should be eating. Pam Rice is incredibly well researched and this book is simply a must have! We don’t say that about everything that crosses our desk. Who is Pam Rice? She is founder of the non-profit VivaVegie Society and Vegetarian Center and the editor of The Viva Vine: The Vegetarian-Issue Magazine. Nearly 200,000 copies of her pamphlet, “101 Reasons Why I’m A Vegetarian,” have been sold and distributed to passerbys on New York City streets since 1991. At the end of this interview find out how to buy your own sponsorship box to keep this vital work alive!

Abolitionist: Who do you think makes up all those rules about "nutrition" and why we must adopt the Standard American Diet of meat and 2 veg?

Pam Rice: The person to ask is Dr. T. Colin Campbell, who was one of the directors of The China Study - the largest-ever epidemiological study of diet and lifestyle, conducted in the late 1980s. He saw close up that even when the data irrefutably show a vegan diet to be optimal for human health, the tendency is for people to ignore it. Many times, he saw the "experts" recommend sub-optimal diets, because they were afraid that people would ignore the truth if it means giving up meat.

On a brighter note, if you look closely at the nutrition guidelines that the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) comes out with every five years, you'll find that its suggested diets include lots of fruits and vegetables and whole grains, as well as beans and meat substitutes. By the agency's own advice, a person cannot have more than even one small-to-medium-sized egg on any one day in order not to overdo cholesterol intake. That's one too many eggs in my book, but most people would be surprised to hear this.

Abolitionist: Who do you think rules the world's food supply?

Pam Rice: Well, it ain't the poor of this world. Apparently, there is plenty of food to go around for the moment (actually, thanks to imprudent use of pesticides and fertilizers), even with a rising population eating more and more meat, but of course millions of poor people are not getting enough. So, why not? The NGOs all say that hunger is a problem of distribution, not lack of supply. But that is sure to eventually change. The human species is scheduled to reach 9 billion souls by mid-century, and already, our kind is putting great pressure on planet earth. Water stores are rapidly drying up, topsoil is blowing away, and arable land is turning to desert. Our life support and ecosystems services as well are being used up. Already, water-poor nations are having to import grain from water-rich ones.

The problem, of course, is that 40 percent of all the grain is not being eaten directly by humans. If it were, the world's grain stores could feed everyone many many times over. No, mountains and mountains of it are being cycled first through animals, so people can eat flesh.

From this perspective, it is nothing short of a disgrace that there is even one hungry person anywhere.

Abolitionist: Is meat unfit for human consumption?

Pam Rice: Well, I cannot in all honestly say that meat is "unfit" to eat. Not in the sense that it will kill you on the spot, not at least in most cases. Many people obviously regularly eat meat and, yes, even live long lives. Now, whether that's right is another thing. And whether a meat diet is optimal is yet another.

I may deviate from other vegetarian writers when I say that I believe man to be omnivorous by nature. There were vegetarian hominids before our kind came to dominate the planet, but we cannot count ourselves among them. This isn't to say that humans cannot be vegan and thrive. Nor is it to say that I don't wish that every Homosapien who walks the earth today adopt a vegan diet. What I do say is that despite our kind's propensity for eating meat, I think people need to use their inordinately large brains to understand the wisdom of a plant-only diet. This is a tall order, I know, but, then again, there's never been anything like the human brain before, not that I know of.

The thing is, at the rate we're going, we (and I mean we humans) will run out of topsoil, we will run out of forests, we will run out of water, and we will run out land, because such great quantities of these resources are needed to make meat for an already bulging-at-the-seams human population. It will be a painful process and the poor are already suffering from our species' profligate practices.

And meanwhile, as we eat up the world's abundance to feed our meat addictions, people will more and more suffer from diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers. We will continue to fall ill to meat-based food poisons, such as salmonella, e. coli O157:H7, listeria, and campylobacter. And we will get sick from the toxic environments - poisoned water, air, and land - created near and far from the factory farms all across our land. And ultimately, we will fall to the diseases brought our way from the domesticated animals in our midst -- just to name a few: bird flu, Nipah virus, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of Mad Cow disease.

To the average American who thinks nothing of sitting down to a meat meal two and three times a day, such dangers are remote. But eventually, they will catch up with us all if we let all this meat eating consume us, which on the face sounds a bit ironic.

Abolitionist: You said before '101 Reasons Why I Am Vegetarian' arrived that I would love the book and you know what? I do. The book is an original with new material presented in a sharp and interesting manner. How did you come to write it Pam, and why?

Pam Rice: It was a long evolution that started with writing my first pamphlet edition of "101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian" in 1991. I was taken in by the information put together in John Robbins's book 'Diet for a New America'. I guess I've seen myself over all of these years as the person to keep Mr. Robbins's thesis and information alive and up to date. I've written six updated editions of my pamphlet; and now the book version is complete, too. I see it all, I guess, as my mission. My husband has to take some of the credit. He has always been there with his support. Furthermore, he has ferreted out much of the reference material I've used in my work.

Abolitionist: Pick out 10 reasons, at random, as to why you are a vegetarian and will you give our readers an insight into what they can expect when they buy this marvelous book.

1. Factory-farm runoff and odor

Pam Rice: Today's giant factory farms are also great spewers of unspeakable odor, due to the massive quantities of manure and dead animals produced on them.

2. Perverse reproduction practices on the farm

Artificial insemination, which is nearly universal on dairy and turkey farms as well as widespread on pig farms, is downright perverted. In one sense, you could call it bestiality. But given that the animals are less than consenting in such affairs, you might better call reproduction practices on today's farms as rape.

3. Mountains of Manure

For every man, woman, and child in America our nation's livestock produce about 5 tons of manure per year. It poisons our land, our water, and our food.

4. Mutilating Animals: A Very Bad Habit

Don't call it a ranch; don't call it a farm. Today's factory farms would more aptly be called production surgical units because the seemingly endless invasive procedures livestock must endure on them: debeaking, dehorning, branding, castrating, toe-docking, tail docking, ear clipping, and wing and comb removal. On well-managed, humane farms, these procedures would be unnecessary. As it is, they are done routinely and almost out of habit. And they are virtually all performed without anesthesia.

5. Mass grinding and pooling of carcasses

In today's modern meat processing plants, meat from several thousand animals at a time are combined in one lot in one grinder that processes hamburger patties. So, if you have a pathogen outbreak at such a place, you could have a big recall on your hands. And often people die from consuming the infected meat, because it is distributed so quickly and so far and wide before any recall can take effect.

6. The platter of poisons in fish

Fish carry wormy parasites and other deadly pathogens. They also are very efficient at storing environmental pollutants, such as mercury, PCBs, and dioxin.

7. Fossil Fuel Alchemy

The amount of fossil fuel that animal-based foods require for their production is shocking. Essentially, the modern meat industry is a product of cheap and abundant oil. There are some who say that the supply of oil is drying up, and vegans would say, "indeed, and in no small part to the world's meat production." In the meantime – that is before the "end of oil" -- meat puts much of all those climate-changing hydrocarbons into the atmosphere to do their dirty work. The so-called "Green Revolution" that brought the world abundant grain supplies would more aptly be called a "sooty revolution."

8. Large mammal slaughter

There is some indication that at some slaughter plants in the United States these days conditions have improved somewhat. It wasn't long ago, however, that Gail A. Eisnitz, in her book 'Slaughterhouse', documented widespread butchering of animals before they were knocked/stunned dead. In any case, until there are round-the-clock Internet cams focused on the hands of every slaughterer in every slaughter plant, we can only assume that the agony continues. The economic incentives of swift line-speeds are just too enticing.

9. Marine refuges the virtues of abstinence

In this chapter, I argue for the establishment of marine reserves where fishing is outlawed. Almost always, overfished and depleted fisheries come back and ecosystems are restored under such conditions.

10. Chemical castration

Downstream from factory farms, scientists have found the sex traits of wildlife species disrupted by trace hormones, brought there via manure runoff.

Abolitionist: One of your goals for writing 101 Reasons is not to argue with peoples' beliefs but to appeal to their reason. Please expand your thoughts here.

Pam Rice: Yes. No matter how much I would like, I cannot wave a magic wand and make people into vegans. I could try threatening people with damnation or excommunication, but in this day in age, I'm afraid it would not get me very far. I'm ultimately left to my abilities to persuade. I'll have to settle for this. I have convinced a good number of people (I wish I knew how many) to explore a vegan diet.

Abolitionist: What's NYC like for vegan and vegetarianism?

Pam Rice: To my dismay, NYC is not terribly conducive to activism and volunteerism. I have long hoped to bring a vegetarian pride parade (similar to the one that already has a foothold in Paris) to this town, but my wish has fallen on deaf ears and unmoved hearts. Not all is lost, though -- far from it. NYC is still a haven for vegan restaurants and vegan food in general. There is no problem finding vegan options almost everywhere here. Ultimately, NYC is a great place to promote veganism through the marketplace.

Abolitionist: What do you envision for the future of all life on earth in the future?

Pam Rice: I'm afraid we're going to have to have a crisis before people, outside of a small minority, come to their senses about veganism. That crisis might be a bird-flu pandemic, a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, the near complete depletion or our nation's topsoil, or nearly dried up aquifers. Thousands of people die of cardiovascular disease every day, thanks to their long-lived meat-based diet. But the deaths from these comes too slowly to cause alarm. I do think veganism will be widespread some day, but at that time, the world will probably also see widespread desolation.

Abolitionist: Any last thoughts Pam?

Pam Rice: Nope. I need to get back to my work. I'm re-writing my pamphlet for another printing - 20,000 copies. Want to buy a sponsorship box?

Abolitionist: How can people contact you?

Pam Rice: pamela@vivavegie.org