I replied:
 
Firstly, do I actually need to justify a vegetarian diet?

    By the tone of your question, I can tell immediately that you are already fixed in your stance as a meat-eater, so whatever I say is likely to fall on deaf ears. I have the impression that you are not seeking an understanding, but simply issuing a challenge.

However, fortunately I do happen to have with me a few details on this subject, extracted from newspaper and magazine articles, which I would like to read to you.

Also, I don’t recall the exact figures, but I understand that it takes something like ten times the amount of land to feed one meat-eater, with all the fodder and grain that has to be produced for cattle; and it needs something like ten pounds of fodder to produce one pound of steak. So, to begin with, land usage for meat production is uneconomical. If the ten times of land used for cattle-food was given over to cereals and vegetables, the same amount of grain and plant food could feed thousands of people. With a vegetarian economy there is no need for anyone to starve on this planet.
 
And have you any idea of the conditions in which factory-farmed animals have to live?

An article in the New York Times says: “Meat production has increased by 500 percent since 1950, according to World Watch Institute. And an estimated 54 percent of the nation’s livestock is crowded into 5 percent of livestock farms, reports the American Public Health Association, an advocacy organization of public health officials. As a result, industrial agriculture ‘is inflicting more suffering on more animals than at any time in history.’
“Millions of America’s animals spend their entire lives indoors without sunlight or pasture, crowded in unsanitary conditions without room for natural movement. In order for the animals to survive their squalid confinement, they are routinely fed antibiotics to prevent disease and [hormones to] to promote faster growth.”
According to GRACE (the Global Resource Action Centre for the Environment): “The for-profit overuse of these drugs threatens their effectiveness, because these persistent low doses breed bacteria that are resistant to their power.”
“…meat from factory farms is frequently contaminated with anti-biotic resistant pathogens, and several independent studies have confirmed this.
“In 2001, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that 20 percent of ground-meat samples taken in Washington D.C., were contaminated with salmonella, and 84 percent were resistant to antibiotics.
 “An independent laboratory conducting an analysis for the Sierra Club and the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy in 2002 found that, [out] of 200 whole chickens and 200 packages of ground turkey in Minneapolis and Des Moines, 95 percent of the chickens were contaminated with campylobacter, and nearly half of the turkey was tainted with salmonella.
Moreover, there is emerging scientific evidence that the heavy use of antibiotics threatens public health.”
Their research concluded that in comparison with the three million pounds of antibiotics used on humans, thirteen million pounds of antibiotics are used yearly in factory farming. And between 25% to 75% of those antibiotics, not only remained in the meat, but also in the 575 million pounds of polluted manure produced by industrialized farming.
 “Such a heavy concentration of antibiotics poses ‘risks to soil, air, and water quality and public health following application to the land’ the Association reported.”

Combined with the use of pesticides, and contamination of fodder, this creates a cocktail of dangerous substances in the body.

After bearing a calf, a cow will naturally yield about seven litres of milk a day. But in factory farming she is forced to give thirty litres or more. I have seen some cows with hugely swollen and painful udders, dragging along virtually at ground level, scratched by thistles and undergrowth and bumping on stones. A normal cow having a natural life in the fields can live up to forty years. But dairy cows are worn out after only six years and get slaughtered and minced up for burgers.

Reports state that many of America’s small slaughterhouses have been replaced by large high-speed facilities, and we can say the same for most countries. The Food and Watch Association reports that processing speeds ‘can be as high as 390 cows and 1,106 pigs per hour, and 25 chickens per minute.’ According to the Humane Farming Association:  “If line-workers fail to keep up with those speeds, they risk being disciplined or fired, … these high quotas mean that workers often resort to violent measures to keep the lines running, dismembering or skinning animals that are still struggling and kicking to stay alive. The meat produced under such conditions can become contaminated with faecal matter, filth, and other adulterants… making it dangerous for consumers.”
 
They omit to also point out, that when vegetarian animals smell blood in the slaughterhouse, they become terrified and flood their bodies with fear toxins, which increase as they are being butchered alive. From Radionic research, it is known that every speck of blood contains the mentality and emotionality of the animal (and of humans) and therefore the person eating their flesh absorbs all that terror. That is why natives in Africa beat and kick an ox to death before going into battle, so that they will be intoxicated with violence from eating the meat, which helps to stimulate them into rage for the killing of their opponents.

Do we wonder about our own mental agitations and aggressive tendencies? Are we surprised by our own outbursts? Do we have any idea what we are absorbing?

As for the Eskimos, evidently where they live, they have little choice. We have. During the ice age, humanity had very little choice. But when the ice receded, the Eskimos stayed with it, while other races developed agriculture and tilled the soil. 

  “The greatest peril in life lies in the fact that [our] human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures we kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and which must therefore be pacified lest they should revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies.”

          They have rituals of contrition for hopefully placating the suddenly dispatched souls. Now, do we have such sensibilities concerning the millions of cows, pigs, sheep, rabbits, chickens and game birds that are daily murdered on our behalf? And do they have revengeful souls? I don’t know. That is not within my sphere of experience. Souls they do have, but even if not vengeful, it is certain that the daily mass murders spread the terror of slaughtered souls out into the mental atmosphere, or what I call the ‘psychesphere’ of the planet. No one is an island. We live in a spiritual continuum. Subliminally, we are affected, whether we are aware of it or not.

Whichever way it is, it is worth thinking about.

I have written a whole chapter in my book ‘Sharing the Quest’ called ‘On the Souls of Animals’ which is relevant to this subject.

In any case, physiologically, we are not carnivores, but herbivores. We have the capacity to eat meat in extreme need, for survival. But we are not constructed for breaking it down and digesting it in the same way as carnivorous creatures. In nature, all meat-eating animals have sharp pointed teeth and jaws that chomp up and down for tearing flesh. All herbivores have flat molars and jaws that move from side to side, for crushing grains and plant food: just as we have. We have only a couple of vestigial canines. A carnivore has a very short bowel for speedily expelling the toxins in the meat. Herbivores have a very long bowel for breaking down and absorbing cellulose in plant food: just as we have.  Meat rots in the long intestine and the bowels, and takes a long time to expel, increasing constipation, while putrefactive bacteria proliferate.