To the editor: As a vegan, my coronary heart hurts when meat-swapping is touted as a method to scale back one’s local weather influence (“What if just 1 in 10 people changed how they eat, drive, heat or shop?,” Feb. 18).
Little doubt, elevating chickens requires much less land and water than beef. However People already eat greater than 9 billion chickens annually, a very mind-boggling quantity. And free-range or not, chickens are not protected below federal animal welfare legal guidelines. The speed at which chickens have to be slaughtered to maintain up with demand is a nightmare for them, to not point out slaughterhouse employees, who typically can’t even take bathroom breaks.
How about another resolution? Decreasing one’s meat consumption throughout the board helps animals and the planet. Only one or two non-animal meals every week makes a distinction. With easy tweaks, we can assist the planet and scale back the struggling of cattle.
Kristen Kessler, Ventura
