We are being fed garbage. 
Here at Capital, there are secrets and facts about the food we consume swept under the rug, ignored and forgotten. Beneath the squeaky clean image advertised by U.S. meat and dairy producers lies the most economically, biologically, and environmentally destructive systems affecting the world today.
Put simply, there is no industry on the face of the planet that pollutes as much as factory farming, which produces 99 percent of the meat and dairy we consume in the United States and the bulk of the meat and dairy eaten at Capital.
This year alone, runoff from factory farming has created an aquatic dead zone spanning “5,052 square miles”1 in the Gulf of Mexico, a space where the water is so polluted that aquatic life is not able to survive.
Remember this summer when the residents of Toledo couldn’t drink their own water?
The heavy water pollution in Lake Erie, which rendered the water undrinkable in Toledo, was fed “by phosphorus run-off from southern Michigan fields applied with commercial fertilizer or factory farm waste.”2
Meat and dairy production are extremely wasteful practices; it takes 3.6 pounds of corn on average to produce one pound of pork and more acres to raise feed crops for livestock than to grow edible grains.
As the U.S. meat and dairy industries run out of room to profitably raise livestock here, they relocate to South America where they cut down thousands of acres of Amazon rain forest to convert to feed crop land facilitating the number one cause of species extinction in the world.
These facts are on top of the horrible way farmed animals are treated in the United States. Cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys are regularly forced to live in tight clusters in their own waste, slaughtered without anesthesia, while male pigs and cows are castrated without anesthesia, and the list continues in a downward spiral.
In just one day out of the week, we can lessen our effect on the environment, stop support of factory farming, and remove a major cause of obesity and diabetes.
Cutting out meat and dairy may seem drastic or unhealthy, but according to the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine, cutting down on animal-based foods filled with saturated fats is the key to removing the root causes of both obesity and the number one cause of type 2 diabetes out of our bodies.
This year, the student organization Capital for Animal Liberation will be advocating Vegan Mondays on campus, which entails taking meat and dairy off the menu at Capital University.
In a meeting earlier this year, Parkhurst informed me that the only way they will be persuaded to make this change is by seeing student support for it. Parkhurst supplies what students demand, and when enough people put ideas into the suggestion box, they listen. The more we explore alternatives to meat and dairy on Mondays, the more alternatives Parkhurst will provide.
Here’s how you can help.
Go to the suggestion box in the Main Dining Room, and let Parkhurst know you would like to have Vegan Mondays and more vegan options. Try the fruit, vegetable, and grain-based options Parkhurst already provides on Mondays instead of meat and dairy.
Additionally, Capital for Animal Liberation is holding on-campus events to give students information about the campaign.
On Wednesday, Oct. 1 at 1 p.m., Capital for Animal Liberation will be hosting a pay-per-view event where we will pay each student $1 to watch a four-minute video on factory farming production. On Wednesday, Nov. 5 at 12:30 p.m., Capital for Animal Liberation will be hosting a vegan food sampling in the MDR. Like us on Facebook for a complete event list.
Cap for Animal Liberation’s events this semester will culminate in submitting a student signed campaign letter supporting Vegan Mondays to Parkhurst. Even as a small campus, by changing the way we eat for a single day of the week, we have the ability to make ourselves and our planet healthier.
1http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/tech/gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone/
2http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140807/OPINION01/308070004#ixzz3CacuXCQ9
