ASU students joined a nation-wide protest Tuesday to undertake a meat-free diet for a day during College Veg Pledge Day 2007.
About 300 students were involved in the awareness movement that brought to light issues of animal cruelty, environmental destruction, waste, and health effects of the meat industry, said Caitlin Joseph, secondary education junior and president of ASU VegAwar-ians.
"Many people are not aware of the correlation between a meat-free diet and a sustainable lifestyle," Joseph said. "By providing people with resources to learn the information for themselves however, we hoped to plant the seed of curiosity of the issues into peoples' heads."
An animal rights group at Princeton University contacted the VegAware-ians at ASU this year to help protest the meat industry, Joseph said.
Instead, she said the group decided to use College Veg Pledge Day as a way to bring understanding to other positive aspects of vegetarianism.
"There is such a stigma in our society about vegetarians," she said. "Our group is hoping to debunk the myths and open people minds to the idea that vegetarianism is not just for those who think 'meat is murder.' This is also a way to help their own health and well being."
Becoming a vegetarian may be the most responsible thing to do if concerned with the well being of the earth's resources or one's health, according to GoVeg.com.
About 80 percent of the agricultural land in the United States and about half of the nation's water is used to raise animals for food, the Web site said.
"Being a vegetarian isn't a protest — it's a lifestyle," said secondary math education junior Courtney Rowland. "I don't want people to get in their minds that I'm trying to accuse them of evil or put down their lifestyle just because I choose not to eat meat."
As a member of the VegAware-ians at ASU, Rowland was one of the students involved in Tuesday's event.
She said that as a practicing vegetarian, she has been motivated in her dietary habits because it is one thing she can personally do to help sustainability and environmental issues in the world.
"In one year, a typical American consumes enough meat to virtually destroy 3.5 football fields worth of otherwise arable land," she said. "This is because animal agriculture is not sustainable — the land the animals use is destroyed after only a few seasons, and more land must be gained and then again destroyed. Vegetarian agriculture is sustainable, especially if it's organic."
Reach the reporter at: kendall.wright@asu.edu.
