I'm thinking of re-becoming a vegetarian.

Every morning there's an article in my email about the nasty, nasty ingredients in cattle feed. Normally I skim over the articles about mad cow disease and don't think much of it, but these latest stories are really gorey and disturbing. That's our FOOD supply they're talking about.

Also, if I have to see that b-roll of the downer cow falling down one more time on the nightly news, I'm gonna have to kick someone's ass.

So I started doing some research yesterday about vegetarianism and first off let me say that the reliable, legit resources on this topic are few and far between. I did find a great organization called Earth Save, which was founded by John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, the book which made me decide to become a vegetarian in the first place back in my college days. A large part of his message focuses on environmental sustainability and how a vegetarian lifestyle contributes to the world at large. The book talks a lot about the massive, massive resources that the cattle industry uses every year in terms of the water, grain, topsoil, etc. and how those resources could be better utilized -- i.e., to feed people. That to me was always the biggest factor in my becoming a vegetarian -- it wasn't so much the animal-rights factor (although that played a part), but more the overwhelming and destructive impact that the meat industry has on the planet. Plus, there's a big ick factor in what goes on in factory farms.

The Earth Save site is worth spending some time on and it definintely beats reading article after article about animal rendering and waste in cattle feed. Blech.