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So let's get the 'I did it and you can too' before-and-after info-mercial out of the way. As a child I hated vegetables, salad, and most fruit. Lettuce made me wretch. My favourite pizza: meatosaurus. My McDonald's meal of choice: a quarter pounder. I would swallow my mother's compulsory peas whole like pills rather than taste them.

Now I’m a vegetarian. No more Christmas turkey. No more BBQ pork buns. No more convenient cans of tuna (vegetarians by definition do not eat fish; fish plus vegetables equals pescetarian). And no more pepperoni pizza. Can you tell that I miss the taste of meat?

Why I stopped eating meat

God tells Noah in Genesis 9:3 that everything that moves is for munching. The Leviticus 11 food laws count some meat in and some out. God shows Peter a zoo on a tablecloth and tells him to kill and eat in Acts 10. Even John the Baptist's far-out diet includes insects. Clearly consuming meat isn't sinful so why would a Christian who loves meat stop eating it? For the answer we'll have to zoom out from one person to look at the bigger picture.

Vegetarianism isn't new but it's becoming hip. Articles about how eating less meat could help reduce obesity, global warming, cancer rates, and animal cruelty are becoming common and the western secular view on meat consumption is shifting. But what does this mean for people who live to praise and glory God? Is what we put into our bodies as food important?

Christians are called upon by non-believers to explain their lifestyle choices because how we act socially reflects our values. This is part of what it is to live in the world; if we can’t point to Christ in our lifestyle then a significant opportunity to be 'salty' is lost. God expects us to turn from looking for justification for our actions in culture or personal desires to considering what the Bible says and how Jesus would react. Clearly this includes food practices.

It's safe to say that Jesus ate meat. He is recorded eating fish and as celebrating the Passover feast which traditionally includes lamb. This doesn’t make meat compulsory - we don't wear what Jesus wore and I haven't noticed an overflow of carpenters at church – but we’re free to eat. Jesus says in Matthew 15 that food cannot make you unclean or clean. It is in and of itself only fuel for the body.

So what's the problem?

Food in your mouth is a biological equation. Food in society is an ethical, economic, spiritual, and cultural issue. Paul knows this when he discusses food sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10. He acknowledges that food itself can not move us closer or further from God (1 Cor 8:8) but that its involvement in immoral practices can cause problems. The issue is not the hunk of meat but where it comes from and what it signifies.

Paul considers the origin of his food. Our food does not miraculously appear; a huge amount of labour and resources goes into its production, in accordance with the curse that came out of humanity's fall into sin. We are responsible for the results of earth toiled in our name.

The Cost of Eating Meat

Vegetarianism is newsy is because of concerns about the environmental health of our planet. This is the same planet that God told man to rule in Genesis 1: we have been given responsibility for caring for where we live. Rulers are not passive. We would not accept a Prime Minister who did nothing while in office and likewise we cannot assume that by not intentionally harming his creation we are fulfilling the command. We must shoulder our role as overseers and investigate the consequences of our actions.

Creating food requires water. Australia is the driest inhabited continent and each summer we pray for rain for our farmers. So how much water do we use creating food in Australia? According to the CSIRO one kilo of maize required up to 630 litres of water, wheat 750 litres, rice 2000 litres, soybeans 2200 litres, and beef 100,000 litres of water.[1] And cows cannot live on water alone. It takes six kilos of grain as feed to produce one kilo of beef[2]; four kilos of grain for one of pork; two kilos for one kilo of chicken.[3]

I have tried to use impartial figures; animal rights organisations will claim higher while meat organisations will quote much lower. At the end of the day it is a simple equation that using water and grain to grow an animal to eat uses more resources than consuming the grain and water directly. The grain fed to animals is of a different quality than that fed to humans and there is grazing involved too, but if less animal feed was grown there would be more space for other crops.

The world is beginning to experience the effects of climate change. According to the Department of Climate Change in 2006 livestock emitted 62.8 megatonnes of CO2 greenhouse gases, mostly due to the enteric fermentation that occurs in the digestive system of ruminant animals.[4] Compare that to all industrial output; 28.4, or to that of aviation: 6.1. Much is made of flying less but there is more to be saved by keeping fewer livestock.

It would be naïve to say that eating meat is always environmentally worse than eating fruit and vegetables. For example when considering food miles (the distance from production point to consumption point) and the fuel emissions involved it may be better to eat beef produced five hundred kilometres away than oranges from California (Jesus ate fish but not fish canned in the Philippines). But if it is a comparison between eating Australian grain and Australian meat the grain is greener.

A Way to Love our Neighbours

It's okay to use resources: it's compulsory or we’d die. However, as the global population grows it becomes critical that this is done efficiently.

It is consideration for these extra people that should really compel us. Humans are currently consuming over half the available fresh water but 1.2 billion people don’t have drinkable water. Nearly 1 in 7 people do not have enough food to be healthy.[5] This number is not shrinking: 40 million more people were undernourished in 2008 due mostly to higher food prices.[6] Rice, a staple for two-thirds of the hungry, is becoming more expensive as farmers change crops to meet the growth in demand for meat and dairy.[7]

There is enough food to feed everyone on the planet. In 2002 agriculture globally produced 17% more calories per person than in 1972 despite a 70% population increase.[8] When a non-Christian says they cannot believe in a God who lets people suffer they are not putting the blame where it belongs; on human greed and mismanagement. The Food and Agricultural Organization determined in 2008 that it would take US$30 billion a year to ensure that everyone in the world was fed: instead the world spent US$1200 billion on arms and weaponry.[9]

Some of these starving people are our spiritual brothers and sisters. All of them are made in the image of God and he loves them as he does us. The sheer amount of hunger and thirst is always before God: we easily forget but he does not.

It is not our fault personally that people starve but we will be held accountable for what we fail to do. In Matthew 25 those accused of leaving the Son of Man to starve are not judged for creating a problem but for doing nothing. Jesus redefines the law in Luke 10 as loving God and our neighbour, illustrating that walking past those in need is ignoring our neighbour. It isn't loving to pretend there’s no problem. Living in the world means bearing responsibility for it.

According to a footprint calculator[10] we would need 1.9 planets if everyone lived like me; I've got work to do! But if I ate beef, lamb or poultry every day it would blow out to 2.9 planets. A lifestyle that requires others to live in conditions less than we will personally accept is not neighbour-loving. If I daily eat meat at lunch and dinner I am effectively requiring that others eat no meat at all. This is not suggesting that unless all can partake no-one should but that Paul’s advice on generosity in 1 Corinthians 10:13 be applied: “Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality”.

So, we see that frequently eating certain foods puts pressure on the environment and its resources which in turn causes the vulnerable in our society to suffer most. We live for Jesus in our workplaces and at the gym… why not the dinner table too? Serving God as rulers responsive to the needs of the poor is part of living out our salvation. Being vegetarian is not the best or only way to serve; for some it is unwise and in some cultural or hospitality situations it may hinder the gospel. But sometimes it is very wise and sometimes it may promote the gospel, particularly as the world looks for guidance in how to live in a world filled with need.

Living for the King

We cannot follow the Servant King without being willing to sacrifice ourselves. Our witness to the unsaved should be that when asked "Why don’t you eat more meat?" we proclaim that God has called us to love all people as our neighbour and to live in a manner that bears this truth out, pointing to Jesus as our inspiration. We are not participating in a Gaian view of a living mother planet but we are worshipping a God for all peoples who cares about what happens to the child of our neighbour in India and expects us to care too.

By Rachel Macdonald

[1] Wayne Myer, Water for Food (CSIRO, 1997), 2 (accessed 19 May 2009).
[2] David Pimental, Food, energy, and society (CRC Press, 2007), 68.
[3] United Nations, Freshwater: Action on the ground, 2 (accessed 21 May 2009).
[4] Department of Climate Change, National Greenhouse Gas Inventory 2006 (Commonwealth of Australia, 2008), 8, 10, 12 (accessed 19 May 2009).
[5] Food Programme, Hunger (United Nations) (accessed 19 May 2009).
[6] Food and Agricultural Organization, Number of hungry people rises to 963 million (United Nations, 2008) (accessed 19 May 2009).
[7] Mark W. Rosegrant, Biofuels and Grain Prices: Impacts and Policy Responses (International Food Research Policy Institute) (accessed 19 May 2009).
[8] Food and Agricultural Organization, Reducing Poverty and Hunger, the Critical Role of Financing for Food, Agriculture, and Rural Development (United Nations), 9 (accessed 19 May 2009).
[9] Food and Agricultural Organization, The world only needs 30 billion dollars a year to eradicate the scourge of hunger (United Nations, 2008) (accessed 19 May 2009).
[10] WWF-Australia, Footprint Calculator (accessed 19 May 2009).