It was a headline many took personally: “Vegetarians Are Ruining the Planet.”
As we know from the source article for our news blurb — and from the many readers who wrote in to emphasize this particular point — about 80 percent of the world’s soy goes to feed livestock, much of which is then eaten by non-vegetarians.
So yes, meat-eaters, dog-food purchasers, leather-jacket wearers, and other sundry livestock end-users thus are about four-fifths at fault for destroying the soy-deadened parts of the Amazon.
But chew on this: inadvertently helping to destroy even 20 percent of these vast Amazonian tracts is still helping to destroy the planet, is it not? Alas, we’re all playing a part — though veggies less so than meat-eaters in this instance (particularly ones who make sure their soy patties and tofu nuggets are certified organic).
Anyhow, we are sincerely sorry that the headline offended many of you, dear readers. We thought, in our innocence, that it was such a clearly ridiculous assertion that it would be taken in jest. We’ve nothing against vegetarians, we swear — in fact, we’ve even let some of them infiltrate our ranks.
