Who is more environmentally friendly, the non-organic vegan or the organic meat eater?

Question

Which person is better for the environment?

Someone who is vegan but doesn't eat organic or someone who restricts his/her diet to organic food but consumes a lot of meat?

Answer 1

meat eater if no animals ate each other including us eating them there would be an over population of the animals eating plants and then shortage of plants starves the species soon causing them to go excint

i have no sources but think about it

Answer 2

VEGANS!!!!!!!! All the way!

Answer 3

I pick the meat eater, if we don't eat them before long they will be eating us, out of house and home. literally.

Answer 4

I think the deciding factor is where they get their produce from.  Food miles (the total distance the food has travelled until it reaches your plate) make much more of an impact on the environment than the choice between organic and non-organic.  The pollution caused by long-distance transport of organic vegan food could easily outweigh the environmental benefits of the organic growing methods.

For most people, the decision of whether or not to eat meat seems to be more of a moral one, based on the ethics of eating animals, rather than for environmental reasons.  Similarly, the decision of organic or non-organic seems to be more often based on health concerns rather than the environment.

Either option can be used as part of a green lifestyle, and both have their pros and cons.  Sorry if my answer seems to be on the fence, but you ask a very interesting question, and I don't think it has a straight answer one way or the other.  There are lots of variables.

Answer 5

I agree that there are a lot of variables, already mentioned.  I have been vegetarian in the past, and it was an environmental decision for me.  Then I moved out to a small farm, and we raised our own chickens and goats for eggs, milk and meat.  We used their manure to fertilize, they ate our bugs and weeds, they had a good life, everything was organic, so that was what made sense in the situation!  No matter what, though, chemical farming is bad.  Local, organic is the best.  Awareness and conscious living is what is needed to make the best choices in an ongoing manner!

Good Question!!

Answer 6

It doesn't really mater. Both have bad points and good points. Though I will never understand why some people elect to cut meat out of their diet. Don't they understand that meat provides the proteins our body needs for higher brain function?

Answer 7

You can get protein from so many other sources than meat though. Soybeans, nuts, peanut butter, etc.

More ENVIRONMENTALLY friendly would probably be the organic meat eater. Organic farmers are much more respectful of the land, while a lot of non-organic farmers plant as much as they possibly can, over fertilize, use pesticides, growth hormones and more.

Now if the vegan gets most of their food from a local farmers market, the role is reversed since there is less environmental impact with their food since it does not have to be trucked all over the country.