This article is exactly as you will see it on the September 30th, 2012 issue of LifestyleBohol. I'm posting this here as a public service effort to reach out to those who aren't subscribed to the Bohol Chronicle.
 |
| webpage heading of worldmeatlesslunch.org |
Granting that you’re reading this on the very last day of September
2012, tomorrow would be Monday, October 1st. To majority of Bol-anons, it is the beginning
of the Month of the Holy Rosary. To the
more socially aware lot, it marks the first of 31 days of wearing pink ribbons,
clothing, and accessories to point to the fact that it’s Breast Cancer
Awareness Month. Yes, you read it
right. A whole month dedicated to the
color pink. Soothing, isn’t it?
Every shade of pink will be proudly displayed throughout October by
Bohol’s hippies and social advocates in an effort to promote awareness on
research endeavors and developments on the very long still-under-construction
road to curing breast cancer. More than
that, it’s also a symbolic extension of hands to those presently living with
the disease. I’m urging everyone reading
this article to join the movement. You
can wear a pink ribbon on your chest, a pink baller band, a pink sticker on
your I.D. card, or maybe a couple of pink stripes on your lanyard made using a
marker. Anything, really. You can get creative with pink. A simple positive gesture makes a huge difference.
Anyway, let’s move on to my primary reason for writing this
entry. Another thing happening tomorrow
is something called the World Meatless Lunch. It’s an awareness initiative created by
Filipino environmentalists headed by Dr. Custer C. Deocaris, a molecular
biologist who cares deeply for the planet.
This idea was inspired by Meatless Monday, an international
campaign run by the Bloomberg Public
Health School of Johns Hopkins
University, one of the most prominent and advanced medical research
institutions in the world, promoting a vegetarian diet every Monday for the
improvement of personal health and the health of the planet. The latter has a Filipino version called Luntiang Lunes, for which a bill to
proliferate the campaign and institutionalize the concept in schools is already
in its early development stage. It will
mark every single Monday as a day to rejoice for veggie lovers and a day to
dread for professed carnivores.
Tomorrow’s event, the World Meatless Lunch, however, isn’t quite
Meatless Monday yet. It’s simply a call
for everyone to forego meat for just one meal—lunch. It encourages solidarity where, at lunch
hour, we imagine ourselves on one enormous dining table munching on vegetables
and fruits with the rest of the world.
Some of you may be wondering how this meat “mayhem” relates to the
environment since this is, as I said, a movement initiated by environmentalists. No worries, I’m getting there. Most of you have probably heard secular
vegetarians and vegans cite health as a reason.
On the other hand, those whose basis for their special diet is religion
or spiritual study would tell you that compassion and kindness to all sentient
beings is their primary motivation.
However, an inexplicably large beneficiary of a vegetarian diet is our
very own Planet Earth. Why, you
ask? I’ll give you a number of reasons.
FACT: 45% of the Earth’s habitable
land area has been cleared for raising livestock and growing crops to feed
them. To cite a rather extreme example, 70%
of the Amazon forest’s original tree-rich terrain has been flattened for this
purpose. Several wildlife species
endemic to it are at risk of extinction because of our perceived need to
produce so much meat.
ANOTHER FACT: In November 2006, the U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), for which Filipino artist Lea Salonga
has been recently selected as a Goodwill Ambassador, released an official
report as a result of several scientific studies stating that conventional
livestock farms produce more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s
conceived forms of transportation combined.
Read the above statements over and over again until they manage to
get drilled in your head. Industrial
meat production is the #1 culprit of climate change. That means if the beef steak on your plate
was produced inorganically, whoever owns the farm that grew it should, in part,
be blamed for the unusually frequent flooding or excruciatingly long drought
periods. Don’t blame legislative
propositions! You should even point a
finger or two at yourself for not being conscious about whether or not the
production method for your meat was humane.
It’s not that I’m waging a war against meat consumption altogether; I’m
merely giving you a few very good reasons to lessen your hunger for flesh. If you care enough to translate thoughts into
actions, you can start by joining the rest of the nation’s caring citizens in
turning tomorrow’s World Meatless Lunch
into an impactful statement both to others and to yourself. Make it a test run to see if you can manage a
meal without flesh obtained by killing a previously living, breathing creature. That means you should have lunch with no
pork, no beef, no chevon (kanding),
no chicken, no fish, no shrimps, not even bivalve shells—just dairy, eggs, and
vegetables. You will find it very light
on your tummy afterwards. You might even
decide to forego meat for the rest of the day.
My hand, as a vegetarian, is permanently glued to the cause of
compassion, health, and environmental healing through meatless meals for the
rest of my life. It’s a conscious choice
I’ve made which I happen to be very, very happy about. I know this is extremely difficult for most
people but I’m glad to say there is a growing number of vegetarians in
Bohol. We are not aiming to proselytize
the rest of the province into taking the same path. We are merely appealing to your good nature
to count yourselves in along with the thousands of people observing World Meatless Lunch tomorrow. Come hand-in-hand with us even if it’s just
for one meal. Surely, you could bear
it. Command yourself to muster the
willpower. If you can’t do it for
yourself, do it for our Mother, the Earth.
