The reasons for becoming vegetarian generally include: improving health, showing compassion for animals and reducing pollution and other environmental threats. One important reason is usually omitted and that is that a vegetarian diet can reduce the potential for violence and war. While it is easy to see the connections between production and consumption of food and health, the treatment of animals and environmental conditions, how is that a carnivorous diet may increase the chances of violence and wars?
The sages of the Talmud saw that the meaning of the Hebrew word for war: “milhama” is directly derived from the word “loham” have two meanings: Feeding and fighting wars. Pan in Hebrew “lehem” comes from the same root. This led to our scholars to suggest that the lack of bread and finding enough food to tempt people to go to war. The seeds of war are usually found in the inability of a nation to provide food and other resources to its inhabitants. Therefore, feeding grains to huge numbers of animals for slaughter, instead of feeding hungry people, may be one of the main causes of war, Has beShalom.
Approximately 70% of the grain produced in the U.S. is used to feed animals for slaughter. Globally the number is greater than 33 percent. 66 percent of U.S. grain exported end up in animal feed as well. It takes about 16 kilos of grain to produce one kilo of meat in factory farms. Worse, the United States are major importers of meat, which is largely used in burgers at fast food restaurants and fast-food type is produced on lands that were once forests and tropical forests in countries where there is hunger among residents.