Letters to the Editor: The difference between animals eating meat and humans eating meat

To the editor: In the July 2 print edition, there was a very short letter from a reader who said he will go vegan when wolves and cougars decide to go vegan as well. Does the letter writer plan to go out and kill the animal he wishes to eat, and then eat it raw?

Vegetarians avoid meat for both moral and environmental reasons. The factory farming of animals uses enormous amounts of water, leaves behind a toxic sludge of effluent, and is a huge addition to climate change from excess release of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

Eating a fast-food burger that was made from a cow that grazed on what was formerly rainforest in South and Central America cannot be equated with a wolf or cougar killing a deer and eating it.

Daniel Diamond, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: The frontal lobe of the human brain is far more developed when it comes to decision making than that of wolves or cougars.

Elizabeth Taylor, Glendale