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After nearly 40 years of near-fanatical meat consumption, I became a vegetarian in 1995. I had been contemplating becoming a vegetarian because of environmental and moral concerns, but it took the unlikely

action of my then 8-year-old son, Louis, to make me act.

One day, after a discussion of animal rights, Louis announced, "I'm not eating meat anymore."

I thought his vegetarianism might last a day or two, but as weeks passed and he did not stray, I concluded that, if an 8-year-old has the willpower and wisdom to change his diet so drastically, so can I.

My wife, who had been a vegetarian in college, and my 10-year-old daughter enthusiastically converted as well.

I was a reluctant vegetarian. I still missed pot roast the way my mother made it, turkey during the holidays, hamburgers, seafood and fried chicken. But I simply could not sleep knowing what I knew: that the American meat-centered diet, which I had wholeheartedly embraced, is environmentally irresponsible, morally wrong and socially unsustainable.

What is so wrong with eating meat? First, in the U.S. we are eating more meat than ever (over 200 pounds per person annually), and this encourages industrial streamlining of the process by which animals are raised for slaughter. This in turn has led to unethical and inhumane living conditions for cows, calves, pigs and chickens, and dangerous working conditions for employees. ... New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote about the largest pork processing facility in the world, the Smithfield Packing Co. in Smithfield, N.C.:

"It's a case study in both the butchering of hogs [some 32,000 are slaughtered there each day] and the systematic exploitation of vulnerable workers. More than 5,500 men and women work at Smithfield, most of them Latino or black, and nearly all of them undereducated and poor."

He quotes worker Edward Morrison: "You have to work fast because that machine is shooting those hogs out at you constantly. You can end up with all this blood dripping down on you, all these feces and stuff just hanging off of you. It's a terrible environment."

Bob Herbert concludes, "The defiance, greed and misplaced humanity of the merchants of misery at the apex of the Smithfield power structure are matters consumers might keep in mind as they bite into that next sizzling, succulent morsel of Smithfield pork."

Next column: Suggestions for an ethical and sustainable diet.

DAN ABEL is an associate professor of marine science at Coastal Carolina University and director of the CCU Campus and Community Sustainability Initiative. Contact him at 349-2257 or by e-mail at dabel@....

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