If you live on the South 40 and your morning class route takes you past the DUC, chances are you’ve been handed a pamphlet with grotesque pictures of factory farming by a vegan protester who seems to stop by our campus once or twice a week. The cover proclaims, “Even if you like meat…you can help end this cruelty. By cutting your meat consumption in half, you can spare hundreds of animals from a lifetime of suffering.”

As someone who is not only from the South (barbeque capital of the world) but is also half Greek, and thus accustomed to roasting an entire lamb on a spit in my backyard on major holidays, there is no way anyone could ever possibly convince me to become a vegan. As an adherent of the Greek Orthodox Christian Church, giving up meat for the 40 days of Lent is hard enough.

While the pamphlet only posits reducing the amount of meat you consume, there are many ways that someone who eats meat and consumes dairy products can support more ethical farming practices. Every time you buy these goods at the grocery store, you are voting for or against factory farming practices. You, as a consumer, can effect real change.

For example, bovine growth hormone (rGBH or rBST) was FDA approved to increase milk production in dairy cows, but it caused many of them to get painful udder infections and in some cases malnutrition. Monsanto (which, by the way, has a building in its name on our campus) tried to suppress these health risks from being leaked to the public. Because many consumers refused to buy products from companies using this hormone, many companies stopped using it on their cows in order to maintain their profits. The website for the Prairie Farms milk that is sold by Bon Appétit says that while their decision not to use growth hormone “does not reflect health and safety issues,” it was “driven by a change in the market place.”

Any meat or dairy products in the grocery store that are certified organic come from animals that were not given growth hormones, antibiotics or forced into cannibalization. In addition, free-range chickens are not kept in cages for their entire lives, although they may still live in extremely crowded environments.

If you want more information about the factory farming system and the ways in which you can be a meat eater and support sustainable, cruelty-free (well, except for the whole killing-to-eat-them part) farming, I highly recommend the Oscar nominated documentary “Food, Inc.,” as well as “Dirt: The Movie” and “King Corn.”

I would have made this argument to the vegan protester in person, but he would probably agree with my two vegetarian suitemates that the killing of any animal constitutes animal cruelty. Whatever choices you make concerning what you eat, remember your dollar can make a difference.

Stella Kamm is a sophomore in Arts & Sciences. Write to Stella at [email protected]