Wait, don’t eat that sausage! Don’t you know that today, March 20th, is the Great American Meatout, “the world’s largest and oldest annual grassroots diet education campaign?” :

Every spring, thousands of Meatout supporters educate their communities and ask their friends, families, and neighbors to pledge to “kick the meat habit (at least for a day) and explore a wholesome, nonviolent diet of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.”

The Great American Meatout is sponsored by The Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM), whose website gives you seven good reasons not to eat meat:

1. Kicking the meat habit reduces our risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other chronic diseases that cripple and kill nearly 1.4 million Americans annually.

2. Kicking the meat habit decreases our exposure to infectious pathogens like Salmonella, E. coli, and Campylobacter, which kill several thousand Americans annually and sicken millions more.

3. Kicking the meat habit raises our energy level, lowers our food budget, and simplifies food preparation and cleanup.

4. Kicking the meat habit frees up grains and other foods that can be used to feed the world’s hungry. Animals are extremely inefficient “protein converters;” it can take up to 16 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef.

5. Kicking the meat habit preserves our topsoil, water, and other food production resources vital to the survival of our children and their children.

6. Kicking the meat habit protects our forests, grasslands, and other wildlife habitats from encroachment by cattle ranchers while reducing the polluting effects of methane, soil particles, manure, and pesticides on our air and water.

7. Kicking the meat habit saves animals from caging, crowding, deprivation, drugging, mutilation, manhandling, and agonizing slaughter. Each person who adopts a plant-based diet saves over 80 innocent, sentient animals each year. Over a lifetime, an individual can save more than 6,000 animals just by going vegan.

Find out more about the benefits of not eating meat at meatout.org.