The environmental and health effects of livestock production and meat can be debated, but one fact is for sure – most people like to eat it.

A brand new Gallup Poll finds that only 5% of people in the United States consider themselves vegetarians – and only 2% say they are vegans who eat no animal products. According to Gallup:

Vegetarianism in the U.S. remains quite uncommon and a lifestyle that is neither growing nor waning in popularity. The 5% of the adult population who consider themselves to be vegetarians is no larger than it was in previous Gallup surveys conducted in 1999 and 2001. The incidence of veganism is even smaller, at a scant 2% of the adult population.

We get lots of vegetarian comments whenever we do stories like the one this week about USDA and Meatless Mondays. They tend to make claims about environmental and human health impacts that they call facts but are not necessarily true. This is a fact: People like meat. Thank God we live in a free country where people can choose to be vegetarians for whatever reason they want to be, but the problem is trying to force that diet down the throats of the rest of us, which is what the radical fringe of that 5% would like to do. Many of them would like nothing better than to shut down animal agriculture for good, and that makes it an agenda.

So, for the 95% of us who love our meat – let’s have some steak tonight to celebrate our freedom to do so!