Many people talk about working to protect the planet, some recycle, some bring cloth bags to the grocery store, some ride their bike to work and others actually go out and rally to change the laws and regulations which are supposed to keep big industry in check. Of all those people, there are very few who are willing to examine our most significant contribution to the destruction of the planet: meat.
This is a touchy subject. People will rally around when you tell them that the problem is some big bad company that is raping the earth, but when they have to look at their own responsibility and choose whether or not to change their own actions, the reaction is drastically different. Even among people who call themselves environmentalist, the great majority of people don't want to hear anything about the reality leading to their nice little cheeseburger. There are plenty of ways for an environmentalist to justify eating meat in this age of industrial mass production, all of them require turning a blind eye to reality.
So what's the big freakin deal eh? It's just food...there are plenty of more important issues to address aren't there? Let's just take a look at some raw numbers and see.
1. Deforestastion: The United States imports roughly 200 million pounds of beef from Central America every year. A large percentage of the grazing land for this cattle is created by clear-cutting of forests and rainforest. For each hamburger that originated from animals raised on rainforest land, approximately 55 square feet of forest have been destroyed. A Smithsonian study estimates that the necessity for more grazing land means that every minute of every day, a land area equivalent to seven football fields is destroyed in the Amazon basin.And its not just the rainforest. In the United States, more than 260 million acres of forest have been clear-cut for animal agriculture. Two thirds of the worlds agricultural land is used for maintaining livestock. Think about that the next time you go to the grocery store.
2.Wasted resources: In order to produce one pound of meat, an animal needs to consume as much a 10 pounds of grains that could be consumed directly by humans.
- One third of the world's cereal harvest is fed to farm animals
- 95% of US soya production (nearly 100 million tons per year) is used as feed
- Worldwide, 73% of maize, 95% of oilmeals and 93% of fishmeal is fed to animals
3.Water: Animal production consumes an amount of water roughly equivalent to all other uses of water in the United States combined. Besides grains, animals need water to survive and grow until they are slaughtered. One pound of beef requires an input of approximately 2500 gallons of water, whereas a pound of soy requires 250 gallons of water and a pound of wheat only 25 gallons.
4.Polution: 1.4 billion tons of solid fecal matter is produced by US farm animals per year - 130 times the amount produced by the human population. This fecal matter often left outside in open pits and seeps into groundwater, and into lakes and rivers. The vast majority of crops grown to be fed to livestock are grown conventionally with massive amounts of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. If you consider the amount of grains that must be consumed in order to produce a pound of meat, and you look at the quantity of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers used to produce those grains, you'll see that the consumption of meat leads to 10 times more chemicals being released into the environment than would have been caused by a vegetarian diet.
All of this is with out taking into consideration the endemic abuse and cruelty inherent in the modern meat industry, which is no small subject in and of itself. If you care about the environment, and you want to minimize your contribution to the destruction, Stop eating meat. It's simple, it's not that hard, and it is the single most important lifestyle choice that we can make in our relationship with planet earth.
Post new comment