Pass On The Beef!

I keep getting questions as to why I’m a vegetarian. People who are aware of animal cruelty in factory farms, wide use of antibiotics, deforestation for the meat industry, and large contribution to methane emissions nod understandingly. But lately I’ve had a really hard time explaining to people who can’t comprehend my logic because I’m a bit rusty on my facts and statistics. In other words, I know why I don’t eat meat but I’m having a hard time effectively communicating this to an ignorant audience. This is why I have decided to hit two birds with one stone and investigate DEEPER into the meat industry for my personal knowledge and so that in the future I will be better equipped to inform others.

Animal Cruelty: I’m not going to elaborate on this topic because we’ve all seen the pictures. I just want to say two things. First, in essence, I don’t believe that eating meat is a “sin.” For centuries, it has ensured human survival. But we’ve gotten to the point where the methods of factory farming and the large-scale environmental effects are too loud to be ignored. I disagree with factory farms, deforestation, and use of antibiotics, animal cruelty that involves meat eating.

Environment: In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization released a report titled Livestock’s Long Shadow. Although this report was released two years ago, there have been no major changes in the livestock sector as to indicate significantly altered figures and statistics. The report revealed that the livestock sector generates 18% more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 than transport. “When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases.” Yet, manure accounts for 65% of human-related nitrous oxide emissions, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Also, 37% of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2 and produced by digestive systems) and 64% of ammonia, a contributor to acid rain are byproducts of the livestock sector.

The report also exposes that livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, including 33 percent of the global arable land used to produce feed for livestock. Especially in South America, deforestation is an incentive to create new pastures and some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

Furthermore, the livestock sector is a major source of land and water degradation. About 20 percent of pastures considered as degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources, contributing among other things to water pollution, euthropication (accelerated growth and overcrowding of plants in a body of water thereby depleting oxygen), and the degeneration of coral reefs. Widespread overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water resources. The major polluting agents include: animal wastes, antibiotics, hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers, and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Significant amounts of water are withdrawn for the production of feed.

Resources: Factory farming wastes resources. The US spends more than 70% of the grains and cereals it grows and about 50% of its water resources to raise animals for food. Approximately, 80% of the agricultural land in the United States is used for animal farming.
I believe that in a world where 923 million are hungry this is incomprehensible.


SOURCES:
http://www.celsias.com/article/what-the-meat-industry-doesnt-want-you-to-see/
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html