Sane and selfish reasons to not eat pieces of animals.
It is energy wise.Meat production requires 10 to 20 times more energy
per edible tonne than grain production and is estimated to have a 54:1 protein
inefficiency ratio (54 units of protein are required to produce a single
unit of meat protein) [6]. Each cow raised requires (directly and
indirectly) 90 to 180 litres of water a day and passes 40kg of manure per kg of
edible meat.
A study by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan
estimated that 1kg (2.2 pounds) of beef is responsible for the equivalent
amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 250 kilometers,
and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days [4].
Harvesting fish requires building, maintaining and fueling fleets of trawlers.
Protein rich beans such as soy require only fertilization, water and land with
very little maintenance.
Once grown, there's a long list of energy expensive processes required to turn
animals into legally consumable food; from transporting them to the abottoir,
slaughtering them, cutting them into pieces, sanitizing and packaging the
pieces (usually in plastic) and then delivering the result to shops where they
are refrigerated until sale.
The process required to turn beans, grains and nuts into pantry-apt food is
minimal and has an extremely long shelf life, no need for energy expensive
refrigeration.
It is an environmental investment
'Livestock production' uses more than 30% of the earth's entire land surface,
70% of the Amazon being now the home of cows rather than the teeming, diverse
ecology there previously [5]. Conservative forecasts assume that over half of all arable land on earth
will be dedicated to the production of cow parts, cow milk, chicken and pig parts by 2050.
Soya has 4 times more calories than red meat so the amount of soy that
could be grown using the same amount of land would feed far more people than if
used to raise cows. More so, a meat-based diet requires 7 times more land on
average than a plant-based diet yet (somewhat ironically) much of the meat
eaten world-wide is raised on soya grain. 98% of all soy grown in America, for
instance, is fed to livestock rather than people directly, making American meat
eaters the driving market of soy production in that country [14]. The trick
here is to eat the bean before it gets to the cow. The more cows, pigs
and chicken eaten, the more competition there is for wooded land.
Agriculture has negative secondary effects. The Earth is increasingly saturated
in animal waste, far more than it can readily process. Animal waste from
agriculture accounts for 50-85% of all ammonia found on land and in water,
contributing significantly to acid rain and air pollution worldwide [15].
According to The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization, livestock
production is at the heart of almost every environmental stress confronting the planet:
rain forest destruction, growing deserts, loss of
fresh water, air and water pollution, acid rain, floods and soil erosion. [5]
Fish eating is destroying ocean life.Hard to believe, given
that we were all told the ocean is apparently abundant and endless, but it's true: 40% of
the worlds oceans are considered by experts to be detrimentally affected by
fishing. According to an FAO estimate, over 70% of the world's fish species
are either exploited to unsustainable limits or depleted. Nitin Desai,
Secretary General of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, said:
"Overfishing cannot continue, the depletion of fisheries poses a major threat
to the food supply of millions of people."[7].
Species such as the Blue Fin
Tuna are now endangered alongside 69 other species of fish in abundance just
decades ago [8]. It is safe to say much of the fish eaten by children today
may be extinct by the time they are adults.
The global harvest for fish has more than quadrupled
since 1950, from 22 million tonnes to 100 million tonnes over the same period.
The environmental cost is already unimaginable, along with a real threat for
consumers' health from the unnatural conditions of inland fish farms. A detailed
account of both kinds of production can be found here
and here.
If you like
the ocean it's a good idea to stop funding the industries that harm it. It appears too
late to hope for regulation, let alone waiting hundreds of years for coral
reefs and underwater ecosystems to heal. You can help slow the decay by choosing not to buy
fish. If you are a person that believes it's not possible to live without fish,
catch it yourself with a hook and rod; this has significantly lower
environmental impact than any other modern means of catching fish.
Quitting meat is good for you and other people.Meat eaters generally consume
more than twice as much protein as they need, increasing likelihood of kidney failure, cholesterol, heart
failure, hypertension, diabetes, stress. [9]
Legumes, especially soybeans, contain
the largest percentage of protein among the vegetable foods and are in the same
range as many meats. If legumes are a central part of a vegetarian's diet,
there will be plenty of enough protein in the diet. For example, one cup of
cooked soybeans contains approximately 20 grams of protein; that is equivalent
to three hot dogs, a quarter-pound hamburger, three 8-ounce cups of milk, three
ounces of cheese.
On the other hand, industrially produced meat and fish is famously full of
nasty things, from bleaching agents to antibiotics,
responsible for allergies, resistance to medicines, fatigue, dehydration and
a long list of cancers. See
here and here.
Cows consume 70% of all antibiotics produced in America [10]. Antiobiotics from
such industrial meats end
up in the bodies of those that consume it, alongside doses of hormones known to have
significantly detrimental impact on people, especially children [11][12]. The
hormone Oestradiol 17ß, used widely by major exporters of cow pieces, is
considered a complete carcinogen. It exerts both tumour initiating and
tumour promoting effects.
The eating of meat affects other people, contributing significantly to food
shortages worldwide. In the U.S., animals are fed more than 80 percent of the
corn and 95 percent of the oats grown. The world's cattle alone consume a
quantity of food estimated to be equal to the caloric needs of 8.7
billion people, more than the entire human population on Earth. Instead, a
vast proportion of the world's forests have been felled to grow the grains fed
to cattle. A report from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change considers agriculture to be the single most prevalent cause of
deforestation throughout human history [13], depleting world oxygen supply, threatening
and/or extinguishing animal and insect life, tipping surrounding ecosystems and
devastating indigenous communities and their cultures.
Consider also the impact on supplies of freshwater. To produce 1kg of feedlot
beef requires 7kg of feed grain, which takes around 7000 litres of water
throughput to grow. The demand for water to grow food to feed cows is resulting
in vast areas of arid, dying land throughout the world as water is pumped out
to feedlot farms elsewhere. Reference adapted to metric, from here.
While the increasing demand for 'organic' meat in 1st world countries has a
less negative impact on the soil itself, cows still require water and cleared
land on which to graze. More so, as organic meat cannot be grown as quickly as
hormone engineered meat these animals consume more land and require a larger
amount of plant matter over the course of a lifetime.
The Agriculture industry is full of many clever and well researched people, all
looking to profit where possible: there would be more grass fed cows if it was
as or more efficient than industrial methods. Replacing industrialised meat
with grass-fed alternatives would rely on vastly greater rates of deforestation
than currently experienced while prohibitively raising the cost of animal parts
themselves. 'Organic meat' is thus not a drop-in solution at the current rates
of meat consumption. It is safe to say meat is no longer an environmentally or
socially responsible source of protein at today's population levels.
If you are a person that believes it's not possible to live without eating meat
you may consider exploring a more immediate relationship with your choice of
diet, with the origin of what you choose to put into your body. Rather than
paying someone to kill on your behalf, find a local farmer and arrange to learn
to kill the animal you select for eating, preparing the parts for
transportation once done; the parts you freeze will last you a very long time.
As someone that grew up on a small farm, I can attest to the awakening
importance of learning to do this, a perspective those that wish to sell you
animal parts would rather you do not have.
A list of interesting citations.
Most of us are aware that our cars, our coal-generated electric power and
even our cement factories adversely affect the environment. Until recently,
however, the foods we eat had gotten a pass in the discussion. Yet according to
a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), our
diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon
dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere
than either transportation or industry. [1]
Approximately 10 billion animals a year are killed in the USA so that some parts
of them can be eaten by people. [2]
According to a 2006 report by the Livestock, Environment And Development
Initiative, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to
environmental degradation worldwide, and modern practices of raising animals for
food contributes on a "massive scale" to air and water pollution, land
degradation, climate change, and loss of biodiversity. The initiative concluded
that "the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most
significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every
scale from local to global." In 2006 FAO estimated that meat industry
contributes 18% of all emissions of greenhouse gasses. This figure was revised
in 2009 by two World Bank scientists and estimated at 51% minimum.[3]
Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or
malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs
and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times
more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock
as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate
professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in
the case of grain-fed beef in the United States. [4]
98% of all Soy grown in the United States is fed to livestock rather than people directly. [14]
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations report summary:[5]
18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock (more than from
transportation).
70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon was cleared to
pasture cattle.
Two-thirds (64 percent) of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which
contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems,
come from cattle.
The livestock sector accounts for over 8 percent of global human water
use, while 64 percent of the world's population will live in
water-stressed areas by 2025.
The world's largest source of water pollution is believed to be the
livestock sector.
In the United States, livestock are responsible for a third of the loads
of nitrogen and phosphorus into freshwater resources.
Livestock account for about 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal
biomass, and the 30 percent of the earth's land surface that they now
pre-empt was once habitat for wildlife, in an era of unprecedented threats
to biodiversity.
These problems will only get worse as meat production is expected to
double by 2050.
1. How
meat contributes to Global Warming. Scientific American, 2009
2. Williams, Erin E. and DeMello, Margo. Why Animals Matter. Prometheus Books,
2007, p. 73.
3. The
Environmental impact of Meat Production, Wikipedia page
4. New
York Times analysis.
5. Livestock's
Long Shadow, UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, 2006.
6. U.S.
could feed 800 million people with grain that livestockNews.cornell.edu. 1997-08-07. Retrieved
2010-05-01.
7. Johannesburg Summit report
8. Guardian report on Compass ban of fish in restaurants
9. Meat and Health, UN Food and Agricultural Organisation.
10. Politics of the Plate: Drug Bust, Barry Estabrook, 2009
11. Meat hygiene 10th edition, Von J. F. Gracey, D. S. Collins, Robert J. Huey, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1999.
12. Barnard ND, Nicholson A, Howard JL. The medical costs attributable to meat consumption. Prev Med. 1995;24:646-655.
13. UNFCCC (2007). "Investment and financial flows to address climate change". unfccc.int. UNFCCC. p. 81.
14. Encyclopedia Britannica entry for 'Soybean'.
15. Ammonia Emissions and Animal Agriculture, Virginia Tech.
N/A. A favourite meat-free recipes blog. Here's another and another.
This page was compiled by Julian Oliver and is mostly based on research by Marta Peirano. Julian has not eaten animal parts for most of his life.
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