According to a recent United Nations report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,”

“…raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and other forms of transportation combined.”

1. A single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day, which is equivalent to that of 20 to 40 humans. And unlike human sewage, cow waste is not processed or elaborately treated therefore its negative environmental impacts are not negated.
2. Peter Singer writes in The Ethics of What We Eat,
   

   “An adult pig produces about four times the amount of feces of a human, so a large confinement operation with, say, fifty thousand pigs, creates a million pounds of pig urine and excrement every day.”

   These factory farmed pigs amount to about 90% of the pigs killed and eaten in the U.S. today.

3. Peter Singer continues,
   

   “…a University of Delaware study found that Sussex County, Delaware, which produces 232 million chickens annually…only has enough land to cope with the manure from 64 million chickens. Up to half of the nutrients in the excess manure washes off into the rivers and streams, or gets into the groundwater. A third of the shallow wells in the Delmarva Peninsula, including those going into the underground aquifer used for drinking water, have nitrate levels above the federal safe drinking water standards, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In the rivers and bay, these nutrients stimulate too much algae growth. The algae decomposes, sucking oxygen out of the water, and fish and other forms of water life die. The bay now has “dead zones” that cannot support fish, crabs, oysters, or other species of ecological significance. In July 2003, a dead zone stretched for 100 miles down the central portion of the bay.”

Researchers from the University of Chicago came to a similar conclusion, reporting that when all levels of production are factored in - from livestock crop production (i.e., feed) to shipping animals to slaughter - a vegetarian diet is the most energy efficient, and the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by not eating meat, eggs, and dairy than by switching to a hybrid car.

It also takes more land, water, and energy to produce meat than it does to grow foods for a vegetarian diet. Eating plants directly is more efficient than growing and harvesting them in order to funnel them through farmed animals.

• 70% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are used by the meat industry.
• It’s estimated that it takes between 15-25 pounds of plant protein to produce a single edible pound of meat protein.
• On average 990 liters of water are required to produce one liter of milk.
• More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow grain for livestock.
• A 2007 journal published by the American Dietetic Association states that researchers found “meat protein production required 26 times more water than vegetable protein on rain-fed lands.”
• Singer writes,
  

  “Feedlots thrive because in the U.S., bulk corn sells for about 4 cents a pound - less than the cost of production, thanks to the billions of taxpayers’ dollars the government gives in subsidies to the growers. (Most of the cash goes to people who are already very wealthy). The corn in turn requires chemical fertilizers, which are made from oil. So a corn-fattened feedlot steer is…the very last thing we need: a fossil-fuel machine…[It is estimated that] 284 gallons of oil went into fattening 534 [steer] to their ’slaughter weight’ of 1,250 pounds.”

These are just a few examples that prove my point: environmentalism ought to be analogous with veganism if environmentalism is to be taken seriously. “Radical environmentalism,” or a Green Movement more generally, that does not take veganism as a necessary (not just a sufficient) condition is a contradiction on its face.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson writes in his great book When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals,

“Animals are, like us, endangered species on an endangered planet, and we are the ones who are endangering them, it, and ourselves. They (nonhumans) are innocent sufferers in a hell of our making.”

This was said in a different context, however, it’s apt. I might add, our children, and future generations alike, will also be condemned to hell on earth if we continue along this path of ours.

Fuel efficient vehicles? Clean energy? Public transportation? Regulate carbon? Clean air? Pollution tax? Re-forestation? Yes!

But what about that which stares you in the face every morning, noon, and night: your meal. The question is, do you really care or are you just pretending?
—
Crossposted @ That Vegan Girl
Sourced from Compassion Over Killing (COK) and Peter Singer.

Sections: Vegan Et Cetera, Vegan Theory
Topics: environmentalism, veg, Vegan