The Real Cost of a Meat-Based Diet…
a grassroots group dedicated to the end of animal suffering
How Fast Can We Destroy Our Planet?THE HUMAN COST:
Dr. Roberts, Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Cardiology says:
• If you separate a room into half vegetarians and half meat-eaters, the vegetarians won’t die of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and most cancers.
• We kill millions of animals a year – and then they kill us.
• When you pull your chair up to the table 21 times a week, you are literally determining your fate.
• The Whopper is the Coronary Bypass Special.
• If you see the Golden Arches, you know you are on the way to the Pearly Gates.
A National Institutes of Health study out of the University of California, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2001), found that:
"Women who ate most of their protein from animal sources had three times the rate of bone loss and 3.7 times the rate of hip fractures of women who ate most of their protein from vegetable sources." Even though the researchers adjusted "for everything we could think of that might otherwise explain the relationship … it didn't change the results." The study's conclusion: "[A]n increase in vegetable protein intake and a decrease in animal protein intake may decrease bone loss and the risk of hip fracture." THE WATER:
Water required to produce 1 pound of U.S. beef, according to the Cattlemen’s Association: 441 gallons (most sources estimate the number considerably higher – the Water Education Foundation puts the number around 2,464 gallons). It takes a lot less water to produce fruits and vegetables. According to the U.C. Agricultural Extension, it takes only 23 gallons of water to produce a pound of lettuce – and only 49 gallons to produce a pound of apples.
Mark Reisner, author of Cadillac Desert says this: "In California, the single biggest consumer of water is not Los Angeles, it’s not the oil and chemicals or defense industries. Nor is it the fields of grapes and tomatoes. It’s irrigated pasture: grass grown in a near-desert climate for cows… The West’s water crisis – and many of its environmental problems as well – can be summed up, implausible, as this may seem, in a single word: livestock."
Newsweek says, "the amount of water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer would float a (Naval) destroyer."
• Gallons of oil spilled by the Exxon-Valdez: 12 million
• Gallons of putrefying hog urine and feces spilled into the New River in North Carolina on June 21, 1995, when a lagoon holding 8 acres of hog excrement burst: 25 million.
• Fish killed as an immediate result: 10-14 million
• Fish whose breeding area was decimated: Half of all mid-East Coast fish species
• Acres of coastal wetlands closed to shell fishing as a result: 364,000THE ANIMALS:
The USDA’s Animal Damage Control (ADC) was established in 1931 with one purpose – to control wildlife that might be detrimental to the livestock industry. Detractors have called the ADC – All the Dead Critters and Aid to Dependent Cowboys. In 1997, the government gave the agency a new name – Wildlife Services. Included in these services are killing any creature that might compete with livestock. They do this through poisoning, trapping, snaring, denning (pouring kerosene into the den and setting it on fire), shooting and aerial gunning. They have intentionally killed badgers, black bears, bobcats, coyotes, fox, mountain lions, opossum, raccoons, skunks, beavers, nutrias, porcupines, prairie dogs, black birds, egrets and starlings – and have unintentionally killed domesticated animals and endangered species. The murder of 1.5 million animals a year is done at the public expense to protect the cattlemen’s interest.
Furthermore, according to the U.S. Congress General Accounting Office, Livestock grazing is the leading cause of species being threatened or eliminated in both tropical rainforests and in this countryTHE RAINFOREST:
The rainforests account for 80% of the world’s species of land vegetation and for much of the global oxygen supply. Half of all species on Earth live in the rainforests. A naturalist once counted 700 species of butterflies with-in a 3-mile radius in an Amazon rainforest (By contrast, there are only 321 known butterfly species in all of Europe).
Yet, we are destroying an area the size of a football field every second.
Norman Myers, author of a book on the Rainforests, states, "the number one factor in elimination of Latin America’s tropical rainforests is cattle-grazing… (we are seeing) the ‘hamburgerization’ of the forests."
The MacArthur Foundation says, ‘Imports of beef by the United States from southern Mexico and Central America during the past 25 years has been the major factor in the loss of about half of the tropical forests there."
DR. Ensminger, author of Animal Science writes, "Is a quarter pound of hamburger worth a half ton of Brazil’s rainforest? Is 67 square feet of rainforest – an area about the size of one small kitchen – too much to pay for one hamburger?… It took nature thousands of years to form the rainforest, but it took a mere 25 years for people to destroy much of it. And when a rainforest is gone, it’s gone forever."GLOBAL WARMING:
49 Nobel prize-winning scientists wrote a letter to the president, stating that "Global warming has emerged as the most serious environmental threat of the 21st century… Only by taking action now can we insure that future generations will not be put at risk."
• Calories of fossil fuel expended to produce 1 calorie of protein from soybeans: 2
• Calories of fossil fuel expended to produce 1 calorie of protein from corn or wheat: 3
• Calories of fossil fuel expended to produce 1 calorie of protein from beef: 54
• Amount of greenhouse-warming carbon gas released by driving a typical American car in one day : 3 kilograms
• Amount released by clearing and burning enough Costa Rican rainforest to produce beef for one hamburger: 75 kilograms
Worldwatch Institute says: "American feed (for livestock) takes so much energy to grow that it might as well be a petroleum byproduct." They also state: "Livestock account for 15-20% of (overall) global methane emissions."THE HUNGRY:
• U.S. Corn eaten by people: 2%
• U.S. Corn eaten by livestock: 77%
• U.S. Farmland producing vegetables: 4 million acres
• U.S. farmland producing hay for livestock: 56 million acres
• U.S. grain and cereals fed to livestock: 70%
• Human beings who could be fed by the grain and soybeans eaten by U.S. livestock: 1,400,000,000
• World’s population living in the U.S.: 4%
• World’s beef eaten in the U.S.: 23%
Peter Cheeke, Professor of Animal Agriculture at Oregon State University notes: "Beef has become a symbol of the extravagant, resource-consuming American who is destroying the global environment to live a life of luxury, while most of the rest of the world suffer pestilence and famine."Most of these points were derived from The Food Revolution (by John Robbins). His book is a "must read" for anyone who cares about our planet and its inhabitants.
