ENVIRONMENT

Animal agriculture turns lush forests into barren deserts and discharges more pollutants into our waterways than all other human activities combined. It also kills more wildlife than all other human activities combined. Moreover, a November 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization found that the livestock sector generates 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions – more than transport! The only effective long-term solution to this multiple global crisis is a gradual transition to an environment-friendly plant-based diet of vegetables, fruits, legumes, and grains.

Land

Animal agriculture has been turning lush forests and prairies into barren deserts since the dawn of human history, but the pace has exploded since the advent of factory farming in the 1950s. It’s hard to believe that North America East of the Rockies was once covered by a luscious forest. The devastation is now continuing in the Amazon River Basin.

The process begins with clear-cutting of forests to create pastures for cattle and other ruminants. This is a major loss, because trees provide wildlife habitats, keep topsoil in place, replenish groundwater aquifers, absorb carbon dioxide, and stabilize climate.

As pastures become overgrazed and trampled, they are plowed under and turned into animal feed croplands. With little plant growth to hold it in place, topsoil is carried by rain and melting snow into streams and lakes, destroying the land’s productivity.

This process is accelerated by the use of marginal sloping lands to meet the insatiable demand for animal feed. The final result is barren desert so much in evidence throughout the once-verdant Middle East, the cradle of human civilization.

An eco-friendly, plant-based diet requires only a small fraction of the land used for a meat-based diet, minimizing adverse impacts.

Water

Animal agriculture's insatiable demand for land to grow feed crops presses into service lands that require irrigation. Irrigation now accounts for more than 80 percent of all water available for use in the U.S. and leads to critical water shortages and bitter conflicts among water users, particularly in the Western states.

Switching to an environment-friendly, plant-based diet provides ample water for all users and prevents conflicts.

The rain and melting snow that run off feed croplands and factory farms dump more pollution load into our lakes, streams, and estuaries than all other human activities combined.

The cropland runoff contains soil particles, salts, organic debris, fertilizer, and pesticides. Soil particles smother fish eggs and bottom-dwelling organisms and block stream flow. Salts, primarily sodium and potassium chloride, raise salinity of the water, rendering it unsuitable for certain organisms. Organic debris feeds microorganisms that deplete the water's oxygen supply and kill the fish. Fertilizers, mostly nitrates and phosphates, spur algal blooms that smother aquatic organisms. Pesticides kill all living organisms.

Animals raised for food in the US produce 130 times the amount of waste that people do. The waste, containing vast amounts of nitrates, pathogens, and hormones, is stored in huge open cesspools dubbed “lagoons” by the meat industry. Eventually, all this waste winds up in the nearest waterway, killing aquatic organisms directly or through formation of algal blooms. Some waste leaks into the ground, poisoning groundwater supplies.

Waste from mid-Atlantic pig and poultry factory farms has destroyed fisheries along the Eastern seaboard and in the Gulf of Mexico. Every summer, a “dead zone” in the Gulf, as large as Massachusetts, becomes void of life due to oxygen depletion.

Switching to an environment-friendly, plant-based diet restores our rivers and lakes as sources of drinking water and recreation.

Air & Global Warming

Methane emitted by the cattle’s digestive system, nitrous oxide from animal waste, and carbon dioxide account for 18 percent of the greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. The carbon dioxide is discharged by burning forests to create cattle pastures, by power plants that generate electricity to operate factory farms, slaughterhouses, and refrigeration equipment, and by farm machinery and trucks that transport animals and animal products.

Global warming threatens planetary survival through destruction of wildlife habitats, flooding of coastal communities, and extreme weather conditions. Melting glaciers deny habitats to polar bears, seals, sea lions, and penguins. The resulting rise in ocean levels will flood low-lying coastal communities like Manhattan, parts of Los Angeles, Miami, and New Orleans. Warming of the ocean surface intensifies hurricanes and droughts that cause extensive property damage and destroy food crops.

Wind erosion from animal croplands is the largest source of fine airborne particles, which irritate respiratory passages and make them more susceptible to respiratory infections. Factory farms and slaughterhouses produce a stench that poses a major nuisance for miles around.

Switching to an environment-friendly, plant-based diet defers substantially the onset of global warming and its disastrous consequences and reduces the risk of respiratory infections.