CHAPTER 19 - Ethics, Beauty and Health - Saving the Earth, One Soyburger at a Time
By now you’ve learned pretty much everything you need to know about becoming a vegetarian, from ethics to nutrition to meal planning. Just don’t forget one of the biggest reasons that living a vegetarian lifestyle is a wonderful choice – what you eat affects the rest of the world.
Consider the effect of a meat-eating society on the planet:
Water and soil damage. 260 million acres of U.S. forest have disappeared, to make room for cropland to farm meat. To produce a one pound of beef requires 2,500 gallons of water. The manufacture of a single hamburger patty takes enough fossil fuel to drive a small car 25 miles. It takes less water to produce a year’s worth of food for a vegetarian than to produce one month’s food for a meat-eater. Factory farms damage the environment in addition to the horrors they commit on the animals that they raise and slaughter. They use large quantities of fossil fuels and fresh water, and pollute the earth in return.
85 percent American topsoil – over 5 billion tons – is lost annually due to the raising of livestock. 26 billion tons of topsoil is lost annually on agricultural land worldwide. In the United States, one-third of the cropland has been permanently destroyed due to excessive soil erosion. By switching to a vegetarian diet, you alone spare an acre of trees every year.
Millions of acres of forests and wetlands have been leveled and drained to create pastures to feed the animals butchered for meat, destroying habitats for wildlife and disrupting the ecological balance. Irrigation of these pastures and croplands uses vast quantities of water, our most precious resource, and the water that runs off these lands takes with it irreplaceable topsoil, turning millions of acres of lush cropland into desert. Along with waste products from factory farming and slaughterhouses, runoff from agribusiness contributes more pollution than all other human activities combined.
Depletion of rainforests. Between 1960 and 1985, nearly 40 percent of all Central American rain forests were destroyed to create pasture for beef cattle. As the primary source of oxygen for the entire planet, the survival of the rainforests is inextricably linked with the survival of mankind. The unique flora and fauna found in the rain forests provide ingredients for many medicines used to treat and cure human illnesses, and scientists are continuing to find new medicines as they discover new plants available only in these regions – yet approximately 1,000 species go extinct every year due to destruction of tropical rainforests. By destroying the rain forests, we may be destroying the chance to cure AIDS, cancer or influenza.
Poison in the atmosphere. Two-thirds of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide are created by the burning of fossil fuels, and 200 gallons of fossil fuel are burned to produce the beef currently eaten by the average American family of four each year. Burning 200 gallons of fossil fuel releases two tonsof carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – by switching to a vegetarian diet, you’re cutting back on the amount of pollution in the air.
Poison in the workplace. The air inside factory farms contains a dangerous combination of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, bacteria, and decomposing fecal matter. A joint study by the University of Iowa and the American Lung Association concluded that 70 percent of the workers in indoor facilities on factory pig farms experience symptoms of respiratory illness. Chronic bronchitis is suffered by over 50 percent of all "swine confinement workers," three times that of farmers who work in outdoor facilities. The turnover rate of workers in these conditions is understandably very high, and in some cases the owners of the factory farms have had to sell their businesses because they themselves were unable to work in their own farms.
Consider this, the next time you’re complaining about your job – the decomposing waste from pig pens is collected in pits below, causing a build-up of hydrogen sulfide. According to the American Lung Association report,"Animals have died and workers have become seriously ill in confinement buildings ... Several workers have died when entering a pit during or soon after the emptying process to repair pumping equipment. Persons attempting to rescue these workers have also died." The pigs living in these conditions breathe those toxic fumes every minute of their short lives. Animals living in these conditions regularly contract pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses – yet another reason why they’re pumped full of antibiotics.
Economics. Raising animals for food is,, to put it bluntly, a stupid way to feed a hungry world. Livestock in the United States consume enough grain and soybeans to feed more than five times the nation’s population. One acre of pasture produces an average of 165 pounds of beef – the same acre could produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes. If Americans reduced their consumption of meat by just 10 percent, it would save 12 million tonsof grain annually. That much grain could feed 60 million people each year. 60,000,000 !
