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Most importantly read what is in red.
by Richard H. Pitcairn
“A reduction in meat consumption is the most potent single act you
can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve out
precious natural resources,” contends Robbins. And he makes the
following points.
* If Americans were to adopt a meatless diet and stop exporting
livestock feed, we could return 204,000,000 acres to forests-almost an
acre for every American who would become vegetarian.
* Over two-thirds of the topsoil in the United States has been
lost, with 85 percent of this loss associated with livestock
production.
* It takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of
protein from beef. Only 2 calories will produce the same amount of
protein from soybeans.
* The 5,215 gallons of water California uses to produce only one
edible pound of beef would grow 209 edible pounds of wheat or 10 pounds
of eggs or provide 300 five-minute showers.
It’s clear that we can’t continue with this pattern of inefficient
consumption. For the sake of future generations, it would be wise for
us to begin to rely more on plant sources for out daily food.
Even as we waste resources needed for the future, we contribute to
the present world hunger problem. Some 20 million people a year die
from malnutrition. Yet 15 vegetarians can be fed on the amount of land
needed to feed 1 person eating a meat-centered diet. If Americans would
reduce their intake of mean by only 10 percent, 100,000,000 people
could be adequately nourished using the same land, water and energy no
longer devoted to livestock feed. That’s five times the number of
people who now die of malnutrition.
Finally, let’s consider the impact of meat production on the
animals involved. When all we see is a neatly wrapped package in the
supermarket and maybe a few cows out in the countryside, we may imagine
that the meat came from animals who spent long, peaceful lives lazily
scratching for bugs in a barnyard or grazing in sunny pastures. At the
end of their idyll, we imagine, they are slaughtered quickly and
humanely. Unfortunately, the reality is usually quite different.
I
used to work with livestock and was often appalled at the crowded,
stress ful and uncomfortable conditions under which most chickens, pigs
and cows actually live and die. Farming has become big business, and
most animals are treated more like profit-making units than creatures
capable of feeling pain and distress. To minimize costs and maximize
profits, most of them are packed into crowded quarters like items in a
production line, deprived of normal environments and relationships.
They may never even see the daylight or stand on the ground. |
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