How the Meat Industry Is Destroying the Environment

Lower the heat, use fans instead of AC, buy florescent bulbs, switch to Energy Star appliances, use a low-flow shower head, compost your organic waste, plant trees, use an electric lawn mower, drive a hybrid or electric car, carpool, turn off lights when you're not in the room, switch to low-flow toilet, recycle, buy reusable shopping bags, use rechargeable batteries...Sound familiar? We all know these are great ways to go green. Things like hectic climate change, polluted air, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, global warming, and an increase in poverty prove that the way we use things is ineffective. However, of the simplest and most effective ways to make a difference though, is often overlooked. Eat less meat. The production of meat is one of the most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, including global climate change (Swanson, 2007).

There has never been a better time for environmentalists to become vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are becoming better known. Meanwhile, full-scale industrialized factory farming--which allows diseases to spread quickly as animals are raised in close confinement--has given rise to recent, highly publicized epidemics of meat-borne illnesses. All this comes at a time when meat consumption is reaching an all-time high around the world, quadrupling in the last 50 years. There are 20 billion head of livestock taking up space on the Earth, more than triple the number of people. According to the Worldwatch Institute, global livestock population has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of fowl being raised for human dinner tables has nearly quadrupled in the same time period, from 4.2 billion to 15.7 billion. U.S. beef and pork consumption has tripled since 1970, during which time it has more than doubled in Asia (Motavalli, 2009).

One reason for the increase in meat consumption is the rise of fast-food restaurants as an American dietary staple. As Eric Schlosser noted in his best-selling book Fast Food Nation, "Americans now spend more money on fast food--$110 billion a year--than they do on higher education. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music combined (Motavalli, 2009)."

Strong growth in meat production and consumption continues despite mounting evidence that meat-based diets are unhealthy, and that just about every aspect of meat production--from grazing-related loss of cropland and open space, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle in a hungry world, to pollution from "factory farms"--is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences. Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke calls factory farming "a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution problems (Motavalli, 2009)."

Livestock's Long Shadow - Environmental Issues and Options is a United Nations report, released by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on 29 November 2006, that "aims to assess the full impact of the livestock sector on environmental problems, along with potential technical and policy approaches to mitigation." According to the UN report, Emissions of greenhouse gases from raising animals for food is the equivalent of 7.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. "The livestock sector is... responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions." That's about 40 percent more than all the cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships in the world combined (transport is 13%). The sector emits 37% of anthropogenic methane (with 23 times the global warming potential-or GWP-of CO2)... It emits 65% of anthropogenic nitrous oxide (with 296 times the GWP of CO2)." These figures are based on the power of these gases over 100 years; in fact, over 20 years-a more important timeframe for dealing with global warming-methane and nitrous oxide are 72 times and 289 times more warming than CO2. It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie of animal protein as it does to make one calorie of plant protein. If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads. Something to think about if you're driving a Prius and still eating meat for 3 or more meals a day (Steinfeld H., 2006).

The excrement produced by chickens, pigs, and other farm animals is a major cause of air and water pollution. 16.6 billion tons per year -- more than a million pounds per second (that's 60 times as much as is produced by the world's human population -- farmed animals produce more waste in one day than the U.S. human population produces in 3 years). According to the United Nations: "The livestock sector is... the largest sectoral source of water pollution, contributing to eutrophication, 'dead' zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reefs, human health problems, emergence of antibiotic resistance and many others." The main water pollutants in the US are sediments and nutrients. Animal agriculture is responsible for 55 percent of the erosion that causes sedimentation, and for a third of the main nutrient pollutants, nitrogen and phosphorous. On top of that, animal agriculture is the source of more than a third of the United States' water pollution from pesticides, and half of its water pollution from antibiotics (Steinfeld H., 2006).

Water used for farmed animals and irrigating feed crops exceeds 240 trillion gallons per year -- that's 7.5 million gallons per second and 100 billion gallons of water per day (that's enough for every human to take 8 showers a day, or as much as is used by Europe, Africa, and South America combined). So much for all those low-flow shower heads and toilets. According to the UN: "the water used by the sector exceeds 8 percent of the global human water use." As just one example, "On average 990 liters of water are required to produce one liter of milk." So drinking milk instead of tap water requires almost 1,000 times as much water.

Soil erosion due to growing livestock feed is reported as 40 billion tons per year (or 6 tons/year for every human being on the planet, although if you're in the U.S. where we eat lots more meat than most of the world, your contribution is many times greater). About 60% of soil that is washed away ends up in rivers, streams and lakes, making waterways more prone to flooding and to contamination