Scientific Power of the Vegetarian Diet

All these billions of animals also consume precious fresh water. How much fresh water? Half of all fresh water goes to feed thirsty livestock. Read that sentence again. Crop production for animal feed places an enormous demand on water resources: eighty-seven percent of the use of fresh water in the U.S. is used in agriculture. For example, it takes nearly 420 gallons of water to produce one pound of grain-fed broiler chicken.[1] Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water; the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.

 

Those who eat flesh are but eating grains and vegetables at second hand; for the animal receives from these things the nutrition that produces growth. The life that was in the grains and the vegetables passes into the eater. We receive it by eating the flesh of the animal. How much better to get it direct by eating the food that God provided for our use!

—Ellen White (1827-1915), Cofounder of the Seventh Day Adventist Church

 

Meat production is also one of the two main catalysts for climate change. As we all know, global warming threatens the world’s climates and all of its ecologies. Tragically, scientists estimate that we will soon lose one-sixth of all species on earth due to climate change and as we are all dependent on each other, the fear is that this calamity of species loss and depletion is enough to cause an unstoppable dramatic reduction in life on our planet.

 One of the main culprits is carbon dioxide, but nitrous oxide, methane, manmade CFCs, and ozone all contribute as well. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that livestock production is responsible for 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, while other organizations like the Worldwatch Institute have estimated it could be as much as fifty-one percent.

​

While that figure alone certainly makes the case, it is only the beginning. Cows also produce 150 billion gallons of methane per day; a single cow produces between sixty-six and 132 gallons of methane per day. Methane is twenty-five to 100 times more destructive than CO2 and this most pernicious gas has eighty-six times the warming power of CO2. [2] [3]

​

And think of this: Livestock causes sixty-five percent of nitrous oxide emissions—a greenhouse gas 296 times more destructive than carbon dioxide and which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years.[4]

 

A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter. What’s healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet.

—John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America,

and President, EarthSave Foundation

 

Meat production also is the main cause of deforestation, which further contributes to climate change and threatens many species with extinction. Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the world to make room for grazing cattle and the food that feed them furthers the greenhouse effect. Industrialized animal agriculture currently uses around fifty percent of the world’s arable land. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from nine million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately this destruction has accelerated in the last decade and a half. (Please note that one hectare equals 10,000 square meters, or 2.471 acres.) Forests once covered half of the earth’s landmass, but now they cover less than one-tenth! Why? Mostly to make room for livestock.

​

There is another often-overlooked consequence of modern agriculture--the global collapse of insect populations. Many recent studies of insect numbers are alarming—there has been a shocking and precipitous decline. One recent study by Dr. Goulson of the University of Sussex and Dr. Williams of UC Davis showed that the numbers of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years. Another study revealed equally dire invertebrate patterns: 67% of monitored populations show 45% mean abundance decline. Even though falling insect populations do not have anywhere near the emotional impact of say, threatened gorillas or elephants, if we reflect for but a moment on the number of birds and other animals who depend on insects for their food supply, we glimpse the cascading, calamitous effect.

​

The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined.

—Philip Fradkin in Audubon,

National Audubon Society, New York

 

Finally, soil erosion is another unfortunate consequence of meat production. In the last two decades, there has been a growing appreciation of the threat to European,[5] Asian, African, and North, South and Central American soils as a result of the intensification of agriculture and overgrazing (UNA-Canada).  In Central and South America, two-thirds of the richest farmland is used as pasture for cattle, as well as all of the farmland lining rivers. This meat does not feed the people of the region—rather it is exported. The poorer farmers farm hillsides or cut down more forests, both of which accelerate massive soil erosion. Soon these smaller farmers completely exploit the soil and are obliged to move on, carrying their destructive habits with them. Similarly, the number of people and animals skyrocketed in Africa, and overgrazing in some countries is thought to exceed the carrying capacity of the range by 100 per cent, leading not just soil erosion of farming land, but ultimately causing desertification.

 

No single activity or combination of activities has contributed more to the deterioration of plant and animal life than the nibbling mouths and pounding hooves of livestock.

—Richard and Jacob Rabkin

 

Likewise, the United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year on cropland and grazing land—and eighty-four percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture. And while this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing it much faster than we are able to replace it. It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil; farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year, due to livestock grazing and feeding.

 

“Animal factories are one more sign of the extent to which our technological capacities have advanced faster than our ethics. We plow under habitats of other animals to grow hybrid corn that fattens our genetically engineered animals for slaughter. We make free species extinct and domestic species into bio-machines. We build cruelty in our diet.”

—Dr. Peter Singer, philosopher, writer, and professor

and Jim Mason, writer.

 

To eliminate all confusion, fish is in fact meat and those that consume fish are not vegetarians. I used to feel that any movement towards vegetarianism was to be celebrated and this included the millions of people who do not eat mammals or birds, but who do consume fish. This is a difficult issue for many thoughtful people. Why? There are two reasons. If you eliminate meat and eat a mostly plant-based diet supplemented occasionally with fish, you generally reap the many of the health benefits of the vegetarian diet. Eating fish does not seem to have nearly the pernicious effect on our health as meat consumption. For some mysterious reason, perhaps an evolutionary one, people who have no trouble extending their compassion to mammals and even birds, really don’t care much about fish.

​

They just haven’t considered it from the perspective of the fish.

​

Anyone who has ever caught a fish witnesses the fiercest and often protracted fight for survival. There is more life force packed into most fish than in any other animal, including humans.

​

Let us honor this heroic life force.

​

Besides, the global stakes of our fish nuttiness is high.

​

Let’s look at some sobering worldwide statistics. All global fish stocks are in jeopardy, pressured by both overfishing and environmental degradation. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, now ninety percent of the world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. For instance, commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as ninety-five percent in the north Atlantic.[6]

​

Fishing provides a livelihood and food security for 200 million people, especially in the developing world, and one of five people on this planet depends on fish as a primary source of protein. Unfortunately, seafood has never been more popular in the industrialized world and—pardon the teen-speak, but—OMG, we are rapacious. Even precious water mammals are not saved from humans’ appetite for slaughter.

​

Making matters worse, a significant portion of all harvested fish is fed to livestock. Some estimates claim that one-third of all harvested fish goes to supplementing vegetarian cows’ feed, the theory being that fish fattens cows faster.

​

Additionally, new technology—sophisticated sonar equipment and impossibly large nets—have allowed us to tremendously increase the exploitation of countless marine species. The World Conservation Union lists well over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) estimate, over ninety percent of the world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Demand for seafood continues to increase, fueled in part by the serious health consequences of meat eating, and the voracious human appetite for fish. The problem worsens.

 

The Positive Impact of the Vegetarian Diet

​

Basically, taking the high choice and going vegetarian reverses the impact of meat production for you, the animals, and the planet. These positive effects of the vegetarian diet reverberate throughout the world. There is a spiritual payoff too.

​

Just consider: Going vegetarian can positively affect world hunger; it is a great humanitarian act. The World Health Organization estimates that twenty million people will die of malnutrition this year worldwide, and over half of these people are children. Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only ten percent per year, it would free at least twelve million tons of grain for human consumption—or enough to feed sixty million people. The food spent on animal production, if properly distributed, could end malnutrition and hunger throughout the world.[7]

 

“It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the over-population of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat.”

—Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture,

and President of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

 

[1] Pimentel, D., Houser, J., Preiss, E. (1997). Water resources: agriculture, the environment, and Society. BioScience. 47:97–106.

[2] Ross, P. (2013). Cow Farts Have ‘Larger Greenhouse Gas Impact’ Than Previously Thought; Methane Pushes Climate Change. International Business Times.

[3] Methane: Its Role as a Greenhouse Gas. Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA.

[4] Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. (2006). Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

[5] Technical annex to COST Action 623: Soil Erosion and Global Change. (2004).

[6]

[7] Singer, P. (2002). Animal Liberation (Third Edition). HarperCollins Publishers: New York.