Guest guest Posted April 16, 2002 Report Share Posted April 16, 2002 As Earth Day approaches, here's a reminder. THE BEST THING YOU CAN DO FOR THE EARTH ON EARTH DAY IS TO GIVE UP MEAT. There is no such thing as a meat-eating environmentalist. Whether it’s overuse of resources, water or air pollution, or soil erosion, raising animals for food is wreaking havoc on the Earth. Today's factory farms leave behind an environmental toll that generations to come will be forced to pay. In fact, raising animals for food requires more water than all other uses of water combined, causes more water pollution than any other activity, and is responsible for soil erosion. The planet's addiction with meat addiction is steadily poisoning and depleting our land, water, and air. Raising animals for food has a worse effect on the planet than just about anything else we can do. The most important step you can take to save the planet is to go vegetarian. In an effort to conserve water, you might install a water-saver on your kitchen faucet, saving up to 6,000 gallons of water per year. Most of those savings would be lost if you consumed just one pound of beef (which requires 5,200 gallons of water per pound to produce—compared to only 25 gallons for a pound of wheat). A totally vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,200 gallons of water per day. Producing just one hamburger uses enough fossil fuel to drive a small car 20 miles. Of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in western countries, more than one-third is used to raise animals for food. A typical pig factory farm generates raw waste equal to that of a city of 12,000 people. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, factory farms pollute waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Animals raised for food produce 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population, roughly 68,000 pounds per second, all without the benefit of waste treatment systems. It’s untreated and unsanitary, full of chemicals and disease-bearing organisms and it goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will bathe in, wash their clothes with and drink. It poisons rivers and kills fish and sickens people. ... Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated. This excrement is also generally believed to be responsible for the " cell from hell, " Pfiesteria, a deadly microbe. More than 80% of all agricultural land in developed countries is being used to raise animals for food. Huge tracks of forest lands are being cleared to create cropland in order to feed animals to satisfy our meat-centered diet. Raising animals for food is grossly inefficient, because you have to put 20 calories of food into an animal to get just one measly calorie back in the form of flesh. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth. According to environmental think-tank Worldwatch Institute, " The easiest way to reduce grain consumption is to lower the intake of meat and milk, grain-intensive foods. Roughly 2 of every 5 tons of grain produced in the world are fed to livestock, poultry, or fish; decreasing consumption of these products, especially of beef, could free up massive quantities of grain and reduce pressure on land. " Each vegetarian saves one acre of trees every year! Approximately one acre of trees disappear every eight seconds in the world today. The earth's last remaining tropical rain forests are being destroyed to create grazing land for cattle. Fifty-five square feet of rain forest may be razed to produce just one quarter-pound burger. Caring for the environment means protecting all of our planet’s inhabitants, not just the human ones. Animals suffer extreme pain and deprivation on today’s factory farms. Chickens have their beaks sliced off with a hot blade, pigs have their tails chopped off and their teeth removed with pliers, and male cows and pigs are castrated all without anesthesia. The animals are crowded together and dosed with hormones and antibiotics to make them grow so quickly that their hearts and limbs often cannot keep up, causing crippling and heart attacks. Finally, at the slaughterhouse, they are hung upside down and bled to death, often while fully conscious. What kind of environmentalist can support any of that? If you eat meat, don't call yourself a nature lover or an environmentalist. If you are an animal welfare worker and eat meat, that's a huge contradiction. How do you rationalize working for the lives of one species while being responsible for the deaths of so many others? For more information on how your meat habit is destroying the earth: Read: Beyond Beef by Jeremy Rifkin Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating by Erik Marcus Diet for a New America by John Robbins Fast food Nation -Eric Schlosser Visit: www-peta-online.org http://www.factoryfarming.com http://www.farmusa.org http://www.hfa.org http://www.meatstinks.com http://www.mercyforanimals.org http://www.veganoutreach.org/ http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/ http://www.vrg.org http://www.vegan.com http://www.pcrm.org http://www.upc-online.org Cheers, Juggi ===== " If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. " -- Albert Einstein Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes./ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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