Animal agriculture is the most destructive industry on the planet today

Animal agriculture is the most destructive industry on the planet today. Here's why.

Climate Change

Global greenhouse gas emissions:
• 13% due to transport (road, rail, air and sea)
• 51% due to livestock and their byproducts

Livestock is responsible for 65% of nitrous oxide emissions, a greenhouse gas 296× more destructive than CO₂.

A person who follows a vegan diet produces 1/2 as much CO₂ as a meat eater.

Deforestation

1-2 acres (4,000-8,000 m²) of rainforest are cleared every minute.

Animal agriculture is responsible 91% of Amazon destruction.

Area of rainforest cleared:
• palm oil: 105 billion m²
• animal agriculture: 550 billion m²

A person who follows a vegan diet uses 1/11 as much oil as a meat eater.

Species Extinction

110 animal and insect species are lost every day from rainforest destruction.

Animal agriculture is the leading cause of:
• species extinction
• ocean dead zones
• water pollution
• habitat destruction

Fisheries

80.4 million metric tons of fish are pulled from the oceans each year.
(1 metric ton = 1,000 kilograms ≈ 2,200 pounds)

3/4 of the world's fish habitats are exploited.

For every 1 kilogram of fish caught, 5 kilograms of unintended species are caught and discarded as by-kill
(1 kg = 2.2 lb; 5 kg = 11 lb)

Water Use

1 hamburger = 3,000 liters of water = 2 months' showering
(1 liter ≈ 1 quart; 3,000 liters ≈ 800 gallons)

The meat & dairy industry use 1/3 of the earth's fresh water.

USA water use:
• domestic: 5%
• animal agriculture: 55%

A person who follows a vegan diet uses 1/13 as much water as a meat eater.

Waste

Waste from a farm of 2,500 dairy cows = waste from a city of 411,000 people.

Every minute, 3.2 million kilograms of excrement is produced by animals raised for food in the USA.
(3.2 million kg ≈ 7 million lb)

Land Use

1/3 of land desertification is due to livestock.

30% of the earth's land is used for livestock.

1.5 acres (6,000 m²) = 16,800 kg (37,000 lb) of plant-based food OR 170 kg (375 lb) of meat

Land needed to feed 1 person for 1 year:
• meat eater: 12,000 m² (3 acres)
• vegan: 675 m² (1/6 of an acre)

A person who follows a vegan diet uses 1/18 as much land as a meat eater.

Click here for nonmetric original by Luke Jones.
See: Cowspiracy references and calculations.

A Dairy/Veal Farm

These photos and their captions are all taken from Jo-Anne McArthur's "We Animals" web site.


Ears are clipped and tagged without anesthetic or painkillers.


These young calves will either be raised for veal or put into the milk production system. Both outcomes involve lives of exploitation and a premature death.




Veal calves are taken away from their mothers within minutes of being born. Their first food is colostrum from a bottle.


Unless veal crates are thoroughly cleaned on a daily basis, they can be breeding grounds for flies which plague the calves.


These cows know no pasture. Their days are spent standing on hard surfaces and as a result their hooves grow to painful lengths.


Born with ropes around her legs, she is literally enslaved to us from birth.


Other dairy cows, who have had their calves taken away, watch as the new mother cleans her baby.


The bond between mother and babe is obvious and immediate.




Dairy cows who have had their babies removed from them so that we can drink their milk, watch the new mother bond with her calf.


As the calf takes her first steps, the cows watch the humans warily.


The calf is dumped in barrow and wheeled to her home, a veal crate.




Still wet from birth, she will be added to the rows of other calves and crates, and raised in this confinement.


A lonely existence.




Painfully overgrown hooves are a result of sedentary days and the cement they stand on their whole lives.


Overgrown hooves, anxious looks.




Meanwhile, the mothers are milked through a meticulously motorized and computerized system.






The sickly, fly-covered calf we saw earlier in the day is now dead.


A calf's life.




The dead are wheeled away.




She will be reimpregnated until her body becomes exhausted from the years of giving birth and milk production. At that point, she will be sent to slaughter and sold as low-grade beef. Outside this system, she could live 20+ years but here, she will be slaughtered before her eighth birthday.

Reducing meat and dairy is crucial to fighting climate change

In an article titled “The importance of reduced meat and dairy consumption for meeting stringent climate change targets”, published in the May 2014 issue of Climatic Change, the authors – from the Department of Energy and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden – “conclude that reduced ruminant meat and dairy consumption will be indispensable for reaching the 2 °C target with a high probability”.

And Chatham House, the preeminent establish think tank in the U.K., has just published “Livestock – Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector”, recognizing that:

• Consumption of meat and dairy produce is a major driver of climate change.
  
  • Greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock sector are estimated to account for 14.5 per cent of the global total, more than direct emissions from the transport sector.
  • Even with ambitious supply-side action to reduce the emissions intensity of livestock production, rising global demand for meat and dairy produce means emissions will continue to rise.

• Shifting global demand for meat and dairy produce is central to achieving climate goals.

• However, there is a striking paucity of efforts to reduce consumption of meat and dairy products.

• The data presented in this paper reveal a major awareness gap about livestock’s contribution to climate change.

• Climate change is not currently a primary consideration in food choices.

We can’t address climate change without addressing meat consumption

Ruby Hamad wrote at The Drum on ABC (Australia), 28 April 2014:

The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said, "It is easier to change a man's religion than his diet." It is also, apparently, easier to change the entire world's energy production.

Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report, "Mitigation of Climate Change", citing fossil fuels as the biggest source of emissions, with coal, oil, and natural gas the major culprits.

However, the panel also implicates animal agriculture, noting that "changes in diet and reductions of losses in the food supply chain, have a significant, but uncertain, potential to reduce GHG emissions from food production."

Seventy per cent of agricultural emissions come directly from livestock - and about 37 per cent of total worldwide methane emissions - and it is clear that moving away from animal products is not just potentially significant but downright necessary.

The IPCC findings come hot on the heels of another study, "The importance of reduced meat and dairy consumption for meeting stringent climate change targets", published in the April edition of Climate Change.

The study's lead author argues that targeting the fossil fuel industry alone is insufficient because "the agricultural emissions ... may be too high. Thus we have to take action in both sectors."

In 2010 a UN report, "Priority, Products, and Materials" concluded that, "A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

That report puts agriculture's global emissions at 14 per cent, and while not giving an exact figure, the researchers warn that "animal products, both meat and dairy, in general require more resources and cause higher emissions than plant-based alternatives". Subsequent research suggests emissions from livestock and their by-products may be much higher (even as high as 51 per cent). Even if we err on the side of conservatism and stick to the lower UN figure, it still indicates that agriculture is responsible for more emissions that all means of transport combined.

No one who cares about the threat of climate change is ignorant of the importance of renewable energy and a reduction in energy use. So why do we still have our collective head in the sand about the need to change our diet?

In an impassioned tirade against Earth Day (April 22), which he dismisses as emblematic of "the culture of progressive green denial", The Nation's Wen Stephenson calls for radical action, namely, "physically, non-violently disrupting the fossil-fuel industry and the institutions that support and abet it ... Forcing the issue. Finally acting as though we accept what the science is telling us."

I don't know what Stephenson's food habits are but, ironically, in a piece railing against denialism, he does not mention meat consumption once. It is rather extraordinary how we acknowledge the need to address climate change and then carry on with those very activities that are causing the damage in the first place.

While some media outlets do report on the link between animal agriculture and global warming, they also undermine the urgency by featuring stories on, for example, how to include bacon in every meal - including dessert. TV channels flog reality shows glorifying high levels of meat consumption, and fast food outlets compete to see who can stuff the most meat and cheese into a single, fat-laden item.

All as scientists warn of the need to move away from dependency on animals as a food source.

When those of us who are concerned by the devastating effects of animal agriculture raise the issue, somehow the focus shifts from saving the planet to respecting personal choice, as if the choice to eat certain foods is sacrosanct.

We have to compromise our personal preferences every day in the interests of public safety. Smoking prohibitions, speed limits, alcohol restrictions, even initiatives promoting recycling and "green" household products all affect our choices.

But, for some reason, requesting people reduce their consumption of meat is taken as a personal affront to their very being. Humans have been eating animals for so long, and in such large quantities, we think we are entitled to their bodies, regardless of the consequences.

Clearly, our dependence on fossil fuels has to change but it is quite remarkable that we actually consider restructuring our entire energy system as an easier and more viable undertaking than simply altering our food habits.

The Guardian's food writer Jay Rayner unwittingly demonstrates this in his reaction to a University of Aberdeen study that found a worldwide adoption of a vegan diet would reduce CO₂ emissions by a massive 7.8 gigatonnes. But, rather than take this on board, Rayner chooses instead to shrug his shoulders, declare that "the world is not going vegan any time soon" and condemn "self-righteous vegans" for "making airy proclamations about the way forward when [they] have no power whatsoever to make it happen".

But why don't we have the power to make it happen?

Even if we don't all go completely vegan, surely the takeaway is that everyone should eat less meat and more plants, and not just on Meatless Mondays?

It's easy to point the finger only at fossil fuels because this requires no major personal sacrifice. We can pin all the blame on big corporations, demand policy change, and then feel good about ourselves by declaring on Facebook that we are against dredging the Barrier Reef and we don't support fracking.

But meat is different. Meat means we have to change. It means we have to sacrifice something we enjoy, something we believe we are entitled to. And most of us simply aren't willing to compromise that entitlement, so we pretend that the idea of a worldwide shift to a plant-based diet is simply too ridiculous to contemplate. That's if we even acknowledge the crisis at all.

So we sign petitions and attend demonstrations. Some of us even drive less, take shorter showers, and use eco light bulbs. But nothing it seems, not even the looming threat of environmental catastrophe, could compel a significant number of us to simply change our diet.

James McWilliams telling vegans to eat insects

“At the risk of being a total bore, I have a few more thoughts to shake out on the proposition that vegans are morally obligated to eat insects. ...” —The Life and Death of Insects

[previously:
Insects As Food: Hard Fact Versus Possible Fact
Are Vegans Obligated To Eat Insects?
Starting Over]

Rucio says:
October 24, 2014 at 8:34 am

You are indeed becoming a total bore here. Everything you argue about insects has already been said about other animals to justify their mass exploitation and slaughter. Even about other humans.

And telling vegans what they are “morally obligated” to do is as offensive coming from another vegan as it is from a grass-fed beef proponent.

James says:
October 24, 2014 at 10:25 am

I’ve offered a number of arguments for why cows and crickets do not deserve the same level of moral consideration. I’m open to having those arguments proven wrong. But you need to do that. Rather than make blanket statements without substantiation, I urge you to avoid insults and make arguments.

Rucio says:
October 24, 2014 at 10:52 am

The argument is simply that cows and crickets DO deserve the same level of moral consideration. That is the vegan ethic. It is not a question of sentience or whatever other anthropocentric rationalization you want to apply.

I really don’t have a problem with anyone eating insects, although I don’t see any good coming from “farming” them. It’s just absurd to suggest that it should be a part of veganism. Your very language in this post has devolved into that of “humane meat” advocates.

(As for insult, you set yourself up for the confirmation.)

James says:
October 24, 2014 at 12:39 pm

Your logic is circular. To say that a behavior is wrong because it does not adhere to a preexisting definition (in this case, veganism) is to subsume the demand for a real argument (which you still won’t provide) under the guise of a label that may or may not best accomplish the goal that we both seek–to reduce the suffering of animals who can suffer. My argument is that veganism may not be the best approach to reducing the harm humans do to animals. My previous posts on insects have laid out why I think that is the case. Thus, in the interests of having a genuine and fruitful discussion (and possibly getting me to change my mind), you must do more than say, in essence, “veganism does not allow for eating crickets.” I really don’t care about the insult, honestly, so no worries there. But I do care about logic.

Rucio says:
October 24, 2014 at 1:05 pm

Any circularity is in your framing the question as one of “animals who can suffer”. In other words, you’ve already asserted the conclusion in the premise.

Furthermore, if, rather than arguing that veganism may not be the best approach to reducing harm to animals (other than insects), you are attempting to redefine veganism to include eating insects, then the burden is yours.

unethical_and_speciesist_vegan says:
October 24, 2014 at 7:07 pm

“It’s just absurd to suggest that it should be a part of veganism.”

Thankfully deontic vegans don’t get to decide who is and is not vegan. Many utilitarian (see vegan action and vegan outreach position on insects and honey) vegans accept the ambiguity of insects and insect products (shellack, honey, silk etc).

Moreover, many deontic vegans are not at all consistent when it come to their own avoidance of insect “suffering”: honey is verboten but shellack is “don’t ask don’t tell”.

Rucio says:
October 24, 2014 at 10:11 pm

“Vegan” is generally understood to mean no animal flesh or products. It is not a “deontic” or utilitarian or pseudo-religious proposition, but just a simple definition. Nobody’s a perfect vegan, but if everybody’s a vegan by their own definitions, than the word means nothing.

unethical_and_speciesist_vegan says:
October 27, 2014 at 3:42 pm

“Vegan” is generally understood to mean no animal flesh or products.

Generally understood as “NO” by deontic vegans but not by many utilitarian vegans:

http://vegan.org/frequently-asked-questions/

“Again, it depends on one’s definition of vegan. Insects are animals, and so insect products, such as honey and silk, are not traditionally considered vegan. Many vegans, however, are not opposed to using insect products, because they do not believe insects are conscious of pain.”

http://www.veganoutreach.org/advocacy/definingvegan.html

“This may sound odd coming from a co-founder of Vegan Outreach, but it doesn’t matter what label anyone places on me, or what label anyone places on themselves. For example, if Peter Singer (author of Animal Liberation) were to eat a dish that contains hidden dairy when at a colleague’s house, or if Carole Morton (who runs Green Acres Farm Sanctuary and is a humane agent in a rural PA county) were to eat the eggs laid by the hens she has rescued … do I want to cut them off, shun them from our vegan club?”

Rucio says:
October 27, 2014 at 5:11 pm

That’s essentially what I already said. Many vegans fudge the line with invertebrate animals. But asserting that vegans are “morally obligated to eat insects” is a lot more offensive than asserting that they shouldn’t. As I also pointed out earlier, that’s not much different than Alan Savory asserting that we are morally obligated to eat free-range beef to save the planet. Even if his evidence were sound, we are certainly not obligated.

(Regarding evidence, James McW stacks his a bit by ignoring the tremendous land use required for animal agriculture feed. Switching to a vegan diet would reduce that land use to an eighteenth. Whereas farming insects would add a new land use, since it would obviously replace non-insect meat, not plants, in the diet.)

Later post: Consciousness

Rucio says:
November 1, 2014 at 3:47 pm

Moral consideration that relies on the resemblance of a being to oneself would not seem to be very deep.

It may turn a few people away from eating other vertebrate animals, but it’s a shaky foundation to build on. After all, humans easily rationalize brutality towards other humans. The hierarchic ladder of being is an easily manipulated fallacy.

Speciesism: the day after

“I can’t pinpoint some time or moment when I thought, when I realized that there was something to the argument ... so it was kind of a cumulative process ... But once there was a tipping point, when you come out on the other side intellectually, it’s almost, I would almost say it’s crippling. You’re immediately confronted with a holocaust that is occurring everywhere at all times, and everybody you know – your loved ones and people you hate, everywhere – they’re all participating in it. And yet here I am, I’m just talking about it, kind of somewhat unpassionately, just talking about it because I’m trying to relay my feelings about it, when really, the only reasonable response to that realization, to wake up to this world we live in, is a fucking explosion. That’s the only reasonable response. Because this is something – it’s never happened before – I can’t ... It’s so bad, that how do you possibly talk about a holocaust that’s happening everywhere all the time every day and everybody’s included? How do you talk about that when no one ... it’s a laughable subject when you bring it up, you know, when your friends and family, when they think it’s cute that you decided to take an interest in animal issues: ‘but I’m glad, you’ve made your choice, please respect my choice’ – How in hell do you possibly go on in that world? How do you not see the world and everybody in it as dark and dangerous and irrational? How in the world do you not see your life that you’ve lived up to that point when you’ve woken up as inexcusable?”

“I realized that it goes much deeper than I could have ever expected. For people who try to see past speciesism, the world becomes very different.”

Speciesism: the movie

Green Mountain College, Carnism, and the Embrace of Death

The echo chamber's not going to work if you allow dissenting opinions!
(Green Mountain College student Emily McCoy, who blocks Facebook users who engage her in public fora, on a GMC page that blocks dissenting opinions)
The people of Green Mountain College, Poultney, Vermont, remain defensive about the public outcry over their decision to kill for meat two oxen that they had worked for 10 years. A brief history: Lou was injured in the Spring such that he could no longer work; over the summer the GMC farm staff decided it was time to kill both him and his brother Bill and eat them (or, more likely, get some human-grade meat in exchange for their value as dog food). Some students and/or alumni, when classes resumed in the fall, were shocked by that decision and alerted Green Mountain Animal Defenders in Burlington, which led to an offer of veterinary care and sanctuary from VINE Sanctuary in Springfield. People’s shock at the decision to kill Bill and Lou was then compounded by GMC’s refusal of the offer to let them live out their lives in peaceful retirement. But the school became only more entrenched, lashing out at those asking for compassion and mercy as “extremists” and “abolitionists” “terrorizing” slaughterhouses and the college. Then they “euthanized” Lou (†Nov. 11, 2012), who had been seen happily grazing with Bill the day before his pre-dawn “sacrifice”, and perversely made themselves out to be the victim because he had to be composted instead of eaten. Two faculty members in particular, Steven Fesmire and Philip Ackerman-Leist, the latter a beef farmer himself, have been interviewing and writing all over the place to present this simple call for compassion toward two loved and hardworking oxen as a concerted and militant effort to end food choice and all animal agriculture.

It would be funny if it did not mean that Lou was killed and Bill remains in danger.

[[[[[ ]]]]]
The first reason given for killing Bill and Lou, and then for refusing sanctuary, was economic. In a cold calculus of utility, these aging oxen were deemed to be no longer paying for their upkeep, and a sanctuary would only perpetuate the “waste” of resources. This is the thinking of psychopaths. Bill and Lou are not machines to be junked for parts or materials, but living creatures as deserving and desiring to live as those calling for their deaths.

The defense developed, along with the paranoid exaggeration of “the enemy”, to a more complex idea of “sustainability”. At the basis of that “sustainability” ethic is the self-serving “happy meat” paradigm, by which human carnivores think they are being conscientious and environmentally mature by convincing themselves that their taste for meat is “love” for the animal itself and its place in nature (or rather the nature of agriculture that includes them), particularly when it is applied locally (eg, in the name of food sovereignty).

Let us look at that ethic, which has come to be called “carnism”.

To rationalize their inability or unwillingness to live without meat or dairy, they have constructed a system that is environmentally conscientious only within the terms of a perceived necessity for consumption of animals. There is no room in that vision for the rejection of animal agriculture. Ethical veganism is heretical, not just because it considers the interests, even rights, of the animals themselves (assuming that like all creatures they want to live full lives according to their own interests and social needs) apart from their usefulness to humans, but mostly because it recognizes that consuming animals is a choice, not a necessity.

With all ethical issues, each of us comes to a balance or accommodation that we are comfortable with, constantly weighing myriad factors of society, personality, culture, economy, etc. And that balance changes (or ought to) throughout our lives. Ethics isn’t about that balance, but about the choices we make when we are able to.

It is indeed good that some of those who won’t give up meat are trying to make that choice less cruel to the animals and less harmful to the environment. That is a step forward and does not obviate further steps. But the “carnist” trend of recent years has been to assert that it is actually better in every way (morally, environmentally, nutritionally) to continue to consume animals in this “balanced” way, which, first, is offensive to those whose decision not to is also shaped by efforts to be less cruel and harmful, and, second, only suggests that it most certainly is not.

It is obvious that loving animals can not include killing them unnecessarily just because we want to eat them. Animals are not things (”I love my teddy bear”). They are not meals (”I love squash soup”). Love, applied to any animal, is the same love we mean when we apply it to the human animal. That is a simple truth. The complex arguments to prove that animal agriculture is natural or necessary or beneficial serve to obscure that truth. They serve as a firewall between salving one’s conscience by treating animals marginally better and having to consequently recognize animals as having their own rights. They serve as an artificial boundary between granting animals a right to “welfare” and granting them the actual rights implied by concern for their welfare.

It is the same dynamic that has been seen in every battle for rights. Of course, the first principle of carnism is that animals aren’t people (not even noncivilized people, however sentient and social). Evolution of conscience is a slow process, and most vegans recognize that frustrating fact. Most of the time, they are biting their tongues about the world’s casual cruelty and disrespect. What vegans can not abide is carnists challenging or claiming superiority to veganism on any ground. It is frightening to see the lengths people go to rationalize needless killing. As they take their arguments farther and farther but go nowhere, stuck in their self-imposed carnism, their urge becomes to silence, if not destroy, those who remind them of that shortcoming. The vegan “no” is taken as an existential threat. Again, this is a fact of human history, which vegans must suffer through like anyone who has ever taken an ethical stand against entrenched cultural assumptions.

If carnists were truly comfortable about their choice, then they would not feel so threatened by the very existence of vegans. After all, everyone eats what vegans eat. Vegans just cut out the animal bits. And that small reduction of violence by our diet can only be for the good — of the planet, all animals, and humanity.

[[[[[ ]]]]]
As to Green Mountain College, they were given a choice: kill Bill and Lou or let them live out their lives at a sanctuary. While claiming to assert their rights and responsibilities, they revealed their sustainability ethic as one that embraces death, not love.

[See also:  Omnivores? ]

environment, environmentalism, human rights, animal rights, vegetarianism, veganism, Vermont, ecoanarchism