MEAT

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The Case Against Meat

Evidence Shows that Our Meat-Based Diet is Bad for the Environment,

Aggravates Global Hunger, Brutalizes Animals and Compromises Our Health. So

Why Aren’t More Environmentalists Switching to Vegetarianism?

By Jim Motavalli

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. At presstime,

the first discovery of mad cow disease in a Tokyo suburb caused beef prices

to plummet in Japan and many people to stop eating meat.

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.

Americans spend $110 billion a year on meat-intensive fast food, and its

growing popularity around the world may be a factor in dramatic increases in

global meat consumption.

© Kremkau

One reason for the increase in meat consumption is the rise of fast-food

restaurants as an American dietary staple. As 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.â€Â 

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 farmsâ€â€”is an

environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences.

Oregon State University agriculture professor Cheeke calls factory

farming “a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and

air pollution problems.â€

World Hunger and Resources

The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef for human

beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a world still teeming with

people who suffer from profound hunger and malnutrition.

According to the British group Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60 people

growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn and only

two producing cattle. Britain—with 56 million people—could support a

population of 250 million on an all-vegetable diet. Because 90 percent of

U.S. and European meat eaters’ grain consumption is indirect (first being fed

to animals), westerners each consume 2,000 pounds of grain a year. Most grain

in underdeveloped countries is consumed directly.......................