Why a Vegetarian Diet Is Better For the Environment

Logic suggests that if you're passionate about the environment, then you're also vegetarian. There really is no debate; the lower you eat on the food chain, the better it is for the environment. For those concerned with global warming, deforestation, desertification, water and air pollution, soil erosion and the destruction of habitat areas including rainforests, a plant-based diet is the single most significant contribution an individual can make to help minimize these ecological disasters.

Meat and fish production is damaging the Earth beyond repair. Here's how:

• Methane-emitting livestock contribute massively to the 'Greenhouse Effect' and global warming.
• Ammonia from animal waste and agricultural fertilizers contribute to acid rain, which kills aquatic and plant life.
• Livestock farming makes inefficient use of limited resources. Millions of people go hungry and thirsty in the developing world while grain and water is squandered on rearing animals to be slaughtered for food in the developed world.
• Millions of hectares of life sustaining rain forest are destroyed each year to create grazing pasture. This kills off and puts at risk animal species and indigenous human populations.
• Over-fishing of the Earth's oceans has decimated fish populations to the point of near extinction of many species. Dolphins and whales are indiscriminately killed by drift nets while massive amounts of dead fish are thrown back into the sea or used as pig and sheep feed.
• Intensive grazing causes soil erosion and nutrient depletion.

The latest scientific research indicates clearly that today's mass keeping of livestock is one of the main causes of the dying of forests. Nowadays, human excrements are for the most part being disposed of by sewage plants; animal excrements, however, are still being poured respectively sprayed onto the fields. The result of this is that nitrogen (N) in the form of ammonia (NH3), which is today considered to be mainly responsible for the dying of forests, is being caused to 85% by the emissions of livestock. Nitrogen, actually an essential nutrient for meadows, forests and life in the water, can lead to over-fertilization if available in excess.

Ammonia does not only have terrible consequences for forests, but also for water. Over-fertilization causes among other things an unnatural growth of algae, which in turn extract oxygen from the water. Animal-factories, which nowadays work independent of soil, produce such an amount of liquid manure that ground water is being seriously threatened. For example, the Swiss lake of Sempach as well as the lake of Baldegg are given artificial respiration with a huge oxygen blower. About 50% of water pollution in Europe is caused by mass keeping of livestock. Nitrate from agriculture has already today penetrated so deep into the ground water that some of the mineral water labels no longer comply with guiding values for drinking water. In the USA, the share of agriculture on water pollution is already bigger than all cities and industries together!

Up until now, mainly traffic and industry have been held responsible for the hothouse effect. The influence of agricultural keeping of livestock has also been neglected for a long time in this respect. The contributions of cattle breeding to the hothouse effect are about the same as for the total of automobile traffic, if we take into consideration clearing of forests for cattle and for fodder. And the transformation from savannas into deserts, the erosion of mountain areas, the excessive need of water for cattle, the gigantic need of energy for keeping fattening animals are only further reasons for our taking a lot out of our environment with each pound of beef. Since 1970 more than 20 million hectares (1 hectare = 2.47 acres) of tropical forests have been changed into pastures for cattle. Among other things, the hothouse effect is caused by the three gases of methane, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide. All three of them originate in the agricultural keeping of livestock in big numbers. 12% of methane gas emissions are caused only by the 1.3 billion cattle kept worldwide. Breeding of livestock causes 115 mio. tons (115’000’000’000 kg) of methane gas yearly. This gets even more critical if one considers that one molecule of methane contributes 25 times more to the hothouse effect than one molecule of carbon dioxide.

On the same piece of land that is needed to produce one kilogram of meat, one could harvest 200 kg of tomatoes or 160 kg of potatoes in the same period of time. In Switzerland, approximately 67% of productive land is being used for keeping livestock and growing fodder. Approximately 100 liters of water are needed to grow 1 kg of grain, the production of 1 kg of meat, however, takes 2,000 to 3,000 liters of water. One needs 7 to 16 kg of grain or soybeans to produce 1 kg of meat. This can easily be defined as one of the most effective ways to waste foodstuff. This artificial extension of the food chain due to the transformation from grain into meat causes, among other things, 90% of protein, 99% of carbohydrates and 100% of fiber to be lost. Nevertheless, in the USA, 80% of the grain harvests are being fed to about 8 billion slaughter animals. Regarding soybeans, this amounts to even 90% worldwide. About half of the worldwide produced grain is being fed to animals in order to eat their meat.