Sustainable Eating: Environmental Vegetarianism

In September, 2001, a shocking billboard appeared in whale watching hotspot Vancouver, Canada. “Eat the whales,” it boldly stated. The signature on the sign? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, more commonly known as PETA (“Divide”).

Of course, the goal of PETA’s edgy campaign was not really to encourage people to eat the “megafauna of the ocean”, but to provoke environmentalists into seeing the errors of their ways. The environmental community is often guilty of viewing animal issues in the context of wild populations and ignoring the multitude of problems with animals that are factory farmed (“Divide”). But these largely unregulated megafarms are not to be taken lightly.

Veterinarian and vice president of the Humane Society of the U.S. Dr. Michael W. Fox points out that the typical American eats thousands of animals throughout the course of a lifetime, with hardly a thought to the contrary. “In order to satisfy this meat consumption, agribusiness has developed an immense slaughtering machine that causes great suffering to animals, creates long-term environmental disasters, endangers healthy food production and, ultimately, threatens the economic independence of developing countries who support this growing American appetite” (qtd. in “Divide”).

Carnivorous America is certainly serving as a model for countries that had consumed very little meat — until recently. The word’s per capita meat consumption is on the rise. According to Shapin, it was 62 pounds per year in 1981. By 2002 it had risen to 87.5 pounds and in the U.S. alone rose from 238.1 to 275.1 pounds. Traditionally vegetarian Asia is also following suite: since 1981 meat consumption in India increased from 8.4 to 11.5 pounds, and skyrocketed in China from 33.1 to 115.5 pounds.

John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America and Food Revolution reports that an analysis of ecological impact of lifestyles in the U.S. “concluded that the two most damaging things Americans do is drive sport-utility vehicles and eat meat.” President of Worldwatch Institute Christopher Flavin says "there is no question that the choice to become a vegetarian or lower meat consumption is one of the most positive lifestyle changes a person could make in terms of reducing one's personal impact on the environment. The resource requirements and environmental degradation associated with a meat-based diet are very substantial” (qtd. in “Divide”). What exactly are those risks and requirements? Meat production is an enormous waste of land, energy, food and water and significantly contributes to global warming. The most effective way to combat these issues is simply to choose a sustainable diet: vegetarianism.

Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution report that an amount of land equal to seven football fields is bulldozed every minute to make more room for farmed animals. Almost 80% of all the agricultural land in the U.S. is used to raise animals — nearly half the land mass of the country. Both in the U.S. and worldwide, overgrazing leads to soil erosion, the extinction of plant and animal species and eventual desertification. This overgrazing is the primary cause of threatened and extinct species around the world (GoVeg). In Diet for a New America, John Robbins notes that while it takes an acre of land to produce just 165 pounds of beef, that same acre could instead be used to grow 19,840 pounds of potatoes. He also claims that “twenty vegetarians can be fed off the land needed to support one person on a meat-based diet” (qtd. in “Praise”). A more logical, vegetarian use of land would give the possibility of adequately feeding more people on a global scale (Fox).

In 2002, the well-known environmental magazine E stated that of all the fossil fuels produced in the U.S., more than one-third is used for animal production. This is not surprising when the stages of meat production are taken into consideration: grow huge amounts of grain and soybeans, transport grain and soybeans to feed manufacturers by way of 18-wheeler, operate feed mills, ship feed to factory farms, operate factory farms, transport animals many miles to be slaughtered, operate slaughterhouse, ship meat to processing plants, operate plants, transport processed meat to grocery stores, and keep meet frozen or refrigerated in stores (GoVeg). Considering the amount of energy consumed during this process, a 16-ounce steak is easily the equivalent of a Hummer on a plate. According to research at the University of Chicago, by switching to vegetarianism one’s carbon footprint can be shrunk by up to 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide per year (Walsh).

Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet, points out that “thirty years ago, one-third of the world's grain was going to livestock; today it is closer to one-half” (qtd. in “Case”). Outside the U.S., only about 20% of total grain production is consumed by farmed animals (“Eating”). But within this country, the amount of grain fed to livestock is more than 70% — enough to feed about 800 million people a basic vegetarian diet (GoVeg; Fox). These figures are even more disturbing considering that 90% of grain’s protein is wasted by cycling it through livestock; also 99% of carbohydrates and 100% of dietary fiber is lost (“Praise”). When asked which food harms the environment the most, Michael Jacobson, Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI) was quick to answer “grain fed beef.” “It takes about 7 pounds of grain to put a pound of weight on cattle in feedlots,” he says, “but because much of the weight gain goes into bone, organs, and other inedible tissues, it takes even more feed to produce a pound of beef” (qtd. in “Nutrition”).

Almost half of the water used in the U.S. goes to raising livestock (GoVeg). And again, the biggest culprit is beef production, which alone consumes more water than the country’s entire fruit and vegetable crop (“Divide”). While it only requires 60 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, 12,000 gallons are required for a pound of beef (Fox). In Food Revolution, John Robbins says that, on a daily basis, a completely vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water. This is a striking contrast compared with the water requirements of a meat-eating diet: more than 4,000 gallons per day. Robbins also estimates that "you'd save more water by not eating a pound of California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year” (qtd. in “Case”).

Factory farming does not only waste water; it contaminates it. It is estimated by the United Nations that two million children worldwide die every year from drinking water contaminated by manure-borne E. coli (Fox). In the U.S., most of the waste excreted by farmed animals is stored in vast brown “lagoons”, which sometimes spill over into surrounding waterways (GoVeg). In 1989, the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill in dumped 12 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s into Prince William Sound. But is is a little known fact that in 1995 the New River hog waste spill poured 25 million gallons of urine and feces into North Carolina waters, closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds and killing an estimated 10 to 14 million fish. Excrement spills such as this have caused a rapid spread of Pfiesteria piscicida, a virulent microbe which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone (“Case”). Similar incidents occurred in Japan in 1996 and in the small town of Walkerton, located in Canada’s largest and most heavily polluted province. E. coli bacterial contamination, most likely due to manure runoff, was the culprit (Fox).

In addition to harmful bacteria, animal waste contains highly concentrated amounts of antibiotics, pesticides and powerful growth hormones. These drugs often have shocking effects on the ecosystems surrounding factory farms. Scientists in West Virginia and Maryland have recently discovered male fish growing ovaries. They suspect that run-off from chemical-laden chicken feces is to blame for this freakish deformity. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states groundwater in 17 states have been contaminated by chicken, hog, and cattle excrement. Some of these streams and rivers carry waste from factory farms to the Mississippi River, which in turn deposits it into the Gulf of Mexico. The nitrogen in the animal feces has caused an exponential increase in algae population, requiring so much oxygen that a “dead zone” is created in which virtually all other sea animals and plants cannot survive. In 2006, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone has grown to half the size of Maryland. A separate study conducted by Princeton University in 2006 found that by shifting away from meat production the Gulf’s nitrogen levels could be returned to normal (GoVeg).

Many environmentally conscientious people try to reduce global warming by using energy-saving light-bulbs or driving fuel-efficient cars. While these efforts are certainly not in vain, studies show that becoming vegetarian could be the most effective way to fight global warming (GoVeg). In 2006, the United Nations released a groundbreaking report which stated that the raising animals for food generates about 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the vehicles in the world combined (Walsh; GoVeg). Factory farms, which house up to 10,000 animals, produce “staggering amounts of toxic organic waste.” Just 2,500 hogs generate as much excrement as a city of 10,000 people without sufficient composting or disposal facilities, and cows generate twenty-two times as much waste as humans (Fox). All of that waste produces huge amounts of nitrous oxide and methane which, along with carbon dioxide, cause the vast majority of global warming (Walsh; GoVeg). According to geophysicists Pamela Martina and Gidon Eshel of the University of Chicago, each individual who eats a typical American diet rather than a vegetarian diet contributes the same amount of greenhouse gases as if he or she drove an SUV instead of a Camry. If all Americans switched to a vegetarian diet, 430 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide would be produced per year (“Nutrition”).

According to Jim Motovalli, editor of E magazine, “there has never been a better time for environmentalists to become vegetarians” (“Case”). It has even been said that “there is no such thing as a meat-eating environmentalist.” A choice to eat animals is, unwittingly or not, a choice to support environmental destruction and the misuse of resources on a global scale (GoVeg). A vegetarian diet aims at ecosystem stability and the preservation of natural resources (Tanke). If a significant percentage of the population switched to vegetarianism, all of the negative environmental factors that have been discussed would either be reduced significantly or eliminated entirely (Fox). John Robbins thinks that even persuading Americans to cut back on meat consumption would help. “I don’t think we should have a purity patch for people to sign. If everyone ate 10% less meat, the reduction would be much more than if a handful of people become vegans” (qtd. in “Divide”). It is most important to make informed, and sustainable, dietary choices. The key to changing the world is to simply change what is on your plate.