Livestock production is one of the major causes of the world’s greatest environmental worries, that is global warming .Global warming is becoming a threat to the environment. Science shows that going vegan is one of the most effective ways to fight global warming. To minimize the hazardous effects of the climate, people across the world are changing to a vegan diet. Meat industry is ‘one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems.’ Quitting meat from your diet is the ‘single most effective thing you can do’ to reduce your climate change impact.
1. Overheating the planet
Billions of cattle and poultry produce enormous amounts of methane during the process of digestion and also leave their excreta on the land. This methane is 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in causing global warming. Feeding the cattle and poultry huge amounts of grain and other food and then killing and processing them needs a lot of energy. When large acres of forest land are cut down for rearing the poultry and cattle farms, huge amounts of carbon dioxide is released from the plants into the environment causing air pollution.
2. Eating up land
Meat eaters need far more area to live than the vegetarians. An example to this is an Asian family feeding on a vegan diet who can live on an acre of land or less, whereas families living on meat require much more land than this.
If the amount of grains used to feed the animals in the western countries is used to feed the humans, at least twice the the number of people can be well fed.
Eating more and more meat led to soil desertification and also the fragile lands are overstocked.
3. Using more water
Eating meat can make you more thirsty than when you eat vegetarian food. This will automatically result in more consumption of water.
Pigs are thirstiest animals and they consume 75m gallons of water every year in a pig farm. It takes nine thousand liters of water to produce a pound of meat whereas it takes just 60-150 liters to produce potatoes, wheat etc.
As demand for meat increases, so there will be less available for both crops and drinking.
4. Causing deforestation
Acres of forest land are deforested to breed the livestock and poultry industry. As the meat requirement is growing, more and more forests are undergoing deforestation and thus disturbing the Eco-system.
5. Poisoning the earth
The amount of waste produced by the animals is poisoning the earth and causing many health hazards. The cattle’s urine causes soil pollution. The manure and urine pollute underground water supplies. The waste produced by one farm of livestock is equal to waste produced by one city.
6. Spoiling the oceans
The huge amounts of nutrients from animal wastes, sewage, fertilizers get drained into the rivers causing water pollution which in turn drain into the sea also causing pollution in the sea. This leads to death of the aquatic life in the sea.
7. Spoiling the fresh air
Not only green house gases like methane, carbon dioxide cause air pollution but also the gases from pigs, cows etc can also cause air pollution. Livestock generates nearly two thirds of ammonia which causes acid rains.Factory farming can lead to harming the ozone layer.
8. Making us prone to disease
Wastes produced by animals contains many pathogens that can harm the human body. Also every year lots of antibiotics are added to the animal feed to increase their growth and ultimately when humans consume them and fall sick, they cannot be treated easily as these bacteria become resistant to drugs.
9. Draining the world’s oil
Growing livestock and poultry leads to oil drainage. Every single step needs fuel. Like pumping the water for the farm requires electricity, transporting the meat in huge refrigerator ships needs a lot of fuel and so on and so forth every single step needed to bring the meat to the table requires fuel or electricity.
10. Meat’s costly, in many ways
When compared to the expense for eating a vegan meal, eating meat costs you double the amount of money. In addition, there are many health risks like obesity, cancers, heart disease etc that can occur if your a non-vegetarian. So, meat just not weighs heavy on your pocket, but on your health too.
Above are ten possible hazards that meat can cause. So, why don’t we do out bit to save mother earth of serious consequences by turning vegan!!!
