For over a decade, I have not eaten meat or poultry. Although many good reasons exist for this stance, including better health and animal rights, my primary motivation is the environment. What we eat hurts our planet.
Your hamburger is responsible for much of the earth’s deforestation. A 2018 study found that about 12.4 million acres of forest, the equivalent of five Yellowstone National Parks, are decimated each year to make room for industrial agriculture.
The study also found that beef production requires twice the land per gram than pork or chicken and twenty times more for the equivalent amount of bean-based protein. Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies found that the cattle industry was responsible for 80% of the earth’s recent rainforest deforestation.
In 2020, ten million acres of primary tropical forest (about the size of Switzerland) were lost. The following year, 9.3 million more acres were lost, causing 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emission. This was almost two and a half times the amount emitted by U.S. passenger cars and light trucks combined.
The U.S. livestock sector is one of the top three most significant contributors to the most severe environmental problems, accounting for 62% of agricultural emissions.
Consider the transportation cost of supplying the average U.S. meal, which usually travels 1,500 miles to arrive on our plates. No wonder food production and its distribution are responsible for one-third of all human-caused global warming.
It’s not just that our self-delusion of some human right to eat animals is causing havoc. What we eat is making the matter worse.
Animals, including their waste, contribute to the greenhouse gas problem. Heat-trapping methane released by cows and pigs, while less prevalent in the air than carbon dioxide, is 23 times more potent. The animals we eat are responsible for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, while transportation is only responsible for 13%.
Processing manure has become an environmental disaster because of the sheer number of livestock housed in crowded facilities, making the proper disposal of animal waste a logistical impossibility. A daily farm with 2,500 cows produces as much waste as a city of 411,000 individuals.
The city at least has a sewage treatment plant. The dairy plant does not.
So, we spray animal manure on the land, creating cesspools that pollute groundwater, streams and rivers. This leads to health problems among workers and nearby neighbors.
Two-thirds of all human infectious diseases, including respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular problems and prenatal and neonatal health, are zoonotic. So, an increase in pandemics should come as no surprise.
Deforestation and increased carbon dioxide are decimating the earth’s lungs, which produce the oxygen you and I need to live.
As global warming increases, not only is a shortage of land created, but the need for water is strained. Four billion people globally, about two-thirds of all humans, experience severe water scarcity. Within the U.S., some 2.2 million people lack access to running water.
Now, consider that the production of a kilogram of grain-fed beef requires 100,000 liters of water, mainly due to raising feed crops that are ineligible for human consumption. Compare that with soybeans, which only require 2,000 liters of water per kilogram. Rice uses 1,912 liters of water, wheat needs 900 liters, and potatoes only need 500 liters.
The World Bank notes that humans consume half of the world’s available freshwater, of which 70% is diverted for agriculture. This model is unsustainable.
Making matters worse, livestock production is responsible for most water pollution, mainly due to animal waste runoff, pesticides and fertilizer runoff from feed crops, and chemical contaminations from tanneries.
The World Health Organization reports that approximately two billion out of the 7.7 billion people inhabiting our planet drink water contaminated with feces. By next year, half of the world’s population will live in water-stressed areas. Wars are increasingly fought over water— not oil.
If we want to reduce our carbon footprint and create a healthy world where its inhabitants experience a fuller, healthier life, then the most significant contribution we can make to the cause is to eat less meat and poultry.
What we eat is an ethical and moral imperative.
Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
