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What's Wrong With This Picture?

(data taken from John Robbins, Diet for a New America, 1986)

FOOD

in the U.S., animals eat 80% of the corn supply and 95% of the oats
in the U.S., more than half of the harvested agricultural land is used to grow food for livestock
for every 16 pounds of grain and soybeans fed to beef cattle, one pound of meat is produced (most of the rest becomes manure that pollutes our water)
40,000 children starve to death on the planet every day
to feed one meat-eater for a year's worth of food requires three and a half acres of land; it takes only one half acre for a lacto-ovo vegetarian and one sixth acre for a vegan; with one acre of land, one can feed 20 times as many people on a pure vegetarian diet as one a meat-based diet
one acre of land can grow 165 pounds of beef; it can also grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes

WATER

over half of the water consumed in the U.S. is used to irrigate land that grows livestock food
to produce a pound of meat takes 2,500 gallons of water, the same amount an average family uses for all combined household purposes in a month; it takes 100 times more water to produce a pound of meat as it does to produce a pound of wheat
to produce a day's food for one meat eater requires 4,000 gallons of water. It takes 1,200 for a lacto-ovo vegetarian, and 300 gallons for a vegan. It takes less water to produce a year's worth of food for a vegan that to produce a month's food for a meat eater
at present, over 13 trillion gallons of water are being drained from the Ogallala aquifer each year, the vast majority of which is used to produce meat. More water is taken from the Ogallala aquifer each year than is used to grow all the fruits and vegetables for the entire country. At present rates (for 1987), the Ogallala aquifer will be exhausted in 35 years, making the high plains of the U.S. uninhabitable for human beings. In the last twenty years (since 1987), Texas has used up one-quarter of its entire supply of ground water, most of it to grow sorghum to feed cattle.

SOIL EROSION

nature requires 500 years time to create one inch of topsoil; in the last two hundred years, America's croplands have shrunk 75%, from 21 to 6 inches of topsoil; 4 million acres of cropland are lost to erosion in the U.S. each year, an annual loss of 7,000,000,000 tons
85% of this loss is directly related to livestock raising
a pure vegetarian diet uses less than 5% of the soil as a meat-based diet

RAINFOREST DESTRUCTION AND SPECIES EXTINCTION

since 1967, the rate of deforestation in the U.S. has been one acre every five seconds; at the present rate, the U.S. will be completely stripped of its forests in 50 years (as of 1987). At its own rate, the tropical rainforests of Central America will be destroyed in 40 years (as of 1987)
as of the late 1980s, the world was losing 1,000 species a year, a figure projected to rise to 10,000 in the 1990s (over one species an hour)
species extinction is directly related to rainforest destruction (half of the earth's species live in the tropical rainforests); the main cause of rainforest destruction is the creation of "grazing land" used to import fast food hamburgers
of the 260 million acres of American forest converted into land now used for beef production, over 200 million acres could be returned to forest if the land was used directly to feed people instead of animals. For every person who switches to a vegan diet, an acre of trees is saved every year

ANIMAL WASTE

animals outweigh human beings on earth by 4 to 1; every 24 hours animals used to produce food create 20 billion pounds of waste, 250,000 pounds a second; one cow produces as much waste as 16 human beings
much of this waste ends up in the oceans, streams, rivers, and lakes, depleting the oxygen levels of the water and polluting the water; animal waste is high in nitrogen which can cause brain damage or death to infants
animal waste accounts for more than ten times the amount of water pollution as attributable to human beings; the meat industry dumps more than three times as much harmful waste in the waters than the rest of the nation's industries combined

ENERGY WASTE

the value of raw materials consumed to produce livestock is greater than the value of all oil, gas, and coal consumed in the U.S. The production of meat, dairy products, and eggs accounts for one-third of the total amount of raw materials used for all purposes. Growing grains, vegetables, and fruits accounts for less than 5% of raw material consumption
the least efficient plant food is almost ten times as energy efficient as the most efficient animal food

WHAT'S IN YOUR "MEAT"?

(i.e. your decomposing, carcinogenic, fear-laden, tortured flesh)

rat feces
cow urine
cow pus
tranquilizers
ground up cow heads ("puke heads" contaminated with hair, dirt, and ingest)
chicken and cow manure (a "beef fattener" with e-coli contamination)
"rendered" cows and sheep (recycled animal parts, diseased "downers," and road kill added to animal feed)
euthanized animals from humane societies, etc.
growth steroid hormones (fatteners)
radioactive isotopes
antibiotics (disease controllers)
pesticides
herbicides
insecticides
larvicides
lethal euthanasia drugs such as sodium penabarbitol
a host of diseases from the cow, including pneumonia, bovine aids and perhaps mad cow
chemicals like phosphorous to mask putrefaction