I don't think most people realize how much pollution there is from meat production either. This blurb is not just about beef, but it gives a good idea of some of the societal costs:
If you thought living near a nuclear reactor would be a nightmare, trying living by a factory farm. A farm producing 18,000 pigs a year can create as much waste as a town of almost 60,000 people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the pollution from animal waste causes respiratory problems, skin infections, nausea, depression, and even death for people who live near factory farms. According to other U.S. studies, as many as 70 percent of all workers employed by hog barns suffer from bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses resulting from the corrosive nature of hog waste.
Pounds of excrement produced by farm animals in the United States since January 1, 2000:
In December 1997, the Senate Agricultural Committee released a report stating that animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 130 times as much excrement as the human population-5 tons for every person in the United States. A Scripps Howard synopsis of the report (April 24, 1998) stated, "[I]t's untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and disease-bearing organisms. ... It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and sickening people. ... Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated. ... Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick."
"No one has the right to use America's rivers and America's waterways, that belong to all the people, as a sewer. The banks of a river may belong to one man or one industry or one State, but the waters which flow between the banks should belong to all the people." -Lyndon B. Johnson, signing the Clean Water Act of 1965
It's not just animal waste that is making us sick. Vegetarians have 40 percent less cancer mortality and are less likely to suffer from strokes, obesity, appendicitis, osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes, and food poisoning. According to the Worldwatch Institute, "Dr. Colin Campbell of Cornell University, who headed the China Health Project, conservatively estimates that excessive meat consumption is responsible for between $60 and $120 billion of health care costs each year in the United States alone."
Drugs and hormones are routinely used on farms. Factory farmers routinely add antibiotics to animal feed to prevent the spread of disease and hormones to induce growth. The use of antibiotics in farm animals that are not sick causes an increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that jeopardizes human health. Antibiotic resistance has been called one of the world's most pressing public health problems. Antibiotic resistance can cause significant danger and suffering for children and adults who have common infections, once easily treatable with antibiotics.
In addition to drugs and hormones, meat is full of pesticides. Farmed animals are eating pesticide-laden grain, and pesticides then collect in the animals' flesh such that meat contains accumulations of pesticides and other chemicals up to 14 times more concentrated than those in plant foods.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1 acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. The same acre of land, if used to grow cattle feed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef. During the 2002 World Food Summit, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that 24,000 people die every day as a consequence of chronic, persistent hunger. The Hunger Project estimates that 600 million to 1 billion people live in conditions of poverty so severe that they are unable to obtain enough food to meet their daily requirements. Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer is quoted in E magazine as estimating that reducing meat production by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free up enough grain to feed 60 million people. Adopting a vegetarian diet is kind to animals and humans alike. "In a world where an estimated one in every six people goes hungry each day, the politics of meat consumption are increasingly heated, since meat production is an inefficient use of grain-the grain is used more efficiently when consumed directly by humans. Continued growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grains to animals, creating competition for grain between affluent meat eaters and the world's poor." -Worldwatch Institute
Caring for the environment means protecting all of our planet's inhabitants. Animals suffer extreme pain and deprivation on today's factory farms. Chickens have their beaks sliced off with a hot blade, pigs have their tails chopped off and their teeth removed with pliers, and male cows and pigs are castrated-all without anesthetics. The animals are crowded together and dosed with hormones and antibiotics to make them grow so quickly that their hearts and limbs often cannot keep up, causing crippling and heart attacks. Finally, at the slaughterhouse, they are hung upside-down and bled to death, often while fully conscious. What kind of environmentalist can support any of that?
"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard." -Gaylord Nelson, former governor of Wisconsin, founder of Earth Day
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