So You're An Environmentalist,
Why Are You Still Eating Meat?
by
Jim Motavalli
There
has never been a better time for environmentalists to become
vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based
diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are
becoming better known. Meanwhile, full-scale industrialized
factory farming -- which allows diseases to spread quickly
as animals are raised in close confinement -- has given rise
to recent, highly publicized epidemics of meat-borne illnesses.
At press time, the first discovery of mad cow disease in a
Tokyo suburb caused beef prices to plummet in Japan and many
people to stop eating meat.
All
this comes at a time when meat consumption is reaching an
all-time high around the world, quadrupling in the last 50
years. There are 20 billion head of livestock taking up space
on the Earth, more than triple the number of people. According
to the Worldwatch Institute, global livestock population has
increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of fowl being
raised for human dinner tables has nearly quadrupled in the
same time period, from 4.2 billion to 15.7 billion. U.S. beef
and pork consumption has tripled since 1970, during which
time it has more than doubled in Asia.
Americans
spend $110 billion a year on meat-intensive fast food, and
its growing popularity around the world may be a factor in
dramatic increases in global meat consumption. © Jason
Kremkau
One
reason for the increase in meat consumption is the rise of
fast-food restaurants as an American dietary staple. As Eric
Schlosser noted in his best-selling book Fast Food Nation,
"Americans now spend more money on fast food -- $110
billion a year -- than they do on higher education. They spend
more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers,
videos and recorded music -- combined."
Strong
growth in meat production and consumption continues despite
mounting evidence that meat-based diets are unhealthy, and
that just about every aspect of meat production -- from grazing-related
loss of cropland and open space, to the inefficiencies of
feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle in a
hungry world, to pollution from "factory farms"
-- is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic
consequences. Oregon State University agriculture professor
Peter Cheeke calls factory farming "a frontal assault
on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution
problems."
World
Hunger and Resources
The
4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of
beef for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources
in a world still teeming with people who suffer from profound
hunger and malnutrition.
According
to the British group Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60
people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people
growing corn and only two producing cattle. Britain -- with
56 million people --could support a population of 250 million
on an all-vegetable diet. Because 90 percent of U.S. and European
meat eaters' grain consumption is indirect (first being fed
to animals), westerners each consume 2,000 pounds of grain
a year. Most grain in underdeveloped countries is consumed
directly.
Somalian
famine victims line up for food handouts. Producing a pound
of beef requires 4.8 pounds of grain, and critics of our modern
agricultural system say that the spread of meat-based diets
aggravates world hunger. © David & Peter Turnley
/ Corbis
While
it is true that many animals graze on land that would be unsuitable
for cultivation, the demand for meat has taken millions of
productive acres away from farm inventories. The cost of that
is incalculable. As Diet For a Small Planet author Frances
Moore Lappé writes, imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce
steak. "Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people
with empty bowls in front of them. For the 'feed cost' of
your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full
cup of cooked cereal grains."
Harvard
nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat production
by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to
feed 60 million people. Authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich note
that a pound of wheat can be grown with 60 pounds of water,
whereas a pound of meat requires 2,500 to 6,000 pounds.
Environmental
Costs
Energy-intensive
U.S. factory farms generated 1.4 billion tons of animal waste
in 1996, which, the Environmental Protection Agency reports,
pollutes American waterways more than all other industrial
sources combined. Meat production has also been linked to
severe erosion of billions of acres of once-productive farmland
and to the destruction of rainforests.
McDonald's
took a group of British animal rights activists to court in
the 1990s because they had linked the fast food giant to an
unhealthy diet and rainforest destruction. The defendants,
who fought the company to a standstill, made a convincing
case. In court documents, the activists asserted, "From
1970 onwards, beef from cattle reared on ex-rainforest land
was supplied to McDonald's." In a policy statement, McDonald's
claims that it "does not purchase beef which threatens
tropical rainforests anywhere in the world," but it does
not deny past purchases.
Circle
Four Farms, a Utah-based pork producer, hosts a three-million
gallon waste lagoon. When lagoons like this spill into rivers
and lakes as happened in North Carolina in 1995, the result
can be environmentally catastrophic. © AP Photo / Douglas
C. Pizac
According
to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), livestock
raised for food produce 130 times the excrement of the human
population, some 87,000 pounds per second. The Union of Concerned
Scientists points out that 20 tons of livestock manure is
produced annually for every U.S. household. The much-publicized
1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped 12 million gallons
of oil into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown
1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25
million gallons of excrement and urine into the water, killing
an estimated 10 to 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres
of coastal shellfishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused
the rapid spread of a virulent microbe called Pfiesteria piscicida,
which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.
More
than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed
in the U.S. are used in animal production. Beef production
alone uses more water than is consumed in growing the nation's
entire fruit and vegetable crop. Producing a single hamburger
patty uses enough fuel to drive 20 miles and causes the loss
of five times its weight in topsoil. In his book The Food
Revolution, author John Robbins 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." Because
of deforestation to create grazing land, each vegetarian saves
an acre of trees per year.
"We
definitely take up more environmental space when we eat meat,"
says Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation.
"I think it's consistent with environmental values to
eat lower on the food chain."
The
Human Health Toll
There
is some evidence to suggest that the human digestive system
was not designed for meat consumption and processing (see
sidebar), which could help explain why there is such high
incidence of heart disease, hypertension, and colon and other
cancers. Add to this the plethora of drugs and antibiotics
applied as a salve to unnatural factory farming conditions
and growing occurrences of meat-based diseases like E. coli
and Salmonella, and there's a compelling health-based case
for vegetarianism.
The
factory-farmed chicken, cow or pig of today is among the most
medicated creatures on Earth. "For sheer overprescription,
no doctor can touch the American farmer," reported Newsweek.
According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) report, the use of antimicrobial drugs for nontherapeutic
purposes -- mainly to increase factory farm growth rates --
has risen 50 percent since 1985.
Ninety
percent of commercially available eggs come from chickens
raised on factory farms, and six billion "broiler"
chickens emerge from the same conditions. Ninety percent of
U.S.-raised pigs are closely confined at some point during
their lives. According to the book Animal Factories by Jim
Mason and Peter Singer, pork producers lose $187 million annually
to chronic diseases such as dysentery, cholera, trichinosis
and other ailments fostered by factory farming. Drugs are
used to reduce stress levels in animals crowded together unnaturally,
although 20 percent of the chickens die of stress or disease
anyway.
One
result of these conditions is a high rate of meat contamination.
Up to 60 percent of chickens sold in supermarkets are infected
with Salmonella entenidis, which can pass to humans if the
meat is not heated to a high enough temperature. Another pathogen,
Campylobacter, can also spread from chickens to human beings
with deadly results.
In
1997, more than 25 million pounds of hamburger were found
to be contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7, which is spread by
fecal matter. The bacteria are a particular problem in hamburger,
because the grinding process spreads it throughout the meat.
E. coli, the leading cause of kidney failure in young children,
was the culprit when three children died of food poisoning
after eating at a Seattle Jack in the Box restaurant in 1993.
Business
as usual at the animal farm: From left: chicken debeaking,
cow confinement, poultry transport and hog crowding.
The
British epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE),
or mad cow disease, which began in 1986 and has affected nearly
200,000 cattle, jumps to beef-eating humans in the form of
the always-fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). The CDC
reports that an average of 10 to 15 people have contracted
CJD from meat in Britain each year since it was first detected
in 1994. In 1998, the British Medical Association warned in
a report to Members of Parliament, "The current state
of food safety in Britain is such that all raw meat should
be assumed to be contaminated with pathogenic organisms."
In 1997, it added, Salmonella or E. coli infected a million
people in Britain. BSE spreads through cattle that are fed
contaminated central nervous-system tissue from other animals.
"Its future magnitude and geographic distribution...cannot
yet be predicted," the CDC reported. In the U.S., deer
have been affected with chronic wasting disease, which has
many similarities to British BSE, though a definitive link
to humans has not been established.
In
the book Eating With Conscience, Dr. Michael W. Fox reports
that what is known as "animal tankage" -- the non-fat
animal residue from slaughterhouses -- is used in a wide variety
of products, from animal feed and fertilizer to pet food.
Dr. Fox adds that hundreds of cats in Europe (and several
zoo animals) that ate tankage-laced food have contracted forms
of BSE. The Japanese outbreak is believed to have originated
in BSE-contaminated feed imported from Europe.
According
to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 10
million animals that were dying or diseased when slaughtered
were "rendered" (processed into a protein-rich meal)
in 1995 for addition to pig, poultry and pet food. Animals
that collapse at the slaughterhouse door or during transportation
are called "downers," and their corpses are routinely
processed for human consumption. A 2001 Zogby America poll
conducted for the group Farm Sanctuary found that 79 percent
of Americans oppose this practice, which could be an entry
point for BSE into the U.S. meat supply. Farm Sanctuary petitioned
the USDA in 1998 to end processing of downer meat for human
consumption, but its petition was denied.
Europe
will spend billions of dollars bringing a virulent epidemic
of yet another animal-borne disease -- foot-and-mouth -- under
control. In the last two years, 60 countries have had outbreaks
of foot-and-mouth, which kills animals but does not spread
to people.
One
of the major western exports is a taste for meat, though it
brings with it increased risk of heart disease and cancer.
Clearly, there is something seriously wrong with a diet and
food production system resulting in such waste, endemic disease
and human health threats.
Caring
About Animals
The
average meat eater is responsible for the deaths of some 2,400
animals during his or her lifetime. Animals raised for food
endure great suffering in their housing, transport, feeding
and slaughter, which is something not clearly evident in the
neatly wrapped packages of meat offered for sale at grocery
counters. Given the information, many Americans -- especially
those with an environmental background -- recoil at knowing
they participate in a meat production system so oppressive
to the animals caught up in it.
The
family farm of the nineteenth century, with its "free-range"
animals running around the farmyard or grazing in a pasture,
is largely a thing of the past. Brutality to animals has become
routine in today's factory farm. A recent article in the pig
industry journal National Hog Farmer recommends reducing the
average space per animal from eight to six square feet, concluding
"Crowding pigs pays." Morley Safer reported on the
television program 60 Minutes that today's factory pig is
no "Babe": "[They] see no sun in their limited
lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows
live in tiny cages, so narrow they cannot even turn around.
They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through
slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits."
Beef
cattle are luckier than factory pigs in that they have an
average of 14 square feet in the overcrowded feedlots where
they live out their lives. Common procedures for beef calves
include branding, castration and dehorning. Veal calves, taken
away from their mothers shortly after birth, live their entire
lives in near darkness, chained by their necks and unable
to move in any direction. They commonly suffer from anemia,
diarrhea, pneumonia and lameness.
Virtually
all chickens today are factory raised, with as many as six
egg-laying hens living in a wire-floored "battery"
cage the size of an album cover. As many as 100,000 birds
can live in each "henhouse." Conditions are so psychologically
taxing on the birds that they must be debeaked to prevent
pecking injuries. Male chicks born on factory farms -- as
many as 280 million per year -- are simply thrown into garbage
bags to die because they're of no economic value as meat or
eggs.
Some
95 percent of factory-raised animals are moved by truck, where
they are typically subjected to overcrowding, severe weather,
hunger and thirst. Many animals die of heat exhaustion or
freezing during transport.
Some
of the worst abuse occurs at the end of the animals' lives,
as documented by Gail Eisnitz' book Slaughterhouse, which
includes interviews with slaughterhouse workers. "On
the farm where I work," reports one employee, "they
drag the live ones who can't stand up anymore out of the crate.
They put a metal snare around her ear or foot and drag her
the full length of the building. These animals are just screaming
in pain." He adds, "The slaughtering part doesn't
bother me. It's the way they're treated when they're alive."
Dying animals unable to walk are tossed into the "downer
pile," and many suffer agonies until, after one or two
days, they are finally killed.
The
threat to slaughterhouse workers' safety is largely underreported
or ignored in the media. For example, Mother Jones magazine,
in an otherwise admirable story on slaughterhouse workers,
barely mentions the frequent injuries caused by pain-wracked
animals lashing out inside the slaughterhouses. Despite the
existence of the Humane Slaughter Act and regular USDA inspection,
animals are often skinned alive or -- in a major threat to
worker safety -- regain consciousness during slaughtering.
The
Vegetarian Solution
Vegetarianism
is not a new phenomenon. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras
was vegetarian, and until the mid-19th century, people who
abstained from meat were known as "Pythagoreans."
Famous followers of Pythagoras' diet included Leonardo da
Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein.
The word "vegetarian" was coined in 1847 to give
a name to what was then a tiny movement in England.
In
the U.S., the 1971 publication of Diet For a Small Planet
was a major catalyst for introducing people to a healthy vegetarian
diet. Other stimuli included Peter Singer's 1975 book Animal
Liberation, which gave vegetarianism a moral underpinning;
Singer and Jim Mason's book Animal Factories, the first expose´
of confinement agriculture; and John Robbins' 1987 Diet for
a New America. In the U.S., according to a 1998 Vegetarian
Journal survey, 82 percent of vegetarians are motivated by
health concerns, 75 percent by ethics, the environment and/or
animal rights, 31 percent because of taste and 26 percent
because of economics.
Is
the vegetarian diet healthy? The common perception persists
that removing meat from the menu is dangerous because of protein
loss. Lappé says there is danger of protein deficiency
if vegetarian diets are heavily dependent upon 1) fruit; 2)
sweet potatoes or cassava (a staple root crop for more than
500 million people in the tropics); or 3) the particular western
problem, junk food.
But
Reed Mangels, nutrition advisor to the Vegetarian Resource
Group (VRG), says vegetarians can meet their protein needs
"easily" if they "eat a varied diet and consume
enough calories to maintain their weight. It is not necessary
to plan combinations of foods. A mixture of proteins throughout
the day will provide enough 'essential amino acids.'"
Although
meat is rich in protein, Vegetarian and Vegan FAQ reports
that other good sources are potatoes, whole wheat bread, rice,
broccoli, spinach, almonds, peas, chickpeas, peanut butter,
tofu (soybean curd), soymilk, lentils and kale.
Supermarket
shelves overflow with soy- or seitan-based meat substitutes.
The soybean contains all eight essential amino acids and exceeds
even meat in the amount of usable protein it can deliver to
the human body. (It should be noted, however, that some people
are allergic to soy, and the "hyper-processing"
of some soy-based foods reduces the useful protein content.)
Animal rights advocates also claim that, contrary to the urging
of the meat and dairy industries, humans need to consume only
two to 10 percent of their total calories as protein.
How
many vegetarians are there in the U.S.? It depends on whom
you ask. A PETA fact sheet asserts that 12 million Americans
are vegetarians, and 19,000 make the switch every week. Pamela
Rice, author of 101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian, puts the
number at 4.5 million, or 2.5 percent of the population, based
on recent surveys. Older counts, from 1992, put the number
of people who "consider themselves" to be vegetarians
at seven percent of the U.S. population, or an impressive
18 million. A 1991 Gallup Poll indicated that 20 percent of
the population look for vegetarian menu items when they eat
out.
Actual
vegetarian numbers may be lower. VRG got virtually the same
results in two separate Roper Polls it sponsored in 1994 and
1997: One percent of the public, or between two and three
million, is vegetarian (eats no meat or fish, but may eat
dairy and/or eggs), with a third to half of them living on
a vegan diet (eschewing all animal products). Roughly five
percent in both studies "never eat red meat." A
2000 poll was slightly more optimistic, putting the number
of vegetarians at 2.5 percent of the population. Women are
more likely to be vegetarians than men; and -- surprisingly
--Republicans are slightly more likely to abstain from meat
than Democrats.
The
American Dietetic Association says in a position statement,
"Appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful,
are nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in
the prevention and treatment of certain diseases." Vegetarians
now have excellent opportunities to put together well-planned
meals. The sale of organic products in natural food stores
is the highest growth niche in the food industry, according
to Nutrition Business Journal, and it grew 22 percent in 1999
to $4 billion. The natural food markets of today are not the
tiny storefronts of yesteryear, but full-service supermarkets,
with vigorous competition among giant national chains. Diverse
veggie entrees are now available in most supermarkets and
on a growing list of restaurant menus.
It's
never been easier to become a vegetarian, and there have never
been more compelling reasons for environmentalists to make
that choice. It's not always easy to do -- most environmentalists
still eat meat -- but the tide is beginning to turn.
For
resources about vegetarianism, contact:
International Vegetarian Union
http://www.ivu.org
North American Vegetarian Society
http://www.navs-online.org
Vegetarian Resource Group
http://wwwv.vrg.org
Source:
http://www.eMagazine.com
