Animal Agriculture Fact Sheet #3

WAR ON THE ENVIRONMENT

Raising animals for food is the leading cause of environmental destruction and resource depletion throughout the world today. More than all other human activity combined, animal agriculture depletes our topsoil, groundwater, and energy resources and causes the destruction of our forests, waterways, and wildlife habitats.

Land Conversion

Animal agriculture has necessitated the deforestation of millions of acres for conversion to grazing and crop lands to feed farm animals. Often overgrazing and intensive cultivation turn these lands into desert. Though a plant-based agricultural system obviously would require some land to be cultivated in crops, the acreage needed would be only a small fraction of that required by the current animal-based system. According to economic analyst Louis Bean, an acre of land used to produce meat can provide one human with adequate protein for 250 days, while an acre cultivated in soybeans would provide protein for 2,200 days.

In 1982, of the 1,498 million acres of nonfederal land in the U.S., 906 million had been converted to range, pasture, or crop land. For wildlife this usurption of habitat is a holocaust. Many animals are fatally crushed or wounded in the clearing operations. The remainder are pushed into surrounding areas, which are usually either unsuitable habitat or habitat where their ecological niches are already filled.

Typically these animals perish from starvation, abnormal fighting that results from ecological imbalance, or predation. Additionally, long-term loss of denning and nesting sites, small water bodies, and food-providing vegetation are causing severe population declines for many species.

Water Pollution

Animal agriculture is the number one industrial polluter in the U.S. In fact, feedlots and slaughterhouses are responsible for more of the country's water pollution than all other industries and households combined. For every pound of meat produced 100 pounds of livestock manure is dumped into our waterways. Slaughterhouse waste, which is up to several hundred times more concentrated than raw sewage, is dumped into our rivers in the form of fat, carcass waste, and fecal matter at the rate of 100,000 pounds per day.

And that doesn't account for the run-off from the crops used to grow feed for farm animals. Agricultural crops are the source of most of the pesticides, nutrients, leachates, sediment, and other pollutants plaguing our water resources, and more than half of the harvested agricultural acreage in the U.S. is cultivated to produce livestock feed.

Energy Waste

Over 90% of U.S. meat products are produced in highly mechanized, mass-scale "factory" farms - by far the most energy-inefficient way to produce food ever devised. According to John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, if the entire world used this method of food production the world's petroleum reserves would be completely exhausted in 13 years. In contrast, if everyone ate a non-animal-based diet, the earth's petroleum reserves would last 260 years. Forty pounds of soybeans can be produced by the amount of fossil fuel needed to produce one pound of feedlot beef.

Water Waste

Our potable water resources are being depleted at an alarming rate. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, "water use is approaching available supply. Already shortages can occur in any region in any year. Supply and treatment problems are intensifying." Agriculture uses 83 out of every 100 gallons withdrawn and not returned to U.S. streams. Over half the water used in this country is used to irrigate feed crops alone.

Considering the amount of water required for feed crop irrigation, slaughtering and meatpacking operations, and the direct raising of animals, an animal-based diet requires roughly 8 times more water than a plant-based diet. A 1973 New York Post article revealed that one large chicken slaughtering plant uses one hundred million gallons of water every day.

Topsoil Disaster

Former Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland said conventional agribusiness practices are sending us "on a collision course with disaster." To illustrate he stated that 15 tons of topsoil are washing out of the mouth of the Mississippi River every second. Topsoil is the organic soil layer from which plants derive nutrients and moisture. Since colonial times one-third of American topsoil has been lost to erosion. The process has now been accelerated to the point that we are losing up to 50 tons per acre every year. Fully 85% of this erosion is directly attributable to livestock raising.

Destroying Life's Treasure Chest

American meat consumption is the driving force behind the clearcutting of Central and South America's rainforests, about half of which have disappeared since 1960. Tropical rainforests, the world's richest genetic treasure chests, are now vanishing forever at the rate of 40,000 square miles per year.

The destruction is primarily caused by clearcutting to provide pasture for cattle that are slaughtered and shipped to American fast-food franchises as cheap beef. Each 4 ounce hamburger purchased from one of these outlets represents about 55 square feet of rainforest destruction. With these exquisitely complex ecosystems will go potential medicines, food and technological advances that could make significant contributions to human welfare.

Of the many devastating consequences of tropical rainforest destruction, one of the most tragic is the immediate toll on biotic diversity. Roughly 1,000 rainforest species are vanishing from the earth each year due to habitat loss. At least 50% of the planet's species dwell in tropical rainforests. The percentage could be much higher, but many species are still undiscovered. There is no way to estimate how many of these undiscovered species will meet extinction through habitat loss before we learn of their existence.

Many scientists believe rainforest destruction is contributing to global warming. High levels of carbon dioxide are being emitted into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, thereby causing temperature increases through the "greenhouse effect." Because rainforests absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, their destruction may accelerate the global warming trend.

The Politics of Hunger

While 800 million people go hungry, millions of tons of grains and other foodstuff are being diverted to feed farm animals in the grossly inefficient process of producing meat. USDA statistics show during the 1985-1986 feeding year 202.5 million tons of corn, wheat, rye, and other foods were fed to livestock and poultry animals. Yet according to the USDA's Economic Research Service, on average only 1 pound of meat is produced for every 16 pounds of grain fed to cattle.

Ninety-seven percent of the legumes and 90% of the grains produced in the U.S. are fed to livestock, though these food resources could feed all the chronically underfed people in the world. Harvard nutritionist Dr. Jean Mayer states "reducing meat production by only 10% would release enough grain to feed 60,000,000 people."