Vegeterian diet over hybrid cars

Not only has the meat production industry historically exhibited its self as a system that incurs ample costs and environmental damage; contemporarily, with an exponential demand for meat, it demonstrates these practices have not ceased, are only on the rise, and coming with more costs to environmental health, economic health, and human health than in previous decades. While most individuals who are conscious of the environment are aware of the concerns surrounding fossil fuels, oil may not be the only commodity soon topping the charts of environmental blasphemists; the meat production industry is coming up quickly behind, if not already taking a place on par with black gold; and the scariest factor in this dilemma is the fact that while there are alternatives to fossil fuels, there are few, if any, alternatives to producing meat.
One solution offered and supported, now by globally recognized organizations such as the United Nations, not only by subcultures, is a movement in dietary trends away from meat and dairy products; towards a vegetarian lifestyle. While meat does provide individuals with nutrition, and the remains can be used in leather production, ect. The meat industry has, and continues to, pollute the world at rates similar to that of the automobile industry, and unlike the automobile industry, meat is consumed by almost everyone. The meat production industry comes with three primary consequences that are beginning to outweigh any potential benefit yielded in their business; environmental pollution, especially in regards to green house gases, environmental deforestation and destruction of natural resources, and lastly, damage to human health. These are the three main topics I will analyze in this blog; but it is obvious if this topic is analyzed critically, one can realize how the repercussions of the meat production industry stretch out to just about every corner of our environmental and economic concerns.
Human health is negatively impacted primarily by the methods by which meat is produced. Here in the United States, we use a feedlot system, where animals are strictly confined, and quickly raised and slaughtered. This method of raising animals was thought to have been an eco-improvement from the previously used method, the pasture system; where animals are raised longer before slaughter and have free mobility (still used in many African countries and around the globe). However, it has failed “the African pasture system produces more methane than the feedlot system due to the much longer life of the animals when incorporating indirect greenhouse gas production from fossil fuels used in production the feedlot produces nearly twice the greenhouse gases at 14.8 kg CO2 equivalent per kg of beef, compared to 8.1 kg CO2 equivalent per kg of beef in the African pasture system”(Fiala, 2008). Due to the demand for meat and the desire for profit, the feedlot method of raising animals has been adopted by westernized nations and used to produce the most amount of meat for the cheapest cost to production owners; regardless of the cost to human, or environmental health.
While feedlots are able to crank out more meat each day, they are doing so with a deadly trick. Feedlots thrive off of quick turn around; they want the animals, whether they be cows, pigs, or chickens, in, grown, slaughtered, and sold as fast as possible, and as cheaply as possible. To accomplish this, farmers use hormones as the primary accelerant for raising animals, and these hormones pass through from the animal which ingested them, into the human who is ingesting the meat they have purchased.
The hormones and chemicals used in the feed of animals, and in accelerating the growth of animals, are having a horrifically negative impact onto the human population. As a result of farmers wanting to make a bigger buck, and really having to keep up with such an escalating demand, people are experiencing a higher prevalence of cancers and other diseases that can be attributed to the hormones and chemicals used in the meat production industry. Everything from the feed that is used to raise the animals to the supplements given to increase the size of the animals on these feedlots are contributing to the rise in human health deficiencies, early menstruation in girls, and early development in boys. This process also makes the animals very sick, resulting in farms being isolated away from the general population, and requiring ample regulation just to safely function “In order to get a large amount of meat from feedlot cattle, which live around a fourth as long as some pastoral cattle, hormones are used to speed up growth. This often leads to the animals becoming very sick, meaning they must be isolated from people and other animals”(Fiala, 2008).
Additionally, the sanitary conditions of many meat producing farms are poor to under par; it is an irrefutable truth that each year toxic, if not deadly, contaminants from these farms come in contact with our food, and not only with meat products; killing people each year directly, and making thousands ill as a result of poor sanitary conditions. A current topic of further inquiry that is becoming poplar in regards to the meat industry is worker health. It is estimated that workers on these feedlots have significantly poorer health than workers in other jobs, and these findings are being related back to the chemicals used in meat production, and the unsanitary working conditions which are common place on feedlots.
While people who consider their selves to be environmentally conscious are aware of, and probably on top of, the crisis surrounding fossil fuels, many individuals have not even been educated into how detrimental the meat production industry is onto our planet. According to a report published this year by the United Nations Environment Program, the agriculture industry in the United States was on a par with the transportation industry in regards to fossil fuel consumption. While the primary image individuals have in their heads of the meat industry may not be animals driving cars, the amount of fossil fuels consumed in transporting both live and processed animals is ample; as is the amount of fuel needed to run the farms and grow/transport feed/water for the animals. It was estimated in 2008 that “to produce 1 kg of beef in a US feedlot requires the equivalent of 14.8 kg of CO2. As a comparison, 1 gallon of gasoline emits approximately 2.4 kg of CO2. Producing 1 kg of beef thus has a similar impact on the environment as 6.2 gallons of gasoline, or driving 160 miles in the average American mid-size car” (Fiala, 2008).
On the topic of gases, the meat production industry is a leading contributor to green house gases; directly contributing between 4.6 and 7.1 billion tons of green house gases, roughly 15-24% of all green house gas emissions in the United States, annually (Fiala, 2008). Indirectly, an uncalculated value of gases and toxins can be attributed to the meat industry, when other factors such as deforestation and other business practices which collude with the meat industry are taken into consideration.
Meat production plants and farms, like all businesses, do not appear over night or with out making substantial arrangements for their arrival. Unlike cars, which not everyone owns or uses, almost every person consumes meat or dairy products, and the demand for meat and dairy products has been escalating in the past decades, and continues to, at an exponential rate. Keeping up with this demand has lead to larger farms and more farms; and to accommodate for the farms and production plantations, a serious amount of land must be cleared to the ground to make way. This step in meat production is often not taken into consideration, nor is the amount of land that is cleared for animal grazing.
As published in the New York Times, and supplemented by a United Nations report, Brazil stopped the further clearing of their rainforests for crop and grazing land for the meat industry after it had consumed 1,250 square miles of land in five months. Additionally, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, an estimated thirty percent of earth’s ice free land is directly or indirectly used for livestock production, and generates more than a fifth of the world’s green house gases, more than transportation. It is obvious an ample amount of land and resources are used for the production and transportation of meat and dairy, and despite the fact that these are precious commodities to some, and a source of nutrition, the meat industry also stands in the way of solving the global hunger crisis.
Roughly 800 million people world wide suffer from hunger (as of 2008), but majority of the corn and soy grown in the world goes to feeding pigs, cows, and chickens, as reported by Rosamond Naylor, associate professor of economics at Stanford University. While it is arguably a large request for individuals to convert to a vegetarian lifestyle, it would not only be a lifestyle that would allow for environmental restoration to some degree, but also for a solution to the global hunger crisis. With the land that is used to produce meat and feed for that meat, crops of all sorts could be grown and produced in vast quantities arguably large enough to feed the growing population. With populations expanding globally, our diets must undergo a change; as nations develop economically and begin to afford meat in larger quantities, the meat industry is expanding faster and faster, and in many nations that do not have regulations on business practices. China and other Asian countries are leading this expansion, and if other means are not sought to supplement this behavior, the meat industry will expand to unforeseen proportions, raising the amount of gases and toxins put into our earth and bodies, as well as the many resources needed to produce, transport and sustain the meat industry.
Meat is definitely a sought after commodity, however, so is water, food, land, fuel, labor, and health. Converting to a vegetarian lifestyle would be a difficult step to make; however, when pitted between that and converting to hybrid vehicles, I find it impossible to say the latter would yield more of a benefit in regards to restoring the environment. As we face finding a solution to the devastation we have caused unto our planet, we will not find an easy one. Converting to a vegetarian lifestyle would however help the environment amply, gosh, removing it alone could reduce annual green house gas emissions by twenty four percent; not to mind the conversion could allow for solutions to come to other prevalent problems, such as fossil fuel consumption, deforestation, hunger, and contamination of our global resources.

SOURCES USED:
• Fiala, N. (2008). Meeting the demand: an estimation of potential future greenhouse gas emissions from meat production. Ecological Economics, 3(4), Retrieved from http://csaweb110v.csa.com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/ids70/view_record.php?id=3&recnum=7&log=from_res&SID=5ora4suedcuk78g91nmpm49e61&mark_id=search%3A3%3A24%2C0%2C25
• Carus, F. (2010, June 2). Un urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet. The Guardian, Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet
• Bittman, M. (2008, January 27). Rethinking the meat-guzzler. New York Times, Retrieved from http://openwetware.org/images/e/e8/MeatGuzzler_NYT_012808.pdf

by Belal Albar