Eating Meat

I don't think there is a more acceptable act in American culture than eating meat. I became a vegetarian four years ago for many reasons, one of them being the costs to the environment of the production of meat. The production of meat wastes food, water, energy, and land in the process of production.

Meat is very inefficient. We have to feed animals plant protein to get flesh protein out of them. In every case, we put more plant protein into animals than we get out in flesh protein. For example, it takes between 16-21 pounds of plant protein to get one pound of protein from beef. It also takes around 12,000 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef as opposed to a number in the low hundreds, or less, for a pound of plant foods (depending on the plant). My basic point is that we grow plants to feed animals when we could just eat the plants.

Some may say that the food fed to animals is not fit for human consumption. This is true in some cases. However, the land used to grow food for animals could be used to grow food that humans could eat. Which brings me to my next point...The land wasted on animal production, raising the animals themselves and the food to feed them, could be used much more efficiently by using that land for to grow crops people could eat. This, like the last point, is not complicated or hard to understand. You can produce more food from growing plants than you can from "raising" animals in the same amount of space. It's just that simple.

The above points have been made without consideration of the current realities of "farming" or raising animals for food. Billions (literally) of cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys are "raised" every year in the US. Unfortunately, many of these animals are not raised on mom and pop farms. Many are raised on what have come to be known as factory farms. Factory farms are large scale, industrialized farms. The number of farms in the US has been in rapid decline for the past few decades while production of animals has been increasing and concentrating in fewer, yet larger, factory farms.

The industrialized production of animals leads to some very negative consequences. One of the major consequences is pollution. Factory farms can have tens of thousands of animals in a very small area. What happens when you feed these animals food? They poop. Though dung from vegetarian animals can be used as fertilizer, most of it is just dumped in "lagoons" near the production facility. Too much animal dung in one place is horrible for the environment. It can ruin the land in which the lagoon sits, it can seep into the ground water of the surrounding area, and the methane from the dung can be harmful to humans and the climate.

Also, when you have that many animals in such close quarters, with poop everywhere, factory farms become a breeding ground for disease. So, those who run these farms give the animals antibiotics to strengthen their immune systems. Antibiotics used in these conditions can find their way into our bodies, or help create more resistant strains of bacteria. Producers in industrialized farms may also use steroids to make the animals reach maximum size faster. These antibiotics and steroids remain in the flesh of the animals and are passed on to humans.

This topic cannot be discussed without addressing what happens to animals in the process of turning them into food. While traditional farming techniques are not so harmful to animals (except the slaughter part), modern industrialized farming techniques are barbaric. In factory farms, animals can live their entire lives indoors in conditions not fit for any living being. For different animals the circumstances are different. Pigs can be confined to "crates", most of the chicken consumed is raised in "battery cages" that have been banned in other countries, and cattle can been raised on cement floors. I will do a post later on about the horrors of modern farming, but modern farming can't be discussed without at least acknowledging this point.

Another aspect of this topic that must be mentioned are the health effects of the amount of meat Americans consume. We eat a lot of f*ckin meat, more than most other cultures, and this American tradition has become a problem. Consuming so much meat, and neglecting other foods (like fresh fruits and vegetables), has led to high rates in preventable diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and other, equally preventable illnesses.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg.  This is just an overview of some of the reason I choose not to eat meat.

Here are some helpful links for those interested:
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?142

http://bigteaparty.com/2008/02/08/environmental-effects-of-meat/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_meat_production
http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-m/singer02.htm
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1826
http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=103