I have been a long time reader but never felt the need to post. However I just could not pass this thread by. Just like the rest of my life - a day late and a dollar short - but here goes.
I became a vegan because of concerns about the inhumane treatment of animals in the meat/egg/milk industries. In my small way I am not willing to contribute to the pain and suffering those animals go through.
Since going vegan I have learned other things that make me upset with myself for waiting so long. Dr. Greger has a website about the harm that consuming animal products can cause. And he is by no means by himself. Do with it what you will, I just pass it along in the interest of information sharing.
http://www.nutritionfacts.org
And there is a lot of information about climate change out there. Many are saying that the biggest thing we can do to halt climate change is to change our diet. I know this does not apply to the people here who are farming animals but the majority of people in the USA are not farming.
http://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gas-sources
"There are 2 ways that greenhouse gases enters our atmosphere. One of them is through natural processes like animal and plant respiration. The other is through human activities. The main human sources of greenhouse gas emissions are: fossil fuel use, deforestation, intensive livestock farming, use of synthetic fertilizers and industrial processes."
All things being equal:
some of the fossil fuel is used to cultivate, fertilize, plant, harvest, water large fields of animal feed
other water use: "At 50 degrees, a cow may consume about five to seven gallons per day, but the amount increases by 0.4 gallons per day for every one-degree increase in air temperature. At 95 degrees, the same cow will drink an average of twenty-four gallons per day."
http://www.noble.org/ag/livestock/waterconcerns/
some of the fossil fuel is used to take the feed to the animals, harvest the animals and take to slaughter houses, take the meat for processing if not done right there in the slaughter house, distribution out in a chain -> large companies -> smaller warehouses -> grocery stores -> our fuel to pick that meat (and produce) up
paul wheaton wrote:And then he did some math and exploration of a vegetarian diet eating conventional (non-organic) food. Just for the pesticides sprayed on wheat, millions of birds are killed. The author makes an issue of the number of lives taken by pesticides alone, that a vegetarian kills more animals than an omnivore.
So then you go to organic. The author spends a lot of time in the book exploring organic factory farms. Tilling is done far more often to fight weeds. Tilling kills all sorts of little furry creatures in the soil. Based on the tilling alone, the organic omnivore kills fewer animals than the organic vegetarian.
some of the synthetic fertilizers are used to grow their food also, and don't omnivores eat wheat products?
a lot of the deforestation, especially in the Amazon is for animal grazing
some of those industrial processes have to be the big factory farming operations, synthetic fertilizer production, and whatever other chemicals used (not to mention the billions of dollars spent in PR to make you think you need their products)
cows and pigs produce a lot of methane - respiration and flatus
China is the biggest producer of meat and who knows what kind of regulations they have in place. I don't trust the USDA, how am I going to be confident about meat coming from another country.
I may be misunderstanding the point. If that is the case, please excuse me for jumping to conclusions.
