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Here is some information taken from EarthSave International about eating meat that may disturb
you:
*reprinted in Student's Vegetarian Cookbook by Carloe Raymond (Three River's Press, 2003).
- Livestock consume 70 percent of U.S. grain production. Twenty million people die each year as a result of malnutrition
and starvation. Americans could feed 100,000,000 people by reducing their intake of meat by just 10 percent.
- One acre of prime land can produce many pounds of edible product. Here are a few examples: 30,000 pounds of apples,
40,000 pounds of potatoes, 50,000 pounds of tomatoes....250 pounds of beef.
- Livestock--cattle, poultry, goats, sheep,--totalling 15 billion worldwide now outnumber people three to one. Livestock
graze on half of the worlds land mass. The explosion of livestock populations has resulted in a parallel explosion of
animal wastes that pollute surface and ground water. U.S. livestock produce 230,000 pounds of excrement per second.
The amount of waste created by a 10,000-head feed lot is equal to the waste of a city of 110,000 people.
- World livestock production is now a significant factor in the emission of two of the four global warming gasses: carbon
dioxide and methane. Every steak we eat has the same effect as a 25-mile drive in a typical American car.
- Each year, an estimated 125,000 square miles of rainforest are permanently destroyed, bringing about the extinction of
approximately 1,000 plant and animal species.
- Producing 1 pound of feedlot steak results in the loss of 35 pounds of topsoil. It takes 200 to 1,000 years to form
1 inch of topsoil.
- It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 edible pound of beef. It takes 49 gallons of water to produce 1 edible
pound of apples.
- Eighty percent of the meat produced in the United States contains drugs that are passed on to you when you eat it.
- Animal products contain large quantities of saturated fat and cholesterol and have no dietary fiber. The U.S. Surgeon
General has stated that 68 percent of all diseases are diet related. A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and grains (and
free from animal products) can prevent, improve, and sometimes cure breast cancer, osteoperosis, prostate cancer, impotence,
and obesity.
- Seventy-five percent of federal poultry inspectors say they would not eat chicken.
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