Living Vegan For Dummies - Alexandra Jamieson [14]
In this chapter, I discuss the basic truths about the negative impacts that factory farming and animal consumption can have on people’s health, on the environment, and, of course, on the animals themselves. This chapter also sheds light on how a vegan lifestyle helps to counteract these negatives.
Straight Talk about the Ecological Impact of Animal Protein
The practice of raising animals for human consumption is nothing new. The earliest trace of livestock being kept for slaughter dates back several thousand years and continues today around the world. However, only in the last 200 years has large-scale animal agribusiness been taking place in huge feedlots and ranches across the globe. These factory farms are called concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. This animal agribusiness has created systems of raising, slaughtering, and transporting animals so that the production of flesh foods can reach ever-higher quantities to satisfy the growing appetite for meat, poultry, fish, and dairy.
Tied together with rising animal production comes the rising ecological impact of these industries. Massive swaths of land are required to raise cattle, chickens, pigs, and other food animals. Countless tons of clean water are needed for these animals to drink, bathe in, and wash away their waste. Air quality is degraded in ranching and farming communities because of the huge amount of waste created by animals housed so closely together. This section details the effect that animal farming has on water and air quality.
By choosing to live a vegan life, you’re sending a clear message that you understand how your choices affect the world around you, and you choose to be a force for positive change! Food production can be accomplished with less dangerous methods and more humane treatment of animals and people.
Before eating your vegan meals, say a heartfelt prayer of hope for every living critter on earth. The animals could use the psychic blessings, and even our meat-eating friends need a little spiritual support in this day and age.
Water pollution and water scarcity
When large numbers of animals are kept in a contained area, something has to be done with their waste. Many factory farms use huge man-made pools or lagoons to store the animal-made waste. These cesspools, as big as 7 acres and containing 20 to 45 million gallons of wastewater, break or overflow all the time, allowing dangerous pollution, fecal microbes, hormones, drug-resistant bacteria, and antibiotics into the local water supply. Often these pools are close to natural waterways, so the escaped sludge simply gets washed downstream into the nearest river, lake, or ocean. The laws protecting our water supplies, especially where it comes to factory farming, are weak, so little enforcement is available to protect the land and waterways.
The huge quantities of manure in the waterways contain dangerous amounts of salts, heavy metals, phosphorus, and nitrogen. Enormous dead zones are created when these lagoons burst into local waterways. After being released into open water, these contaminants feed algae blooms, which rob the water of oxygen, killing fish, plants, and other wildlife. Farm-animal waste also can carry dangerous microorganisms that have been linked to massive fish kills in coastal waters around the United States.
The connection between livestock production and global warming
In 2006, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published a report titled “Livestock’s Long Shadow — Environmental Issues and Options.” In this report, Henning Steinfeld, the senior author of the report and head of FAO’s Livestock Information and Policy Branch said, “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.” Livestock production was deemed to be a bigger threat and contributor to global warming than pollution from cars. So, it’s true: It’s more environmentally friendly to be an SUV-driving