Hi Jenn H,
Let’s drop beliefs altogether and instead consider facts. It seems my last post didn’t make it through to this thread… I’m guessing it was the links, so let’s try it without references/links and see how it goes. You can always google them.
You said it well here: “there really isn’t a way to not cause harm to other living creatures when growing crops”
I totally agree with that, but disagree with pretty much everything else.
Your thought process about pesticides might make sense if the animals we eat, didn’t eat plants. However, to get an animal to slaughter size/age, it has to be fed–daily. What do most animals that we eat consume for food? Feed that comes from plants… lots and lots of plants. (Some also are fed other animals, that ate plants… further amplifying the cost… but for simplification, we can pretend that doesn’t happen.) Plants grown for livestock feed, typically grown as monocultures, are of course prone to massive infestations and diseases. This is why there is massive pesticide (and herbicide and fungicide) use involved in producing livestock. When we consider the food that livestock consumes as part of the equation, which is only fair as it’s a part of the environmental cost of rearing the animals we eat, it paints a very different picture.
*Land required to feed 1 person for 1 year:
Vegan: 1/6th acre
Vegetarian: 3x as much as a vegan
Meat Eater: 18x as much as a vegan
*1.5 acres can produce 37,000 pounds of plant-based food.
1.5 acres can produce 375 pounds of meat.
Just think how much less land would be needed to produce so much more food if people would even just reduce their meat consumption. Instead of using all of the land that currently goes towards producing livestock feed for human consumption of meat, we could use a fraction of it to produce plants for human consumption.
Veganism and animal cruelty/suffering doesn’t have to be an all or nothing attempt. Any reduction in animal abuse/farming is beneficial for our planet.
Btw, the manure used on crops, needn’t be from animals that aren’t consumed for food. We have no shortage of manure due to livestock that are used for food. More facts:
*Every minute, 7 million pounds of excrement are produced by animals raised for food in the US. This doesn’t include the animals raised outside of USDA jurisdiction or in backyards, or the billions of fish raised in aquaculture settings in the US.
*130 times more animal waste than human waste is produced in the US – 1.4 billion tons from the meat industry annually. 5 tons of animal waste is produced per person in the US.
*In the U.S. livestock produce 116,000 lbs of waste per second:
-Dairy Cows, 120lbs of waste per day x 9 million cows.
-Cattle, 63lbs of waste per day, x 90 million cattle.
-Pigs, 14lbs. of waste per day, x 67 million pigs.
-Sheep/Goats. 5lbs of waste per day, x 9 million sheep/goats.
-Poultry, .25-1lbs of waste per day, x 9 billion birds.
Dairy cows and cattle-1.08 billion pounds per day (from 9 million dairy cows, 120 pounds waste per cow per day) + 5.67 billion pounds per day (90 million cattle, 63 pounds waste per one cattle per day) = 6.75 billion pounds per day waste or 2.464 trillion pounds waste per year (manure+urine)
** 3.745 trillion pounds waste per year(this is the equivalent of over 7 million pounds of excrement per MINUTE produced by animals raised for food in the U.S. excluding those animals raised outside of USDA jurisdiction, backyards, and billions of fish raised in aquaculture settings in the U.S.)
Some more interesting bits:
*Livestock or livestock feed occupies 1/3 of the earth’s ice-free land.
*Agriculture is responsible for 80-90% of US water consumption.
*Growing feed crops for livestock consumes 56% of water in the US.
Just some food for thought… or thoughts on food…
