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Tuesday 17 November 2009
Vegetarianism is a major step for environmental change

Here’s why: The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the synthetic fertilizer used in the United States, contributing more than any other sector to marine dead zones. It consumes 70 percent of the water in the American West — water so heavily subsidized that if irrigation supports were removed, ground beef would cost $35 a pound. Livestock accounts for at least 21 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally — more than all forms of transportation combined. Domestic animals — most of them healthy — consume about 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced. Undigested antibiotics leach from manure into freshwater systems and impair the sex organs of fish.

It takes a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of conventional beef. If all the grain fed to animals went to people, you could feed China and India. That’s just a start.

20 notes

  1. earlyfrost reblogged this from azspot and added:
    Here’s why: The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the...
  2. abcsoupdot reblogged this from azspot and added:
    Here’s why: The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the...
  3. alexanderpf reblogged this from azspot and added:
    *Excluding wild hunted meat Here in Alabama we have a massive deer population — and unlike feedlot cattle and factory...
  4. mandigray reblogged this from azspot
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