How’s Your Food Karma?, Part II: Eco Impacts

The famous writer, Michael Pollan—himself a meat eater—said, "a vegan driving a Hummer has a smaller carbon footprint than a meat eater driving a Prius." While this comparison may be closer to a tie, the reality is our current and projected consumption of animals and all that entails—massive water consumption, nitrate pollution, methane emissions, and concentrated factory farming practices to name a few—is taking an enormous toll on our natural environment and contributing significantly to global warming.

My intent is not to make enemies out of those who—out of habit or conscious choice—consume animals for food. My intention is to point out some of the consequences and encourage people to at least practice and promote consuming less meat.

The United nations FAO undertook a comprehensive study—Livestock's Long Shadow - Environmental Issues and Options—regarding the environmental impacts of consuming animals for food in 2006. Based on that study, the FAO concluded that livestock are responsible for a larger share of greenhouse gas emissions than even transportation—18%. Further, the report estimates that livestock contributes to about 9% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, 7% of methane and 65% of nitrous oxide emissions. They further conclude that we must take urgent action to correct the massive negative impact that animal production is having and is his projected to have on the environment.

Intensive animal farming produces massive amounts of waste

I remember being shocked years ago by the fact from the book Cadillac Desert that the largest water user in the state of California was not the city of Los Angeles but growing grass to graze cattle. A few other facts about animal consumption and its negative impacts on the environment include the following (from John Robbins’ Diet for a New America):
•    Three times more fossil fuels are needed to produce food for a meat centered diet than a meat free diet,
•    85% of topsoil loss is directly related to raising livestock,
•    55 square feet of tropical rainforest is destroyed for every ¼ pound of rainforest beef produced,
•    300,000,000 pounds of meat are imported to the US annually from Central and South America,
•    More than half of all water used in the US for all purposes is used for livestock production,
•    It takes 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, it takes 5000 gallons of water to produce a pound of California beef,
•    If every human follows a meat centered diet the world's known oil reserves will only last 13 years, if human beings no longer ate meat they would last 260 years,
•    33% of all raw materials consumed in the US are devoted to production of livestock, 2% of all raw materials consumed in the US are needed to produce a complete vegetarian diet,

It's your choice what you eat, but let's make it a conscious choice based on the facts. We all have to decide for ourselves, and everyone has a different approach. I chose to give up animals for food all at once; some choose to wean themselves off of meat slowly. I hope you will consider giving up meat consumption entirely, and if that doesn't work, I hope you will choose to consistently reduce your consumption of animals starting now by going meat free one or two days a week, increasing the number of days each month from there.

There are lots of great resources for how to eat healthy, tasty food free from animal products. One good source is Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which has a free vegetarian starter kit.

According to Captain Paul Watson, "The bottom line is that to be a conservationist and an environmentalist, you must practice and promote vegetarianism or better yet veganism."




Here are some related links:
vegan hummer vs meat eater in a prius: http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2007/04/vegans-vs-hybrids.html
NYT article: Rethinking the  Meat Gussler http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_meat_production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock%27s_Long_Shadow
http://www.tommywonk.com/2008/01/environmental-impact-of-meat.html

How's Your Food Karma?

As much as we may try to deny it or ignore it, our actions have profound consequences. This is certainly true in the area of our food choices.

I have personally chosen a vegan path. Having said that, I'm not very judgmental. Some of my best friends and most of my relatives are meat eaters. We all need to make our own choices. I do, however, encourage people to look at the full impact of our choices and make decisions in light of that. BTW, “vegan” diet means a plant-based diet focusing on grains, fruits, legumes, and vegetables with no animal products. So in addition to no animal flesh, that means no eggs or dairy as well. And, no, fish are not plants). So my purpose here is to inform rather than judge peoples’ choices in life.

After growing up as a typical omnivore eating my share of meat (and even teasing my then vegetarian sister for her diet), I first came to a vegetarian diet after being captivated by the philosophy of nonviolence so eloquently articulated by Mahatma Gandhi. Inspired by that, I was seeking to live a more nonviolent life and promote that in the world, however, I realized that my food choices directly brought violence to other living beings. I saw the hypocrisy in that and I decided to change it. The close second motivation for me was realizing that it was not only better for other living beings, but it was healthier for me to exist on a diet free of meat. I was moving into a new household, and one of my roommates was a vegetarian, so I asked him all the typical questions like "what you eat?” and "what you do for protein?” That was more than 25 years ago and I haven't looked back since.

Some years later I realized (and finally admitted to myself) that the egg and dairy industry also brings its share of death and suffering to other living beings. And I decided to go vegan. Again a close second concern at that point was the negative health impacts of dairy and eggs (see Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine for some good info on plant-based diets here). I had often experienced a lot of sniffling and running nose, and although my intake of eggs was minimal, I had at times been consuming lots of dairy products, and those have more than their fair share of cholesterol. I did find that once I went vegan, my energy got a subtle boost and I found that my nose was much clearer. I continue to be in great health and rarely get even a cold or flu.

Around the time I was going vegan, I also started understanding more deeply the environmental impacts of our food choices, which are huge and which I'll cover more in a future post. Suffice it to say that the closer we are to maintaining a plant-based diet, the better it is not only for our health, but for that of the planet (not to mention the animals are happier too). One great source of info related to environmental and health impacts of our animal-centered diet is John Robbins’ book, Diet for a New America (http://www.johnrobbins.info/other-books-by-john/diet-for-a-new-america/).

If I am to articulate a concise piece of my philosophy, I would say that we and the planet would be better off to let go of our anthropocentric view that whatever is outside of us exists for our pleasure, use, and abuse. The current environmental problems we face are directly related to acting according to this viewpoint. I believe other living beings have a right to exist of their own accord, or more eloquently in Alice Walker’s words, “The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men." Again, I put this out not as a judgment, but as a perspective that I hope is helpful for those who choose to see it that way.