So You're an Environmentalist; Why Are You Still Eating Meat?

by Jim Motavalli, E Magazine

There has never been a better time for environmentalists to become
vegetarians. Evidence of the environmental impacts of a meat-based
diet is piling up at the same time its health effects are becoming
better known. Meanwhile, full-scale industrialized factory farming
-- which allows diseases to spread quickly as animals are raised in
close confinement -- has given rise to recent, highly publicized
epidemics of meat-borne illnesses. At press time, the first
discovery of mad cow disease in a Tokyo suburb caused beef prices to
plummet in Japan and many people to stop eating meat.

All this comes at a time when meat consumption is reaching an
all-time high around the world, quadrupling in the last 50 years.
There are 20 billion head of livestock taking up space on the Earth,
more than triple the number of people. According to the Worldwatch
Institute, global livestock population has increased 60 percent
since 1961, and the number of fowl being raised for human dinner
tables has nearly quadrupled in the same time period, from 4.2
billion to 15.7 billion. U.S. beef and pork consumption has tripled
since 1970, during which time it has more than doubled in Asia.

Americans spend $110 billion a year on meat-intensive fast food, and
its growing popularity around the world may be a factor in dramatic
increases in global meat consumption.

One reason for the increase in meat consumption is the rise of
fast-food restaurants as an American dietary staple. As Eric
Schlosser noted in his best-selling book Fast Food Nation,
"Americans now spend more money on fast food -- $110 billion a year
-- than they do on higher education. They spend more on fast food
than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded
music -- combined."

Strong growth in meat production and consumption continues despite
mounting evidence that meat-based diets are unhealthy, and that just
about every aspect of meat production -- from grazing-related loss
of cropland and open space, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast
quantities of water and grain to cattle in a hungry world, to
pollution from "factory farms" -- is an environmental disaster with
wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences. Oregon State
University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke calls factory farming
"a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and
air pollution problems."

World Hunger and Resources

The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to produce one pound of beef
for human beings represents a colossal waste of resources in a world
still teeming with people who suffer from profound hunger and
malnutrition.

According to the British group Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60
people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing
corn and only two producing cattle. Britain -- with 56 million
people -- could support a population of 250 million on an
all-vegetable diet. Because 90 percent of U.S. and European meat
eaters' grain consumption is indirect (first being fed to animals),
westerners each consume 2,000 pounds of grain a year. Most grain in
underdeveloped countries is consumed directly.

Somalian famine victims line up for food handouts. Producing a pound
of beef requires 4.8 pounds of grain, and critics of our modern
agricultural system say that the spread of meat-based diets
aggravates world hunger. David & Peter Turnley / Corbis

While it is true that many animals graze on land that would be
unsuitable for cultivation, the demand for meat has taken millions
of productive acres away from farm inventories. The cost of that is
incalculable. As Diet For a Small Planet author Frances Moore Lapp
writes, imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. "Then imagine
the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of
them. For the 'feed cost' of your steak, each of their bowls could
be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains."

Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat
production by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to
feed 60 million people. Authors Paul and Anne Ehrlich note that a
pound of wheat can be grown with 60 pounds of water, whereas a pound
of meat requires 2,500 to 6,000 pounds.

Environmental Costs

Energy-intensive U.S. factory farms generated 1.4 billion tons of
animal waste in 1996, which, the Environmental Protection Agency
reports, pollutes American waterways more than all other industrial
sources combined. Meat production has also been linked to severe
erosion of billions of acres of once-productive farmland and to the
destruction of rainforests.

McDonald's took a group of British animal rights activists to court
in the 1990s because they had linked the fast food giant to an
unhealthy diet and rainforest destruction. The defendants, who
fought the company to a standstill, made a convincing case. In court
documents, the activists asserted, "From 1970 onwards, beef from
cattle reared on ex-rainforest land was supplied to McDonald's." In
a policy statement, McDonald's claims that it "does not purchase
beef which threatens tropical rainforests anywhere in the world,"
but it does not deny past purchases.

Circle Four Farms, a Utah-based pork producer, hosts a three-million
gallon waste lagoon. When lagoons like this spill into rivers and
lakes as happened in North Carolina in 1995, the result can be
environmentally catastrophic. AP Photo / Douglas C. Pizac

According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA),
livestock raised for food produce 130 times the excrement of the
human population, some 87,000 pounds per second. The Union of
Concerned Scientists points out that 20 tons of livestock manure is
produced annually for every U.S. household. The much-publicized 1989
Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped 12 million gallons of oil
into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River
hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of
excrement and urine into the water, killing an estimated 10 to 14
million fish and closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds.
Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of a virulent microbe
called Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in
North Carolina alone.

More than a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in
the U.S. are used in animal production. Beef production alone uses
more water than is consumed in growing the nation's entire fruit and
vegetable crop. Producing a single hamburger patty uses enough fuel
to drive 20 miles and causes the loss of five times its weight in
topsoil. In his book The Food Revolution, author John Robbins
estimates that "you'd save more water by not eating a pound of
California beef than you would by not showering for an entire year."
Because of deforestation to create grazing land, each vegetarian
saves an acre of trees per year.

"We definitely take up more environmental space when we eat meat,"
says Barbara Bramble of the National Wildlife Federation. "I think
it's consistent with environmental values to eat lower on the food
chain."

The Human Health Toll

There is some evidence to suggest that the human digestive system
was not designed for meat consumption and processing (see sidebar),
which could help explain why there is such high incidence of heart
disease, hypertension, and colon and other cancers. Add to this the
plethora of drugs and antibiotics applied as a salve to unnatural
factory farming conditions and growing occurrences of meat-based
diseases like E. coli and Salmonella, and there's a compelling
health-based case for vegetarianism.

The factory-farmed chicken, cow or pig of today is among the most
medicated creatures on Earth. "For sheer overprescription, no doctor
can touch the American farmer," reported Newsweek. According to a
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, the use of
antimicrobial drugs for nontherapeutic purposes -- mainly to
increase factory farm growth rates -- has risen 50 percent since
1985.

Ninety percent of commercially available eggs come from chickens
raised on factory farms, and six billion "broiler" chickens emerge
from the same conditions. Ninety percent of U.S.-raised pigs are
closely confined at some point during their lives. According to the
book Animal Factories by Jim Mason and Peter Singer, pork producers
lose $187 million annually to chronic diseases such as dysentery,
cholera, trichinosis and other ailments fostered by factory farming.
Drugs are used to reduce stress levels in animals crowded together
unnaturally, although 20 percent of the chickens die of stress or
disease anyway.

One result of these conditions is a high rate of meat contamination.
Up to 60 percent of chickens sold in supermarkets are infected with
Salmonella entenidis, which can pass to humans if the meat is not
heated to a high enough temperature. Another pathogen,
Campylobacter, can also spread from chickens to human beings with
deadly results.

In 1997, more than 25 million pounds of hamburger were found to be
contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7, which is spread by fecal matter.
The bacteria are a particular problem in hamburger, because the
grinding process spreads it throughout the meat. E. coli, the
leading cause of kidney failure in young children, was the culprit
when three children died of food poisoning after eating at a Seattle
Jack in the Box restaurant in 1993.

Business as usual at the animal farm: From left: chicken debeaking,
cow confinement, poultry transport and hog crowding.

The British epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or
mad cow disease, which began in 1986 and has affected nearly 200,000
cattle, jumps to beef-eating humans in the form of the always-fatal
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). The CDC reports that an average of
10 to 15 people have contracted CJD from meat in Britain each year
since it was first detected in 1994. In 1998, the British Medical
Association warned in a report to Members of Parliament, "The
current state of food safety in Britain is such that all raw meat
should be assumed to be contaminated with pathogenic organisms." In
1997, it added, Salmonella or E. coli infected a million people in
Britain. BSE spreads through cattle that are fed contaminated
central nervous-system tissue from other animals. "Its future
magnitude and geographic distribution...cannot yet be predicted,"
the CDC reported. In the U.S., deer have been affected with chronic
wasting disease, which has many similarities to British BSE, though
a definitive link to humans has not been established.

In the book Eating With Conscience, Dr. Michael W. Fox reports that
what is known as "animal tankage" -- the non-fat animal residue from
slaughterhouses -- is used in a wide variety of products, from
animal feed and fertilizer to pet food. Dr. Fox adds that hundreds
of cats in Europe (and several zoo animals) that ate tankage-laced
food have contracted forms of BSE. The Japanese outbreak is believed
to have originated in BSE-contaminated feed imported from Europe.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), more than 10
million animals that were dying or diseased when slaughtered were
"rendered" (processed into a protein-rich meal) in 1995 for addition
to pig, poultry and pet food. Animals that collapse at the
slaughterhouse door or during transportation are called "downers,"
and their corpses are routinely processed for human consumption. A
2001 Zogby America poll conducted for the group Farm Sanctuary found
that 79 percent of Americans oppose this practice, which could be an
entry point for BSE into the U.S. meat supply. Farm Sanctuary
petitioned the USDA in 1998 to end processing of downer meat for
human consumption, but its petition was denied.

Europe will spend billions of dollars bringing a virulent epidemic
of yet another animal-borne disease -- foot-and-mouth -- under
control. In the last two years, 60 countries have had outbreaks of
foot-and-mouth, which kills animals but does not spread to people.

One of the major western exports is a taste for meat, though it
brings with it increased risk of heart disease and cancer. Clearly,
there is something seriously wrong with a diet and food production
system resulting in such waste, endemic disease and human health
threats.

Caring About Animals

The average meat eater is responsible for the deaths of some 2,400
animals during his or her lifetime. Animals raised for food endure
great suffering in their housing, transport, feeding and slaughter,
which is something not clearly evident in the neatly wrapped
packages of meat offered for sale at grocery counters. Given the
information, many Americans -- especially those with an
environmental background -- recoil at knowing they participate in a
meat production system so oppressive to the animals caught up in it.

The family farm of the nineteenth century, with its "free-range"
animals running around the farmyard or grazing in a pasture, is
largely a thing of the past. Brutality to animals has become routine
in today's factory farm. A recent article in the pig industry
journal National Hog Farmer recommends reducing the average space
per animal from eight to six square feet, concluding "Crowding pigs
pays." Morley Safer reported on the television program 60 Minutes
that today's factory pig is no "Babe": "[They] see no sun in their
limited lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows
live in tiny cages, so narrow they cannot even turn around. They
live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats
beneath them and flushed into huge pits."

Beef cattle are luckier than factory pigs in that they have an
average of 14 square feet in the overcrowded feedlots where they
live out their lives. Common procedures for beef calves include
branding, castration and dehorning. Veal calves, taken away from
their mothers shortly after birth, live their entire lives in near
darkness, chained by their necks and unable to move in any
direction. They commonly suffer from anemia, diarrhea, pneumonia and
lameness.

Virtually all chickens today are factory raised, with as many as six
egg-laying hens living in a wire-floored "battery" cage the size of
an album cover. As many as 100,000 birds can live in each
"henhouse." Conditions are so psychologically taxing on the birds
that they must be debeaked to prevent pecking injuries. Male chicks
born on factory farms -- as many as 280 million per year -- are
simply thrown into garbage bags to die because they're of no
economic value as meat or eggs.

Some 95 percent of factory-raised animals are moved by truck, where
they are typically subjected to overcrowding, severe weather, hunger
and thirst. Many animals die of heat exhaustion or freezing during
transport.

Some of the worst abuse occurs at the end of the animals' lives, as
documented by Gail Eisnitz' book Slaughterhouse, which includes
interviews with slaughterhouse workers. "On the farm where I work,"
reports one employee, "they drag the live ones who can't stand up
anymore out of the crate. They put a metal snare around her ear or
foot and drag her the full length of the building. These animals are
just screaming in pain." He adds, "The slaughtering part doesn't
bother me. It's the way they're treated when they're alive." Dying
animals unable to walk are tossed into the "downer pile," and many
suffer agonies until, after one or two days, they are finally
killed.

The threat to slaughterhouse workers' safety is largely
underreported or ignored in the media. For example, Mother Jones
magazine, in an otherwise admirable story on slaughterhouse workers,
barely mentions the frequent injuries caused by pain-wracked animals
lashing out inside the slaughterhouses. Despite the existence of the
Humane Slaughter Act and regular USDA inspection, animals are often
skinned alive or -- in a major threat to worker safety -- regain
consciousness during slaughtering.

The Vegetarian Solution

Vegetarianism is not a new phenomenon. The ancient Greek philosopher
Pythagoras was vegetarian, and until the mid-19th century, people
who abstained from meat were known as "Pythagoreans." Famous
followers of Pythagoras' diet included Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin
Franklin, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein. The word
"vegetarian" was coined in 1847 to give a name to what was then a
tiny movement in England.

In the U.S., the 1971 publication of Diet For a Small Planet was a
major catalyst for introducing people to a healthy vegetarian diet.
Other stimuli included Peter Singer's 1975 book Animal Liberation,
which gave vegetarianism a moral underpinning; Singer and Jim
Mason's book Animal Factories, the first expose of confinement
agriculture; and John Robbins' 1987 Diet for a New America. In the
U.S., according to a 1998 Vegetarian Journal survey, 82 percent of
vegetarians are motivated by health concerns, 75 percent by ethics,
the environment and/or animal rights, 31 percent because of taste
and 26 percent because of economics.

Is the vegetarian diet healthy? The common perception persists that
removing meat from the menu is dangerous because of protein loss.
Lapp says there is danger of protein deficiency if vegetarian diets
are heavily dependent upon 1) fruit; 2) sweet potatoes or cassava (a
staple root crop for more than 500 million people in the tropics);
or 3) the particular western problem, junk food.

But Reed Mangels, nutrition advisor to the Vegetarian Resource Group
(VRG), says vegetarians can meet their protein needs "easily" if
they "eat a varied diet and consume enough calories to maintain
their weight. It is not necessary to plan combinations of foods. A
mixture of proteins throughout the day will provide enough
'essential amino acids.'"

Although meat is rich in protein, Vegetarian and Vegan FAQ reports
that other good sources are potatoes, whole wheat bread, rice,
broccoli, spinach, almonds, peas, chickpeas, peanut butter, tofu
(soybean curd), soymilk, lentils and kale.

Supermarket shelves overflow with soy- or seitan-based meat
substitutes. The soybean contains all eight essential amino acids
and exceeds even meat in the amount of usable protein it can deliver
to the human body. (It should be noted, however, that some people
are allergic to soy, and the "hyper-processing" of some soy-based
foods reduces the useful protein content.) Animal rights advocates
also claim that, contrary to the urging of the meat and dairy
industries, humans need to consume only two to 10 percent of their
total calories as protein.

How many vegetarians are there in the U.S.? It depends on whom you
ask. A PETA fact sheet asserts that 12 million Americans are
vegetarians, and 19,000 make the switch every week. Pamela Rice,
author of 101 Reasons Why I'm a Vegetarian, puts the number at 4.5
million, or 2.5 percent of the population, based on recent surveys.
Older counts, from 1992, put the number of people who "consider
themselves" to be vegetarians at seven percent of the U.S.
population, or an impressive 18 million. A 1991 Gallup Poll
indicated that 20 percent of the population look for vegetarian menu
items when they eat out.

Actual vegetarian numbers may be lower. VRG got virtually the same
results in two separate Roper Polls it sponsored in 1994 and 1997:
One percent of the public, or between two and three million, is
vegetarian (eats no meat or fish, but may eat dairy and/or eggs),
with a third to half of them living on a vegan diet (eschewing all
animal products). Roughly five percent in both studies "never eat
red meat." A 2000 poll was slightly more optimistic, putting the
number of vegetarians at 2.5 percent of the population. Women are
more likely to be vegetarians than men; and -- surprisingly --
Republicans are slightly more likely to abstain from meat than
Democrats.

The American Dietetic Association says in a position statement,
"Appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, are
nutritionally adequate and provide health benefits in the prevention
and treatment of certain diseases." Vegetarians now have excellent
opportunities to put together well-planned meals. The sale of
organic products in natural food stores is the highest growth niche
in the food industry, according to Nutrition Business Journal, and
it grew 22 percent in 1999 to $4 billion. The natural food markets
of today are not the tiny storefronts of yesteryear, but
full-service supermarkets, with vigorous competition among giant
national chains. Diverse veggie entrees are now available in most
supermarkets and on a growing list of restaurant menus.

It's never been easier to become a vegetarian, and there have never
been more compelling reasons for environmentalists to make that
choice. It's not always easy to do -- most environmentalists still
eat meat -- but the tide is beginning to turn.

For resources about vegetarianism, contact:

International Vegetarian Union (www.ivu.org)
North American Vegetarian Society (www.navs-online.org)
Vegetarian Resource Group (wwwv.vrg.org)