Eating for the Environment
As factory farms intensively confine greater numbers of animals, the toll of such industrialized practices weighs heavily on the environment, depleting resources and contaminating habitats. Toxins, chemicals, gasses, and uncontainable amounts of manure from these facilities pollute the soil, water, and air, causing massive environmental degradation and deteriorating public health.
Inefficient Use of Land and Food
Nearly 10 percent of the U.S. land area is used to grow feed for animals raised for meat, and another 32 percent is used for grazing cattle, making livestock production the largest single use of land in the country. To produce a single pound of meat, egg, or milk protein, depending on the species, 3 to 12 pounds of feed protein are needed. Producing all of this feed for farm animals uses more land, water, fertilizer, pesticides, and energy than would be used if we simply ate plant foods directly. Production of chicken meat, for instance, requires 14 times as much energy and 40 percent more cropland per unit of protein as the production of soybeans.
Polluting Air, Water, and Land
Annually in the United States, farm animals produce 1.4 billion tons of feces and urine, and much of this waste — millions of gallons — eventually finds its way into neighboring ecosystems:
The Toll on Wildlife
The staggering amount of farm animal waste can have a devastating impact on wildlife. A U.S. Senate report noted, "Spills of liquid animal waste directly into water have an immediate environmental impact, choking out fish and other aquatic life."(9) One study estimated that between 1990 and 2000, farm animal manure was responsible for 74 percent of fish kills caused by agriculture and led to more fish kills than municipal and industrial sources of pollution, combined.(10) And most of the clearance of tropical rainforests is done to produce pasture or cropland for growing animal feed.(11) This loss of habitat has devastated threatened animal and plant species. A report by the U.S. Forest Service named cattle grazing in the American West "the Number One cause of species being put on the endangered species list in the Southwest and fourth major cause, nationwide."(12) And wild animals are often directly slaughtered to protect agricultural interests. For example, the USDA's Wildlife Services spends millions of dollars to exterminate mountain lions, coyotes, and other wildlife to prevent livestock loss and crop destruction.
Wasted Resources
A plant-based diet requires far fewer resources to sustain life than the typical American diet, which is heavy on animal products. For perspective, compare how many more resources are needed to produce one pound of processed animal protein compared to one pound of processed soy protein (see the table below):
| Resources |
To Produce One Pound of Processed Soy Protein |
To Produce One Pound of Processed Animal Protein |
| Land Needed | 1 | 6 to 17 |
| Water Needed | 1 | 4.4 to 26 |
| Fossil Fuel Needed | 1 | 6 to 20 |
|
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