Herbivore

Happy World Vegetarian Day!

So, last week I gave my "For the Animals" reasons as to why I'm a veggie, but today I would like to present the "For the Environment" reasons (for those of you who don't give a damn about the critters ... which is fine, it's your call). Below are some Fun Facts from goveg.com about the environmental impacts of meat production ... it's pretty interesting stuff no matter which food route you are taking.

"A 2006 United Nations report summarized the devastation caused by the meat industry by calling it 'one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.'"

Land
• An area of rain forest the size of 7 football fields is destroyed EVERY MINUTE to make room for grazing cattle, but each vegetarian saves 1 acre of trees every year.

Food
• It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat, and more than 70% of the grain and cereals that we grow in this country are fed to farmed animals.

• The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth. About 20 percent of the world's population, or 1.4 billion people, could be fed with the grain and soybeans fed to U.S. cattle alone.

Energy
• Of all raw materials and fossil fuels currently used in the U.S., more than 1/3 goes to raising animals for food (producing fertilizer for crops to feed the animals, oil to run trucks that take them to slaughter, electricity to freeze their carcasses)

• If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than a half-million cars off U.S. roads.

Water
It takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat (watering crops to feed animals, drinking water for animals, cleaning the stanky warehouses and trucks, etc), while growing 1 pound of wheat requires only 25 gallons of water.

• You save more water by not eating 1 pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year (This one blows my mind!)

Global Warming
• Eating 1 lb of meat emits the same amount of greenhouse gasses as driving an SUV 40 miles, and scientists are now saying that the meat industry is one of the leading sources of greenhouse gasses that lead to global warming.

And ...
• If you're a glutton for punishment, check out "Meet Your Meat" ... I made it about 45 seconds into the video before I had to turn it off. Go ahead, watch it ... I dare you.

An "I Love Natalie Portman" Sidenote:
Yep, she's a veggie too :)

And so are Forest Whitaker, Russell Simmons, Sir Paul McCartney, Pamela Anderson, Alec Baldwin, the Dalai Lama, Clint Eastwood (yup, you heard it here), Alicia Silverstone ....

Happy Veggie Day!

I'll give it a rest now ... but since it is my blog, I figure I can ramble about whatever I want to ;) And you just might have learned a little something in the process (I did!).