Sarah Martin (Edison): Vegetarianism Will Save the Planet.

28. August 2009 by student.

We Americans love our meat. Socially, we depend upon it. I remember going to countless neighborhood barbecues and church banquets where even the green beans had chunks of pig in them and the only vegetarian options were the desserts. Every Christmas there’s a big pig on the table and a turkey for Thanksgiving complete with giblet gravy. It seems like every social get-together is based around food, and for Americans that means a lot of meat with a side of even more pollution. But is the 260 pounds of animal carcass the average American eats per year worth the depletion of the ozone layer? With all of the vegetarian options out there we have no need to consume as much meat as we do, if any at all.

The United Nations released a report in 2006 stating that the meat industry produces more pollution than all of the cars, planes, trains, and boats in the world combined. The meat industry is one of the biggest in the world. Aside from the massive amounts of land they bulldoze every minute (seven football fields, according to scientists at the Smithsonian Institution) to create room for all of the animals and the millions of tons of food they consume annually, they also use crazy amounts of water. It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of cow flesh as opposed to the 180 gallons to make 1 pound of whole-wheat flour. So as the great Bill Maher so eloquently put it into perspective, “It’s more energy efficient to eat a salad in a hummer, than a burger in a hybrid.” 

   References:

http://www.sakia.org/cms/fileadmin/content/irrig/general/kreith_1991_water_inputs_in_ca_food_production-excerpt.pdf 

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20772&Cr=global&Cr1=environment

Smithsonian Institution, “Smithsonian Researchers Show Amazonian Deforestation Accelerating,” Science Daily 15 Jan. 2002.

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