The benefits of a vegetarian diet grows
In an small opening notation found in the free magazine from ASDA (a popular supermarket in the UK) had the heading Meat-Free Mondays
It referred to an article by the UN at notes that having one meat-free day a week will make an effective difference to greenhouse gas emissions and habitat destruction as nearly a fifth of global emissions comes from meat production.
The article finishes on notating that it will also save you a few pounds.
I checked the rest of the magazine and found it had three recipes:
Broccoli and Cheese Soup
Spiced Bulgar Wheat
Bramley Apple open-top pie
It reminded me of a recent trip to Cardiff bay I went for a nice walk and found a restaurant proudly calling itself Muksha with a small explanation as to it’s meaning; most notably a reference to the need to reduce Karma through the way we live our lives.
With some interest I looked at the menu, may be finally the devotees had moved into a prime spot at the bay ready to catch the tourists with lovely prasadam? The image of devotees chanting the holy names along the day during the summer months and those taking in the extraordinary taste of Krishna prasadam.
So I decided to look at the menu it started well the starters looked promising lovely vegetarian preparations nothing that could not be offered; now what about the main course? HUM! Frankly a notation on Karma was a bit lost, yes you guessed it you can’t have a main course without meat especially chicken and beef how disappointing; may be the owners wish for their customers to take the bodies of animals and they could have more to sell on their menu. The image of happy young people full of the joys of a good day or night out being abruptly ended as they left in a pig’s body came to mind.
As we ruin the planet with mass production of animals for slaughter to satisfy demand and after all we can solve the world hunger, fuel and economic problems with two minor changes: wholesale vegetable production and cow protection.
Interesting then that the NHS has announced that in order to reduce their carbon footprint they are going to reduce the amount of meat and dairy products which was welcomed by friends of the earth and a notation that “livestock production is leading to more climate-changing emissions than transport – and expansion of animal feed plantations is wiping out forests in South America”
But at least the message is starting to slowly get out there is a safer more effective alternative that of whole sale agricultural farming (more veg please I’m saving the planet)
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"Do not hesitate to use your American and European brains, that is Krishna's special gift to you, now use it. Any activity which will please Krishna should be accepted favorably."
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environmental reasons to go veg
The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:
"A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter: What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."
---John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America, and President, EarthSave Foundation
One study puts animal waste in the United States to between 2.4 trillion to 3.9 trillion pounds per year. The United states produces 15,000 pounds of manure per person. This is 130 times the amount of waste produced by the entire human population of the United States.
A 1,000-cow dairy can produce approximately 120,000 pounds of waste per day. This is the functional equivalent of the amount of sanitary waste produced by a city of 20,000 people.
A 20,000-chicken factory produces about 2.4 million pounds of manure a year. Poultry factories are one of the fastest growing industries throughout Asia.
One pig excretes nearly three gallons of waste per day, or 2.5 times the average human's daily total. One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles, and some pig farms are much larger.
Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution. This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.
Meat production causes deforestation, which then contributes to global warming. Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the destruction of forests around the globe to make room for grazing cattle furthers the greenhouse effect. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations reports that the annual rate of tropical deforestation has increased from 9 million hectares in 1980 to 16.8 million hectares in 1990, and unfortunately, this destruction has accelerated since then. By 1994, a staggering 200 million hectares of rainforest had been destroyed in South America just for cattle.
"The impact of countless hooves and mouths over the years has done more to alter the type of vegetation and land forms of the West than all the water projects, strip mines, power plants, freeways, and sub-division developments combined."
---Philip Fradkin, in Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York
Agricultural meat production generates air pollution. As manure decomposes, it releases over 400 volatile organic compounds, many of which are extremely harmful to human health. Nitrogen, a major by-product of animal wastes, changes to ammonia as it escapes into the air, and this is a major source of acid rain. Worldwide, livestock produce over 30 million tons of ammonia. Hydrogen sulfide, another chemical released from animal waste, can cause irreversible neurological damage, even at low levels.
The world Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted. Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic.
The United States and Europe lose several billion tons of topsoil each year from cropland and grazing land, and 84 percent of this erosion is caused by livestock agriculture. While this soil is theoretically a renewable resource, we are losing soil at a much faster rate than we are able to replace it. It takes 100 to 500 years to produce one inch of topsoil, but due to livestock grazing and feeding, farming areas can lose up to six inches of topsoil a year.
Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. That includes the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used to produce the crops that feed the animals. By comparison, urbanization only affects 3 percent of the United States land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom. Meat production consumes the world's land resources.
Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.
The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock. The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.
The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water, the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of topsoil.
33 percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only 2 percent of our resources will go to the production of food.
"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."
---Jeremy Rifkin, author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.