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I stopped eating animals two months ago. Thank you, BlogHer Book Club.
So what happened?
Two months ago, I read the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, whose novel Everything is Illuminated is one of my all-time favorites. I didn’t choose to read Eating Animals because of the topic but because I loved its author and because it was a BlogHer book club selection; I honestly didn’t expect to learn anything more about the meat industry I hadn’t already read about in The Omnivore’s Dilemma or Fast Food Nation or seen in the film Food Inc. I knew how bad the conventional meat industry was. I knew that the conditions for chickens, cows, and pigs were abysmal and that raising them, as well as overfishing the oceans, was wreaking havoc on the environment.
And yet, I loved cheeseburgers.
I mean, I really really loved them. And believe it or not, the cheeseburgers I craved were not even made from organic, humanely raised meat, but came from McDonald’s. I loved McDonald’s double cheeseburgers, to be exact. And I also reserved a special place in my heart for McDonald’s Egg McMuffins with their slabs of Canadian bacon. I mostly resisted these “foods” and felt extreme guilt when I occasionally succumbed to the urge. But the negative consequences of eating that kind of meat were purely intellectual to me. In practice, I had a hard time connecting that burger with the animal it had been. Eating less meat, especially less factory farmed meat, was something I did because I knew I “should.” I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it.
And I should have known. I used to drive past the Harris Ranch feedlot every time I visited my brother in Coalinga. The rank smell preceded it for miles. And when you finally came upon the “ranch,” the sight was appalling. Thousands of cows jammed together, feeding from troughs, and standing and lying in their own shit. It was depressing. And yet still, there was a disconnect in my brain between the cheeseburger that tasted so good, and this:
According to Wikipedia, Harris Ranch keeps about 100,000 cattle on 800 acres. That’s .008 acres per cow. Compare that to the 1-2 acres per cow needed for pasture grazing, which is how calves are raised before they are weaned and forced to spend the rest of their lives in these deplorable conditions. Passing the feedlot, I would feel a momentary twinge of sadness and guilt before turning my head to look away.
If seeing a sight like the Harris Ranch feedlot didn’t stop me from craving meat, perhaps my knowledge of the environmental damage resulting from the meat industry should have.
Environmental Consequences of Industrial Meat Production
Consider the following points from the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization’s 2009 report: The State of Food and Agriculture – Livestock in the balance (PDF):
- Livestock production generates about 18% of human-derived greenhouse gas emissions.
- Animals confined in feedlots produce a larger concentration of waste than the environment can absorb, resulting in pollution runoff into our waterways and groundwater.
- The grain and forage required to feed livestock has led to the destruction of large portions of the world’s forests for crops and grazing land, forests necessary to sequester carbon dioxide and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- Industrial meat production requires huge amounts of water — for feed crops, for animals, for cooling and cleaning facilities, and for processing the meat itself. For these reasons, the livestock industry accounts for 8% of global water use.
- Cattle contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions directly through exhalations of methane gas (burps and farts) as well as nitrous oxide from their manure.
- Illnesses such as swine and avian flu are more likely to mutate into more aggressive diseases in intensive feed operations where animals are crowded together and pathogens can gain access to an abundance of susceptible hosts.
Those are just a few of the major environmental effects of the industrial meat industry. And the industrial fishing industry contributes to the destruction of entire marine ecosystems. Knowing these facts prevented me from eating flesh foods on a regular basis. I
