How can you vegans live with yourselves?!
How can you vegans live with yourselves?
thousands of tress are cut down and thousands more animals are left homeless due to expanding farms.
and just because a plant can't feel does not mean it deserves to die.
Answers:
Time to do your homework - if the massive amounts of country side were not wasted to support the meat industries, the US alone could feed the world.
I don't eat trees; most are cut down to make lumber for houses and for furniture, etc.....
Slam your head in a door. You'll feel it and the plants will thank you.
You got it a tad mixed up. It's the meat industry that uses alot more land then vegetable farmers.
-Half of the water used in the U.S. is used for animal agriculture.
-Every year in the US an area the size of Connecticut is lost to topsoil erosion--85% of this erosion is associated with livestock production.
-Livestock already consume half the world's grain, and their numbers are still growing almost exponentially.
-Every kilogram of beef we consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland, requires around 100,000 litres of water.
-Approximately 1.3 billion cattle populate the earth at any one time. They exist artificially in these vast numbers to satisfy the excessive human demand for the meat and by-products they provide. Their combined weight exceeds that of the entire human population. By sheer numbers, their consequent appetite for the world's resources, have made them a primary cause for the destruction of the environment.
-In the US, feedlot cattle yield one pound of meat for every 16 pounds of feed. It takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat. According to Newsweek, "The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float a destroyer." In contrast, it takes only 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat. Feeding the average meat-eating American requires 3-1/4 acres of land per year.
-Feeding a person who eats no food derived from animals requires only 1/6 acre per year. - Studies by North Carolina State University estimate that half of the some 2,500 open hog manure cesspools (euphemistically termed "lagoons"), now needed as part of hog productions there, are leaking contaminants such as nitrate--a chemical linked to blue-baby syndrome--into the ground water.
-Worldwide demand for fish, along with advances in fishing methods--sonar, driftnets, floating refrigerated fish packing factories--is bringing ocean species, one after another, to the brink of extinction. In the Nov., '95 edition of Scientific American, Carl Safina writes, "For the past two decades, the fishing industry has had increasingly to face the result of extracting [fish] faster than fish populations [can] reproduce." Research reveals that the intended cure--aquaculture (fish farming)--actually hastens the trend toward fish extinction, while disrupting delicate coastal ecosystems at the same time.
-A scientist, reporting in the industry publication Confinement, calculated in 1976 that the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years if the whole world were to take on the diet and technological methods of farming used in the US.
-If tomorrow people in the US made a radical change away from their meat-centered diets, an area of land the size of all of Texas and most of Oklahoma could be returned to forest.
-It is estimated that livestock production accounts for twice the amount of pollution in the US as that produced by industrial sources.
-Livestock in the US produce 130 times the excrement of the entire US population. Since farm animals today spend much or all of their lives in factory sheds or feedlots, their waste no longer serves to fertilize pastures a little at a time. One poultry researcher, according to United Poultry Concerns literature, explains: "A one-million-hen complex will produce 125 tons of wet manure a day." To responsibly store, disperse, or degrade this amount of animal waste is simply not possible. Much of the waste inevitably is flushed into rivers and streams.
-Methane is one of the four greenhouse gasses that contributes to the environmental trend known as global warming. The 1.3 billion cattle in the world produce one fifth of all the methane emitted into the atmosphere.
-.Agricultural engineers have compared the energy costs of producing poultry, pork and other meats with the energy costs of producing a number of plant foods. It was found that even the least efficient plant food was nearly 10 times as efficient in returning food energy as the most energy efficient animal food.
-Since so much fossil fuel is needed to produce it, beef could be considered a petroleum product. With factory housing, irrigation, trucking, and refrigeration, as well as petrochemical fertilizer production requiring vast amounts of energy, approximately one gallon of gasoline goes into every pound of grain-fed beef.
-The direct and hidden costs of soil erosion and runoff in the US, mostly attributable to cattle and feed crop production, is estimated at $44 billion a year.
- Each pound of feedlot beef can be equated with 35 pounds of eroded topsoil.
-A nationwide switch to a pure vegetarian diet would allow us to cut our oil imports by 60%.
-Compared to a vegan diet, three days of a typical American diet requires as much water as you use for showering all year (assuming you shower every day).
-An acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes, but only 165 pounds of beef.
-In the U.S., 260 million acres of forest have been destroyed for use as agricultural land to support our meat diet (over 1 acre per person).
-Since 1967, the rate of deforestation has been one acre every five seconds.
-Trees are being cut down at an alarming rate in the US, as well as around the world, for meat production. For every one acre cleared for urban development, seven acres are cleared to graze animals or grow feed for them.
Have a stalk of celery with your bloody Mary.
your stupid!!!!!
I am a "save the rainforest" kinda person, all the way.
Uhmmm.. you know what those farms are for? NOT For human consumption of grain! They're for COWS and food for COWS..
Beef is an EXTREMELY inneficient food, as far as the environment is concerned. Very wasteful way of producing food.
Did you know that if we took all the grain we feed all the cattle in the world for ONE day.. we could make enough bread to give every single human being on earth, 2 loaves of bread... and by EVERY HUMAN BEING, I mean including the starving children in Africa that haven't eaten in weeks. That's ONE DAY's food. Think those kids in Africa would appreciate 2 loaves of bread per day?
DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT STARTING to try to prove that vegetarianism hurts the environmnent. Your totally weak argument will rip like a sheet of toilet paper under the pressure of my environmental research fire hose.
as for deserving to die.. it is a biological fact that we have to eat SOMETHING.( If you don't want to eat, go ahead. Give me your family's address and I'll send a card to your funeral.) So, if we must eat something, what?
choice A: An animal that can feel, think, experience pain and emotions (I can prove all this, but this answer is getting too long allready)
CHoice B: A plant without a brain or centeral nervous system that can experience neither emotions, pain, thoughts or any physical sensation. (These things are impossible withouot a brain or CNS)
Hmmm.. real hard choice for me.
You have no argument here, you're just wasting your time as well as everyone else's.
Quit being an idiot.
Do it at least for your own sake, please.
i didn't cut it down
you eat everything and pollute more then vegans so go down the street to st. fu
take a left on diaf
We can live with ourselves just fine-its clueless fools like you that we have a hard time with. I am assuming you eat vegetables as well as meat, so that just shows that you dont give a flip what your eating habits do to the environment, just as long as you get to stuff your greedy face. Besides, I grow my own veggies and fruits-no trees going to waste because of me.
Definetly mixed up, thats what you are! Read vegan&prouds info if you can bother yourself, there is no reason for me to repeat. Let me ask you this, why does someone spend so much time trying to find the hypocricy in anothers life who is actually trying to do something to better the worlds conditions? yes believe it or not living on a vegan diet has alot more to do with than a persons eating habits. It helps lessen the enviroments hazards, reduces health risks, and saves land and animals at the same time. Though it may not be as significant a % as we would like it to be, it will only rise as the number of vegetarian/vegans do., and the demand for meat drops. Do you eat vegetables and plant based foods? Do you eat meat on top of that? How do you live with yourself?
lol cannibal i didnt know there was a threat to humanity in vermont. do you live day to day wondering if you are going to be eaten? if you want vegs to leave you alone dont put so much effort into taunting them for making a better choice for a healthier and harmless lifestyle than you have. Or take your questions elsewhere, since you plan on blocking anyone with differing opinions than yourself.
Comment to you tree huggers, I am a small farmer and I do so for self sufficiency. I use the manure to help grow my vegetables and I raise the animals to eat. I have no problem with eating animals or choosing not to eat animals but, if you expect us meat eaters to respect you, you may want to start respecting our choices. Come on up to Vermont, step on any farmers land and tell them they are animals killers. You may not like the response you will get. Some parts of the country you have no choice but to eat or be eaten. I have no interest in hurting anyone or anything but the reality is that if I or my family must make a choice, it is to kill the animal. Get over it. You will die of starvation and mineral deficiency before I will. I don't have to take vitamins and supplements to keep my eyes open. I eat a steak!!!!!!
Cannibal C, I think it is quite ironic that you come into a section that is for the discussion of vegetarian questions, and expect everyone here to not be opposed to the consumption of meat. You talk about respect, but you are the one being confrontational here. Many people were simply answering the question with the correct information, in order to give a bit of insight to the person who asked.
I believe there are far more meat eaters that have a problem respecting the choices of vegetarians, which is apparent in your last sentence. As a vegetarian I do not take vitamins and supplements, my diet provides me with everything I need to be healthy.
Personally I could care less what your family does to survive and make a living. I am more opposed to factory farming, which is cruel, than to the small farmer. The truth of the matter is that there are more "farms" that are cruel than ones like yours.
I don't need nor want the respect of a person such as yourself, and a lot of vegetarians I'm sure feel the same. Many don't care what people such as your self have to say, and that is something you need to get over.
Its funny that they don't kow that their precious soy is the number one cause of deforestation in the Amazon. The number one cause of detah for rodentia is combines in organic grain farms. They don't care about aniumals or their health they only want people to tell them they are cool at Indy rock concerts.
To person above. Most of the soy is for animal feed, not for people.
I STRONGLY agree with you to a point. Plants do have feelings and they can feel pain. That's why I don't eat plants. Think about this: plants help combat global warming because they absorb carbon dioxide, thus eating to many plants causes global warming.
are you a moron?
The rainforest is being cut down in large part, because of animal farming and for growing soy to feed to the animals.
That teensy weensy bit of smug pleasure you probably felt at posting this silly question will hopefully ease the void in your life. It must be nice having lots of time on your hands.