All this talk about hurricane Patricia being the strongest
recorded in history adds to the concern of animal welfare, human welfare,
and the future of our planet…
“Scientists have linked the global ocean temperature
departures from average to manmade global warming, in addition to El
Niño.”
On manmade global warming and climate change: The
meat industry (chickens, pigs, cows, dairy, eggs) is number 1 cause of global
warming, 51% of greenhouse emissions are coming from animal agriculture. http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
“Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.”
This is more than all transportation: planes, trains, cars, COMBINED.
Goodland, R Anhang, J. “Livestock and Climate Change: What if the key actors in climate change were pigs, chickens and cows?”
Every
minute, 7 million pounds of excrement are produced by animals raised for food
in the US.
This
doesn’t include the animals raised outside of USDA jurisdiction or in
backyards, or the billions of fish raised in aquaculture settings in the US.
All
that excrement is polluting our rivers
and creating ocean
dead zones. There is a huge problem in North
Carolina with hogs and manure.
It
is not just about the ‘meat’ or animals we eat, but the water needed to grow
the grains they eat, the antibiotics we feed them (70% of all the antibiotics
sold in the US are administer to farmed animals) and all the waste the produce
that has ‘nowhere’ to go, the energy needed to run slaughterhouses,
transportation, freezing of the corpses, etc. etc. etc. Beans and broccoli come
from farm to fridge to table, and don’t poop, plant-based protein is more
readily and easily digested by our bodies too.
I have read some of Chris Hedges work, I
didn’t know he is a vegan:
"I'm
a vegan, and I'm a vegan because the animal agriculture industry maybe
surpasses the fossil fuel industry in terms of destroying the planet, and you
can wake up tomorrow and be a vegan." (don’t have to join Greenpeace and
leave your job to fight the fracking industry or Exxon) On California: "And
you're enduring this drought. It takes 1,000 gallons of water to make one
gallon of milk [source: Water Footprint Network]. And milk's not even good for
you. It's made for cows, it's not made for humans. It's made for baby cows. Who
we kill."– Harvard-educated journalist, best-selling author, professor, Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism recipient, and member of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism Chris Hedges of Truthdig
“What We Choose to Eat Is Killing Us and Our Planet” http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/saving_the_planet_one_meal_at_a_time_20141109
You can watch the video here, on FB but open
to the public
Thanks for reading, there is something we can do every day
to help our planet and our health and we can do it 3 times a day, with our
forks.
