World Food Crisis: Is global meat consumption a major cause?

Is a change of diet key to solving global warming & food crisis. Some facts While 100 million tons of grain are being diverted to make fuel this year, over seven times as much (760 million tons) will be used to feed animals. The world's passion for meat is a much bigger cause of global hunger than its passion for the car. To maximise food production it is best to be vegan. According to Simon Fairlie, in his magazine The Land, it would take just 3 million hectares of arable land to meet Britain's food needs, half the current total, if the population were vegan. * To produce 1 lb of meat, an average of 40 lbs of vegetation is used. * 12 lbs of wheat produce 12 loaves of bread and only 1hamburger. * It takes 3.25 acres of land to produce food for a meat eater on a continuing basis, while it takes 1/3 of an acre for someone eating a diet of plants and dairy and 1/6 of an acre for a person eating totally plant based diet (vegan). * A University of California Study shows that to produce 1 lb of meat it takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water, it takes 966 gallons of water to produce one gallon of cow's milk and on the other hand plant foods such as wheat, corn, apples etc. take 20 to 50 gallons of water to produce one pound of food. * Eating food crops first hand produces a tremendous energy savings. To produce one pound of protein derived from beef requires 20 times as much fossil fuel energy as the same one pound of protein derived from corn or wheat. Protein from beef requires 40 times more fossil fuel energy than the same amount of protein derived from soybeans. * The waste released in the atmosphere by the U.S. Meat and Dairy Industry is 230,000 pounds per second, thus polluting earth, air and water systems. * It is estimated that it takes 75,000 trees to print a Sunday edition of The New York Times for the readers. These staggering numbers are a wake up-call for us to make a difference now. Human Welfare * Twenty vegetarians can be fed on the amount of land needed to feed one person consuming a meat-based diet. * If America reduced their intake of meat by 10 percent, 60 million people can be adequately fed by grain saved. * A cow has to eat 7 lbs of grain and soy bean protein to produce 1 lb of meat protein. If the same land were to produce food for humans directly, 7 times more people could eat. * More than half of all the water used in the United States is used in live stock production that can be used where there is water shortage. When we become aware of these facts and change our lifestyle and go vegan we can increase the amount of grain available to feed people elsewhere, reduce pollution, save water and energy, cease contributing to the clearing of forests and the most important we can save thousands of sentient beings from torture and pain. Today the dairy cows have become milking machines for human beings. The cows are kept pregnant every year for a consecutive 9-10 year period by artificial insemination. As soon as the cows stop yielding milk, they are dragged to the slaughter house for beef meat. Poor calves are forcefully dragged away from their mothers, depriving them of their mother's milk that is rightfully theirs. If the calves are female they are raised as dairy cows and are exploited as their mothers and at the end face the same fate as them. If the calves are male they are fattened by hormone injections and kept in dark sheds away from sunlight in oppressed conditions, preparing them for veal meat. This ultimately ends the lives of the cows and calves prematurely and cruelly.

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YouTube | April 30, 2008

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