Cows Are Destroying Our Planet?

Being vegetarian or vegan is not only beneficial to the animals that are being slaughtered but it also beneficial to the earth and helps to reduce global warming. According to Wikipedia, there are more than seven billion people and out of those seven billion people only three hundred and seventy five million people are said to be vegetarian or vegan. This mass slaughter of animals and livestock is also one of the leading causes of global warming. People may think that the earth is slowly dying but that is not the case anymore as global warming has caught up with us. According to NASA, there are 406.94 parts per million of carbon di oxide in the atmosphere the highest it has ever been in 650000 years. The global temperature has risen by 1.7 °F and sixteen out of the seventeen warmest years on earth have been recorded since 2001. The arctic ice minimum has decreased by 13.2% per decade and in 2012 arctic summer sea ice shrank to the lowest extent on record. The global sea level has also grown by 3.4 millimeters per year and the global average sea level has risen nearly 178mm over the past 100 years. These statistics show you how quickly global warming and climate change are having an effect on earth and who knows what the stats will be in another 50 to 100 years the earth may become uninhabitable and humans will be the sole reason for this.

Although many researchers believe that our planet’s environment and ecosystems are facing many challenges due to livestock production, proponents of livestock production believe that the reason why the our environmental condition has worsened is not that we eat more meat — but because we eat less of it. Niman argues that instead of decreasing production, we should focus on producing meat that is more environmentally sound. She also argues that “Feed production—with all its attendant problems of fossil fuel consumption, soil erosion, greenhouse gases, and chemical pollution—can be avoided altogether” (Niman, 79). In “Defending Beef”, she explicitly criticises the FAO’s “Livestock’s Long Shadow” and questions certain statements

Michael Pollan (2009) believes that the dependence on a fossil-fuel based food distribution system is toxic both to the environment and to the human body. Cows and other

All across america, cows are confined to crowded, almost prison-like cells, with little to no regard to their health. They are forced to eat food that includes such ingredients like manure, cement, or even cow brains. This is one side of farming, but there is another. This farming has cows and other animals living how they would in nature, across rolling hills and bright green grasses. This is the essence of Local Sustainable farming. As defined in Michael Pollan’s award-winning commentary about the food we eat, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, the Local Sustainable Food Chain, one of four possible food chains, is characterized by not using pesticides, treating animals humanely, and sustainably creating healthier organic food. Out of Michael Pollan’s food chains, the Local Sustainable Food Chain is the best for America as it is much less harmful to the environment and lets animals live in their natural states.

“Meats, Dairies, and Eggs, Oh Why” (2014) is an argumentative essay written by Rebecca Dent that explains the benefits of eating a plant-based diet and advocates for the better treatment of the animals affected by the meat industry. Dent supports her assertions by discussing the negative health effects of an omnivorous diet, addressing reasons some might be hesitant to convert to a plant-based diet, describing the advantages of substituting meat for vegetables for both the consumers and the animals, and finally, by including expert opinions and statistical facts. Dent’s purpose for this essay is to highlight the benefits of vegetarianism in order to convince readers to convert to a plant-based diet. The intended audience for this argument is those who currently eat an omnivorous diet so that they would assess and change their eating habits.

Brought up in the southern of China, I often heard about that people from there “eat anything with four limbs except tables, anything that flies except aero planes, and anything that swims except ships”. Nevertheless, I eat more fruit, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains but less meat to make careful choices for environmental protection. Similarly, Kathy Freston argues that animal agriculture is one of the top contributors to global warming. In her Huffington Post selection “Vegetarian Is the New Prius,” Freston lists how many emissions of greenhouse gases people make when they eat meat and illustrates the consumption of tree in animal agriculture. She effectively convinces her audiences that the livestock results in the most serious environmental problems and encourages people to lead a greener diet to protect our environment. However, ardent craving, poor health, and perpetual hassle and cost prevent all Americans from being vegetarian.

"Cowspiracy" is a documentary by Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn.   The film explores the multi billion dollar cattle industry, specifically focusing on cows. For years environmental organizations and the government have encouraged society to car pool, ride bikes, take quick showers, conserve electricity and water, compost, and recycle. But is this enough? What if cows in actuality are the leading cause of pollution?

In Margaret Lundberg's short story "Eating green" she has a theory about the planet becoming a healthier place to live if everyone became a vegetarian, which I believe is true. Lundberg talks about her childhood and how right off the bat her mother had her eating healthy food and that pretty much stuck with her through out her whole life. "We had two vegetables with every meal, ate plain yogurt for breakfast, and excercised with jack LaLanne." If most families started off like that it would be easier for kids to enjoy eating healthier food now instead of them liking junk food. Most people do not realize that what they eat does effect the planet and how we live on a daily basis and how badly it effects our health.

Veganism has grown into a widespread trend in the last 70 years; in fact, in the United States approximately 3% of the population reports that they do not eat meat and about a third of this group declare themselves as vegan (Singer and Mason 187). Factory farming is an intensive method of farming that results in inexpensive meat products at the expense of one’s health, the environment, and animals (“Factory Farms”) . Moreover, this form of farming has led to the slow destruction of the planet, the mistreatment of animals, and the increase of various health diseases. Veganism is increasing due to the exposure of the secondary effects caused by industrialized

Meat production in modern conditions and scope can negatively affect the environment. Unfortunately, the entire global transportation of cars, planes, and ships allocates a large amount of interest and disposing of all greenhouse gases. Because in the world, many people who like to eat meat, countries allocate a huge swath of land to make more room for animals. Also scattered land to feed these animals. According to the article “Vegetarianism” by Ramsey. P, “Animals not confined to feedlots pose different problems for the environment. Overgrazing and disagreements about land use in the western United States have become major battleground issues between ranchers and environmentalists.” I believe that this is a big problem for our environment.

The documentary ‘Food Choices’ is about the connection between our food choices and the environment. They stated that eating meat leads to global warming, water scarcity, extinction of spices, Amazon destruction, and depletion of the oceans. This documentary talks about how awful the meat industry is to the earth. The creators of this documentary are strongly pushing a plant based diet and, or veganism. They said that live stock is responsible for 14.5% of global CO2 emissions. Then also stating that that is more emissions that the entire transportation system sector combined. They talk about how our small changes to hep the environment, (taking shorter showers, using energy efficient light bulbs, electric cars, is not really that significant. On the contrary, the way to most affectively help fix climate change would to switch our diets. Apart for being bad for the environment they also strongly support that slaughtering innocent animals is wrong. That say freedom for all things, includes animals. They compared our killing of animals to Hitler and the Holocaust. They said that today with all our resources and other foods, there is no need to eat animals. It is a huge misconception that protein is extremely important. They the way Americans consume meat is ridiculous and completely inhumane and unhealthy.

This image relies on and utilizes the audiences’ emotions. Most people care about the environment and the Earth, therefore more people will be willing to switch to a vegan lifestyle. This image represents another one of PETA’s points on the benefits of becoming a vegetarian. According to PETA, becoming a vegetarian can help save the environment and even affect climate change because the creation of meat factories causes environmental destruction Although PETA’s simple solution to our complex predicament seems to be an easy fix, requiring a society that is rooted on the foundation of meat such as beef burgers, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets can be quite a challenge. PETA states that “typical meat-eaters who switched to a vegan diet reduced their food-related carbon footprint by 60 percent, saving 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year”. According to their independent researcher, the study states that “vegans’ carbon footprint is 25 percent smaller than that of vegetarians, who still eat dairy products and eggs.” Also, PETA states that the amount of methane produced by the billions of animals “produce enormous amounts of methane, through the acres of waste “lagoons” that store their feces”. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “the impact of methane on climate change is 25 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period... the digestive processes of animals used for food and the management of manure together account for more than a third of total methane emissions in the

The final argument comes from Peter Dockrill, who claims that vegetarianism is bad for the environment. He begins with talking about a Carnegie Mellon Study, which states that the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) , current recommended number of daily servings, if followed to the letter, would actually be bad (Dockrill 2015). However, this does not necessarily have anything to do with a vegetarian diet. Dockrill (2015) discusses how lettuce and other plants emit more greenhouse gas emissions than some meat products. He proposes three scenarios that could occur. The first, is that if people ate less of what they already do it would decrease the environmental impact (Dockrill 2015). Dockrill’s (2015) second scenario would involve

Consumption of meat by humans creates several problems. First and foremost, raising animals for food compromises the environment. For example, it takes a large amount of natural resources to sustain the meat industry. The use of water, land, and food to raise animals for human consumption is not an efficient use of our limited resources. In contrast, it is more efficient to feed humans directly than to use land, food, and water to feed animals to be used as food. There are shortages of fertile land, clean water, and food in several third world countries. Many of these countries’ resources are allocated to produce feed for animals in developed countries around the world. As a result, the citizens of these countries are stricken with water and food shortages, while their crops are feeding cattle from across the globe. However, this problem can be solved by adopting a vegan diet. The vegan diet will allow a more efficient use of resources that in turn can be used to feed starving men, women, and children throughout the world. Consequently, more people in the world could be fed if the land used to grow feed for animals was used to grow food for humans.

Globally, livestock contribute 18% of greenhouse gasses that lead to global warming, which makes livestock a larger contributor than all forms of transport (United Nations, 2006). Robbins (2011) states that cattle consume 16 time more calories of grain than the calories they produce as meat. This provides a good basis for the argument that it is more sustainable to be a vegetarian. Using the cattle above as an example, energy was used to grow the crops to maturation, but then they were just fed to a primary consumer who will only retain roughly 10% of the energy. So the cattle would need to consume 10 times more plant mass to transfer the same amount of energy than an individual would receive from eating the plant matter directly. So less