Food and diets arise from cultural conditioning, and so making change is hard because it requires a deep rethinking of our innate behaviours. However, with knowledge of what the livestock industry does to our lands, water, forests, and animals - not to mention an evidence-based awareness of the health implications of eating meat - it's easy to find motivation for making the transition to a more whole-food, plant-based diet.
In a world where 1 billion people are starving due to the vast inequalities in our global governance and wasteful, polluting food systems, new research shows that a world of 9.6 billion people could be fed on organic produce, if they ate a vegetarian or vegan diet.
The biggest corporations in the meat industry have lobbied governments globally, gagging entire nations from speaking out against the environmental, social and physical harm of meat. It's up to us to see the truth, and take action, to make the change!
A person with a meat-free diet cuts 50% of their greenhouse gas emissions, uses 1/11th of oil, 1/13th of land and 1/18th of the amount of water.
Stop Animal Cruelty
Going vegetarian or vegan takes custom, money and support from companies committing violent crimes against animal life, companies who are also polluting the planet for free.
Often we hear that this is one of the most peaceful times in human history, with less people dying at war and in violent crimes than ever before. However, this ignores the enormity of loss of life we force through global meat consumption, and the horrific and harrowing conditions of slaughter around the world.
In the UK alone we eat
10 million pigs
14.5 million sheep
2.6 million cattle
over 950 million birds
4.5 billion fish
2.6 billion shellfish
This equates to around 22 million animals slaughtered every day; 919,000 an hour; 15,000 per minute and 255 every second.
Globally, 3 billion animals are killed every day.
Animal Aid secretly filmed inside 10 abattoirs in the UK, 9 of which were breaking the law with inhuman slaughter practices. If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan...
Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
Going vegetarian or vegan takes custom, money and support from companies who emit 51% of global carbon emissions through keeping livestock and its byproducts (keep, feed, slaughter, transport).
Animal agriculture alone is worth 18% of global carbon emissions, which is more than all exhaust fumes from all modes of transportation combined. Additional fumes come cows' stomach gases, growing feed, deforestation for land use, slash and burn clearing techniques, forest fires and peat land burning to name a few. Methane produced by cow digestion is 28 times more destructive for the atmosphere on a short-term basis, and with a few years to avoid runaway climate change, every little thing counts.
Going vegetarian or vegan takes custom, money and support from companies who have felled 50% of the world's forests.
Deforestation for livestock land is devastating, with 27 football fields of land is bulldozed every minute, causing the leading cause of species extinction the world has ever known. The largest mass extinction in 65 million years, in the fastest time ever.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization asserts that livestock farming accounts for 80% of current deforestation rates. Half of our forests have already been lost. It is often developing countries that bear the burden of this disaster, but the species and trees that preserve our delicate ecosystem for life are lamentable worldwide.
Free the land
Improve your health
Going vegetarian or vegan can improve deadly conditions of the body in weeks.
Meat eaters are nine times as likely to be obese as people with a vegan diet. And vegans have only 40 percent of the cancer rate of meat-eaters. Plant based diets can reduce angina attacks by 90% in weeks.
The World Health Organisation class processed meat as a group 1 carcinogen - the same as asbestos, alcohol, arsenic and tobacco.
Plant-based diets are just as rich in protein, iron, calcium and other essential vitamins and minerals. Plant-based sources of nutrients also often tend to be low in saturated fat, high in fibre and packed with antioxidants.
Cholesterol is only found in animal-derived foods. It clogs the arteries and restricts blood flow leading to coronary diseases like heart attack and failure, angina, stroke - serious health problems. People who consume animal-derived foods are also at increased risk for many other illnesses, including strokes, obesity, osteoporosis, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, multiple allergies, diabetes, and food poisoning.
Save & preserve water
Going vegetarian or vegan takes custom, money and support from companies who use 20-35% of fresh water, and are the leading cause in water pollution.
70 per cent of the world is made up of water, yet only less than 3% is safe and available for drinking. Without significant changes in policy on issues such as livestock farming, the world will only have 60% of the water it needs by 2050.
A carnivorous diets uses over 18,000 litres of water a day, compared with over 5,000 litres for a vegetarian. One person can save as much as 162,486 litres of water a year by giving up meat, enough water for 450 people. For comparison it takes 15,500 litres of water to produce 1 kg beef, but only 250 litres for 1 kg potatoes and 180 litres for 1 kg tomatoes.
In the US, 5% of water is used in homes, and 55% is used on keeping livestock. Humans drink 5.2 billion gallons of water a day, but cows drink 45 billion gallons a day, or 8 times as much. This highlights the inequality in meat eating, as many humans survive on 10 litres of water or less a day - the amount of one toilet flush, yet keeping livestock to eat meat uses a third of all drinking water on Earth, and many countries use a half of their agricultural water growing crops to feed livestock.
Farmed animals produce 130 times more excrement than the human population, so the world's 1.4 billion cows are also causing devastating pollution to these precious waterways from waste run off.
Protect human rights
Going vegetarian or vegan takes custom, money and support from companies who are responsible for 80% of forest loss, homes to generations of indigenous tribespeople
The deplorable inequality caused by the livestock industry is never ending. The livestock industry:
♥ fells forests which displaces indigenous cultures
♥ uses of 1/3 of water when 1 billion people are thirsty
♥ uses of 50% of grain when 1 in 10 people are starving
♥ causes the most pollution of land, air and water than any other industry
♥ due to the climate changing impacts, billions of people worldwide are at risk in the coming decades
♥ meat mainly feeds the western world, yet the southern developing countries will feel the first, fastest and worst impacts of climate change in droughts, fires, desertification, sea level rise, displacement, food/ water shortage...
Since 1950, half of the world's forests have disappeared. Latin America has lost 37% of its tropical forests; Central America, 66%; Southeast Asia, 38%; Central Africa, 52%. Nearly 20 million acres are destroyed annually. Land protectors around the world faced the most dangerous and deadliest year for their environmental efforts, as 207 were murdered at the hands of gangs and governments.
There are currently 64 million migrants in the world forced to flee wars, hunger, persecution and climate change, and the UN forecasts that there could be anywhere between 25 million and 1 billion climate migrants by 2050.