Why go vegetarian?
The Environment
The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation's 2006 report Livestock's Long Shadow states that the livestock sector (animals bred for human food) is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent.
Meat and Dairy animals produce more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transport combined.
By choosing to replace your regular servings of meat and dairy with plant-based alternatives in a single meal you can save about 1.3 kilograms of CO2 equivalent.
So try a tasty, nutritious and healthy animal-product-free meal soon — and then make it a regular part of your diet.
Earth Diet
Water usage
Taking into account the large amounts of feed that food animals need to eat, it has been calculated that one kilogram of animal protein typically takes 100 times as much water to produce as one kilogram of plant protein.
Deforestation
In Central America, entire forests are felled or burnt to provide land for grazing cattle. Most of these cattle end up as second-quality hamburger meat for the North American junk food market. Being hard-hooved, cattle erode vulnerable topsoil.
Pollution
The effluent produced by intensive piggeries, cattle feedlots and chicken broiler units is polluting our increasingly fragile waterways and producing huge amounts of nitrates and ammonia. The effluent produced by these animals in the relatively small area of land that they occupy becomes a pollutant in the general environment.
Your Health
Meat, meat products and dairy foods make up the greatest percentage of saturated fat in the average "western" diet, contributing significantly to the huge increases in obesity, adult onset diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. One of the world's leading nutritionists, Professor Walter Willett, of Harvard School of Public Health, lists the adverse health effects of high meat consumption (particularly red meat): "higher rates of several important cancers … heart disease and type 2 diabetes."
Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat. It's a fact. Scientific studies show that vegetarians suffer much less from illnesses like cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure and other common health problems. A major Chinese study of 6,500 people (The China Study) showed that the less animal products eaten, the healthier people were. A major study reported in the British Medical Journal found that, of 5,000 meat eaters and 6,000 non-meat eaters, vegetarians have 40% less risk of cancer and 30% less risk of heart disease than the meat eaters and were 20% less likely to die of any cause (Oxford Vegetarian Study). A US study of 50,000 vegetarians showed a very low rate of cancer (Seventh Day Adventist Study). It has been estimated that by following a low-fat vegetarian diet, the risk of food poisoning is decreased by 80%. More evidence of the benefits of a vegetarian diet is being found each year.
Have you ever noticed that the only people who recommend that you eat more meat and dairy are the meat and dairy industries?
Humane - Avoids Cruelty To Animals
More than 50 billion animals are systematically killed in slaughterhouses around the world each year (over seven times the human population!). It is nothing more than an undercover massacre which we, as consumers, contribute to by distancing ourselves from the truth. Animals suffer enormously in the process. Quite apart from the terror of being killed, they undergo pain and fear through routine stock mutilations and during transportation to saleyards and abattoirs.
Most animals eaten in Australia today are intensively raised in dark, sunless sheds where they are fed a diet of processed foods. In most cases antibiotics and growth-promotants are routinely administered. These animals are treated as little more than meat machines. We would be horrified if our pet cat or dog was treated in this way, so why do we subject other animals to such cruelty? The fact that the killing is done by someone else makes it easy to eat meat but, by eating it, we are really condemning the next animal in line to satisfy consumer demand. Have you ever really stopped to think about the cruelty we systematically inflict on other species simply by eating them?
It's Fairer - SocioEconomic Reasons
Meat is expensive to produce, both economically and agriculturally. With so many starving people in the world today it is a criminal waste of food to produce it. Meat animals are fed perfectly good plant food which could have been fed directly to starving people. For instance, it takes 17 kilos of corn, beans, grains, etc, to produce one kilo of beef in feedlot cattle. This is like investing $17.00 in a bank term deposit and withdrawing $1.00 at maturity!
Europe imports 70% of its protein for animal feed. This is on top of using large proportions of its own arable land. Much of these imported feedstuffs come from countries suffering from poverty or environmental degradation. 95% of world soybean and one third of world grain production is used for animal feed, utilising massive reserves of land. Meanwhile, a child dies of starvation somewhere in the world every two seconds. As the world human population grows, so too does the need for the dwindling reserves of arable land to grow crops to feed it.
Taking into account the large amounts of feed that highly productive food animals need to eat, it has been calculated that one kilogram of animal protein typically takes 100 times as much water to produce as one kilogram of plant protein. To take the example of beef, the production of one kilogram of beef would need 100 kilograms of forage and 4 kilograms of grain. This means that the production of one kilogram of beef takes between 100,000 and 200,000 litres of water, depending on the growing conditions. 87% of the fresh water consumed worldwide is used for agriculture. Clearly meat production is a very inefficient use of water.