The Unsustainability of Factory Farming

My 53 year old father has been vegan for over a decade. He has always preached to me the importance of a vegan or partially vegan lifestyle for one’s health and for the sake of the animals. However, in recent months, he has changed a lot of his talking points to focus more on the environmental impact of the meat industry. He has created a committee that works to spread awareness about this problem, and they have recently applied for grant money to expand. There are so many factors to consider when discussing the impact of factory farming, and I want to bring up just a few of them.

It takes a tremendous amount of water to bring 1 lb. of beef to market.

Methane from cows wrecks havoc on water and air quality.

A staggering amount of rain forest is clear-cut every year for grazing land.

Americans raise and kill for food @75 billion animals every year, which utilizes a huge amount of resources, and requires fuel and power.

Meat production for humans accounts for 50% or more of all greenhouse gasses, more than all the cars on the road everywhere.

The overuse of antibiotics and hormones in animal agriculture ends up in water supply as waste.

About 4 million acres in America are used to raise plant crops for people to eat while 15 times as much is used to raise plant crops for animals to eat.

While all animals raised as food for humans suffer astonishing atrocities, laws protecting their and our environment are practically non-existent. Factory farms treat them as commodities and the areas around them as toilets, with very little regard for clean waste disposal.