Eating Meat is Hurting Our Environment
It may seem odd to think that something as simple as eating a hamburger could harm the environment but, you would be surprised.
I understand not eating meat seems insane to you, and I completely understand that it is hard. However, not eating meat could potentially save our planet from our environmental impact.
Meat production is the biggest cause of deforestation across the globe. Raising cows, planting their food, and manufacturing the meat all need a significant amount of space. This need for space causes enormous amounts of deforestation in places like the Amazon rainforest. In the last two centuries, there has been a significant increase in meat-eaters in the world which amped up the amount of deforestation.
To get rid of large amounts of trees at a time, many would purposely cause forest fires. Forest fires have plenty of moral and environmental issues, but the main one is that it causes climate change. Not only do the gases from the fires harm the environment, but that combined with the methane gases released in running a farm creates as much greenhouse emissions as all the world’s cars, trucks, and planes.
In addition to the physical damage eating meat has, it also can increase pandemics. Eating meat can increase the chances of a zoonotic disease spreading. A zoonotic disease is a disease spread from an animal to a human, this occurs in many ways. It may be direct contact meaning that you were in contact with the infected animal. Indirect contact would be contact with where the infected animal(s) lived, the vector-borne transmission could be transferred by bugs like ticks, food-born could be through eating that infected animal’s meat, and water-borne could be coming in contact with the infected animals’ water. Every year 1 in 6 people eat contaminated meat so, not only for the environment’s safety but for your own safety, refrain from eating meat.
Finally, the forests being burned are not only home to many plants and animals, but also home to many Indigenous people. Despite common belief, there are still people who use and live in forests so destroying their homes is a huge human rights abuse.
Not eating meat is clearly a great choice, but we understand how hard it is. Personally, I am Greek Orthodox so we fast 40 days before Easter and Christmas and 25 days before a holiday called Tis Panagias. We also fast every Wednesday and Friday, so I get how hard it is, but even just pick a day out of the week where you don’t eat meat would help our environment.
