Environmental Reasons To Eat a Plant Based Diet

     My husband likes to go fishing, I know what you are going to say, but before y'all get upset, he throws them back in.  Never brings any home.  :)  Anyway,  himself and his buddy drive by this HUGE cattle farm.  Hundreds of acres of cattle.  My husband's buddy believes there are a million head of cattle out there.  Not one blade of grass grows in all that mess, no trees for shade, just lots of cows and lots of manure.  What a horrible place for any living thing to live.

     What is the impact of health to cattle that are raised in this environment?  They are fed an unnatural diet of grains and corn to fatten them up faster.  They then produce a lot of gas in their bellies called bloat, and then methane or greenhouse gas is produced.  They live in gross conditions where ammonia from their waste make it painful for them to breath because they develop chronic lung issues.

     Now what happens to the environment with all these cattle farms.  There is a very large environmental footprint to our world with livestock.  Water is at risk, deforestation, acid rain etc.  It takes 1.8 acres to raise 1 cow.  There is a whole website devoted to how they figure this out, and I won't go into it, hopefully you won't need this information.  I know I don't.  However, a farmer should have this much land devoted to 1 cow.  Now if you have a huge herd like my husband sees on his way to fishing, there are acres and acres of land, and even though the Simplot farm is huge, there are a million cattle on that field.  Livestock farming produces 18% of all greenhouse gases!  That is more than all ships, planes, trucks and cars combined!

     Meat production is highly inefficient, especially red meat.  To produce 1 kilogram or 2.2 pounds of meat it takes 25 kilograms of grain.  That equals 55 pounds not to mention 15,000 liters of water just to produce that 2.2 pounds of meat!!!!  That is insane!

     Because we feed grain to the livestock, it drives the cost of that grain up, making it harder to feed people.  When we bought corn the other day from a roadside vendor (it is delicious by the way) he was telling us that 90% of the corn that is grown in Boise is fed to cattle!  90%!  Think of all the people we could feed if we didn't have to feed livestock!  If we fed that grain to humans instead of livestock we could feed 3.5 billion people!

     Another big and important issue to this is the animal cruelty.  Factory farms are notorious for being cruel.  I won't get into this as it is heart breaking to me.  If you want more information regarding factory farming, there are a ton of youtube videos.  I for one cannot watch them.  Makes me sick.

     Speaking of sick, eating meat causes us to be sick.  Animals are given antibiotics to help with a myriad of diseases, and they also help the cows or livestock to grow faster.  It is estimated that 23,000 people will die every year due to antibiotic resistant bacteria.  You are correct in thinking that we have become antibiotic resistant because of the meat we eat.  Those antibiotics are passed on to us.  Also hormones.  I know that is why my daughter and many other girls start their periods early because of the hormones that are given to livestock.   I had a friend that could not take antibiotics because of this very reason.  She was sick all the time, with no help for her issues.  She has since died because of complications to cancer, but I will always remember the struggles she went through because of the antibiotics not working for her. I couldn't get her to go to a plant based diet as she was very stubborn.  Other diseases are causes by read meat and processed meat consumption.  Heart disease, diabetes, strokes and cancer.  The world health organization and the American Cancer Society has deemed processed meats to be carcinogenic.  Why it's still on the market just baffles me! 
     I have learned so much from the articles I have read!  There are so many risks to us and our environment.  Why not take meat off your plate!

https://theconversation .com/five-ways-the-meat-on-your-plate-is-killing-the-planet-76128 

https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/world-health-organization-says-processed-meat-causes-cancer.html

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb1097070.pdf