Animal agriculture is more devastating to our natural environment than all other human activities conbined. This devastation impacts land, water, air, and wildlife.
Also, according to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent--18%--than transport!
Animal agriculture has been turning lush forests and prairies into barren deserts since the dawn of human history. The process begins with clear-cutting of forests to create pastures for cattle and other ruminants. This is a major loss, because trees provide wildlife habitats, keep topsoil in place, replenish groundwater aquifers, absorb carbon dioxide, and stabilize climate.
As the pastures become overgrazed, they are plowed under and turned into animal feed croplands. With little or no plant growth to hold it in place, topsoil is carried by rain and melting snow into streams and lakes, and its productive capacity is lost forever. This process is accelerated by the use of marginal sloping lands to meet the insatiable demand for animal feed.
The rain and melting snow that runs off animal feed croplands and factory farms dumps more pollution into our lakes, streams, and estuaries than all other human activities combined.
The cropland runoff contains soil particles, salts, organic debris, fertilizer, and pesticides. Soil particles smother fish eggs and bottom dwelling organisms and block stream flow. Salts, primarily sodium and potassium chloride, raise the salinity of the water, rendering it unsuitable for certain organisms. Organic debris feeds microorganisms that deplete the water's oxygen supply and kill the fish. Fertilizers spur algal blooms that smother or actually attack aquatic organisms. Pesticides kill all living organisms.
Animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 130 times the amount of waste that people do. This waste, containing nutrients, pathogens, and hormones, is stored in huge open cesspools, euphemistically called 'lagoons.' Eventually, this waste winds up in the nearest waterway, killing aquatic organisms directly or through formation of algal blooms. Waste from mid-Atlantic pig and poultry factory farms has destroyed fisheries along the Eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the waste leaks into the ground, poisoning vital groundwater supplies.
Animal agriculture's insatiable demand for land presses into service arid lands that require irrigation. Irrigation now accounts for more than 80% of all water available for use in the U.S. and leads to critical water shortages, particularly in the Western states.
Wind erosion from animal croplands is the largest source of airborne particulates, which irritate respiratory passages and make them more susceptible to respiratory infections. Factory farms produce a stench that poses a major nuisance to neighbors for miles around. Methane emitted by cattle and carbon dioxide generated by power plants that operate factory farms are major contributors to global warming.
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Four Farms, a Utah-based pork producer, hosts a three-million gallon waste
lagoon.
When lagoons like this spill into rivers and lakes as happened in North
Carolina in 1995, the result can be environmentally catastrophic.
The USDA reports that animals in the US meat industry produce 61 million tons of waste each year, which is 130 times the volume of human waste - or five tons for every US citizen.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hog, chicken and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated ground water in 17 states.
© AP Photo / Douglas C. Pizac
Farms in the United States are losing 5000 million tons of soil every year. Eighty-five percent are lost because of animal agriculture from cropland, pasture, rangeland and forest.
