Issue 8.5 - Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia

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Meat and the Environment “By eliminating beef from the human diet, our species takes a significant step toward a new species consciousness, reaching out in a spirit of shared partnership with the bovine, and, by extension, other sentient creatures with whom we share the earth.” 1 Beyond Beef, Jeremy Rifkin Killing animals for food, fur, leather, and cosmetics is one of the most environmentally destructive practices tak¬ing place on the earth today. The Krsna consciousness movement’s policies of protecting animals, especially cows, and broadly promoting a spiritual vegetarian diet could—if widely adopted— relieve many environmental problems. These policies are rooted in the following philosophical and functional principles: 1. Humans should not slaughter animals for food. They should be as compassionate to cows and other farm animals as they are to their pet dogs and cats. Nonviolence extended beyond human society is known as ahimsa, an ancient Vedic principle still practiced in some parts of the world. 2. Cows are the most valuable animals to human society. They give us fuel, fertilizer, power (for tilling, transport, grinding, and irrigating), milk and milk products, and leather (after natural death). 3. The killing of animals violates karmic laws, creating col¬lective and individual reactions in human society. 4. Well-documented medical studies show that flesh-eating is harmful to health. 5. Mass animal-killing for food and fashion erodes mercy, reducing respect for all kinds of life, including human life. 30 | Bhavan Australia | Nov 2010 6. Meat diets are more expensive than nonmeat diets. 7. If the world switched to a nonmeat diet, it could radically increase its food output and save millions of people from hunger, starvation, and death. 8. Massive animal slaughter is destroying the environment. We shall now document this destruction, keeping in mind that it amounts to violence against the earth. It also has karmic consequences. The meat industry is linked to deforestation, desertification, water pollution, water shortages, air pollution, and soil erosion. Neal D. Barnard, President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (USA), therefore says, “If you’re a meat eater, you are contributing to the destruction of the environ¬ment, whether you know it or not. Clearly the best thing you can do for the Earth is to not support animal agriculture.” 2 And Jeremy Rifkin warns in his widely read book Beyond Beef: “Today, millions of Americans, Europeans, and Japanese are consuming countless hamburgers, steaks, and roasts, oblivi¬ous to the impact their dietary habits are having on the biosphere and the very survivability of life on earth. Every pound of grain-fed flesh is secured at the expense of a burned forest, an eroded rangeland, a barren field, a dried-up river or stream, and the release of millions of tons of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane into the skies.” 3 Forest Destruction According to Vegetarian Times, half of the annual destruction of tropical rainforests is caused by clearing land for beef cattle ranches. 4 Each pound
of hamburger made from Central American or South American beef costs about 55 square feet of rain forest vegetation. 5 In the United States, about 260 million acres of forest have been cleared for a meat-centered diet. Each person who becomes a vegetarian saves one acre of trees per year. 6 About 40% of the land in the western United States is used for grazing beef cattle. This has had a detrimental effect on wildlife. Fencing has forced deer and antelope out of their natural habitats. 7 Agricultural Inefficiency About half the world’s grain is consumed by animals that are later slaughtered for meat. 8 This is a very inefficient process. It takes 16 pounds of grain and soybeans to produce 1 pound of feedlot beef. 9 If people were to subsist on grains and other vegetarian foods alone, this would put far less strain on the earth’s agricultural lands. About 20 vegetarians can be fed from the land it takes to feed 1 meat-eater. Eighty per cent of the corn raised in the United States is fed to livestock, as well as 95% of the oats. Altogether, 56% of all agricultural land in the United States is used for beef production. 10 If all the soybeans and grain fed yearly to US livestock were set aside for human consumption, it would feed 1.3 billion people. Soil Erosion and Desertification Overgrazing and the intensive production of feed grain for cattle and other meat animals results in high levels of soil erosion. According to Alan B. Durning of the Worldwatch Institute (1986), one pound of beef from cattle raised on feed-lots represents the loss of 35 pounds of topsoil. 11 Over the past few centuries, the United States has lost about two-thirds of its topsoil. In other countries, such as Australia and the nations of Africa on the southern edge of the Sahara, cattle grazing and feed-crop production on marginal lands contribute substantially to desertification. Air Pollution Burning of oil in the production of feed grain results in air pollution, including carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. Another major source of air pollution is the burning of tropical forests to clear land for cattle grazing. The meat industry burns up a lot of fossil fuel, pouring pollu¬tants into the air. Calorie for calorie, it takes 39 times more energy to produce beef than soybeans. 12 The petroleum used in the United States would decrease by 60% if people adopted a vegetarian diet. 13 And in their book For the Common Good, World Bank Economist Herman E. Daly and Philosopher John B. Cobb, Jr., say, “If a simple and healthful change in eating habits along with localization of most food production and a major shift toward organic farming were to take place over the next generation, food production and distribution could be weaned from their current heavy dependence on fossil fuels. In the process, the enormous suffering now inflicted on livestock would be greatly reduced.” 14 The meat industry, in addition to producing carbon dioxide, is also responsible for other greenhouse gases, such as methane. Methane is produced directly by the digestive process of cows. This greenhouse gas is considered very dangerous because each molecule of methane traps 20 times more heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide. “... stopping animal-killing would help induce a greater respect for all kinds of life, including human.” How big a threat to the planet is the methane emitted by cows? Overall, the effect is not significant, certainly not enough to justify fears of cows destroying the planet by global warming. Each year about 500 million tons of methane enter the atmosphere, 15 contributing about 18% of the total greenhouse gases. Cows account for 60 million tons of the methane, about 12%. 16 Therefore, methane emitted by cows amounts to only 2% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. It should also be kept in mind that feedlot cows, because they eat more, produce more methane than range-fed cows. In India, there are about 270 million cows, but 99.9% of them are range fed. 17 Therefore they produce less methane than an equivalent number of feedlot cows. Nov 2010 | Bhavan Australia | 31
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Page 5 and 6: look and feel about ourselves. Many
Page 7 and 8: Rabindranath Tagore’s Geetanjali
Page 9 and 10: Diwali Festivals of the Month Diwal
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Page 13 and 14: When Yamraj reached Yamuna’s home
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Page 17 and 18: From the President Deepavali - The
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Page 49 and 50: The classical Yoga of India has bee
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Page 53 and 54: The Cosmos and the Self Everything
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Page 71 and 72: machine will work again, but when t
Page 73 and 74: the husband is the enjoyer (purusa)
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Flash back Prayer - Mahatma Gandhi
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Issue 8.5 - Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Australia

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