Meat Consumption's Hidden Costs to Climate Change and Wildlife

Meat production causes more environmental harm than any other single industry, endangering wildlife, contributing at least 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and accounting for 80% of antibiotic use, 37% of pesticide use and nearly 50% of water use in the United States.

The Center for Biological Diversity has done a fantastic job in education about the stunningly huge contribution of meat consumption to climate change, water pollution, land depletion and degradation and species extinction.

Their new Extinction Facts Labels show just how powerful reducing meat consumption can be in slowing/elimination the effects of climate change.

SAN FRANCISCO— The Center for Biological Diversity today released its new Extinction Facts labels illustrating the extreme environmental cost of the most popular items in the American diet: hamburgers, chicken breasts and bacon. Americans consume more than 50 billion pounds of meat per year, four times the global average. This meat-heavy menu comes with high costs in carbon emissions, water pollution and habitat loss — impacts that were left out of the latest federal dietary guidelines despite support from experts and the public.

“What you eat has a profound effect on the planet. Every burger, chicken breast and bacon strip we consume requires enormous amounts of water, energy and greenhouse gases that put threatened and endangered wildlife at risk — along with our climate stability,” said Jennifer Molidor, senior food campaigner with the Center. “Just as nutrition facts labels you see at the grocery store reveal the health cost of dietary choices, Extinction Facts labels expose the environmental cost of our choices.”

Designed in the style of the Food and Drug Administration’s nutrition labels, Extinction Facts labels — and the information that accompanies them — crunch the numbers to help consumers understand the environmental impacts of popular meat products. The labels share the effects of each serving as well as the total consumption in the United States. For example, Americans eat an average of three hamburgers per person per week, which cumulatively requires more than 21 trillion gallons water to produce. Americans also eat enough chicken to destroy 12.4 million acres of wildlife habitat, the equivalent of 12 million football fields. And American bacon consumption comes at a cost of 331 billion pounds of pig manure — which could fill 60,667 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

“Vital habitat and natural resources that go into each hamburger, chicken breast or serving of bacon add up quickly and put immense pressure on already endangered and threatened wildlife — like gray wolves, foxes, loggerhead sea turtles and Atlantic bluefin tuna,” said Molidor. “Cutting consumption of meat products by even a third could save significant land and water and dramatically reduce pollution.”

The amount of water usage in growing meat alone makes it an unsustainable practice for our future:

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To your list, I would add: one-third of all methane(a very potent greenhouse gas) in the contiguous 48 states, comes from cattle. Cattle are also a significant source of ammonia which is a constituent of acid rain.

The Bureau of Land Management oversees 150+ million acres of our jointly owned land. The agency does not do a good job. Management's lax oversight has led to the degradation of these leased grazing lands on a huge scale. We, as a country, would be better served by canceling these grazing permits and allowing the land to restore itself. Much of it is prime recreation land attractive to hikers, campers, birders, fishermen, and hunters.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Cassiodorus's picture

are laid out in Tony Weis's The Ecological Hoofprint -- which in fact tells a history of the meat industry beginning with 1960 and continuing to the present day.

Weis, a brilliant presenter (I've seen him!), is also a proponent of the world-ecology perspective, which I laid out in a recent review once published at the Site Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned and now available at the archive. If you can get this guy to present at your local college or university you should do so!

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

kharma's picture

but our planet. Will the parasite change it's ways before killing it's host? I have serious doubts especially considering the 'sensible' people have shown themselves to have no principles. Thanks for the essay VL.

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There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties.. This...is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.--John Adams

Outsourcing Is Treason's picture

Humans have been eating meet since a million years before the Industrial Revolution, going back to our earliest hunter-gatherer ancestors. Long before Global Warming. So eating meat is not the problem. Perhaps certain modern farming methods are?

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"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush

It doesn't logically follow that since a small population ate meat without global consequences that a population of 7 billion eating meat doesn't have global consequences.

Certainly some farming methods are contributing factors, but those practices are simply part of the attempt to meet the demand. The demand is still the root cause.

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pswaterspirit's picture

Animal poop is a major component of soil. It provides food for earth worms and beneficial bugs along with nutrition for plants. In short it is part of the natural cycle of the earth.

We have destroyed this process by using petroleum based fertilizers and treating animal waste as trash. That creates much of the issue. Soil with high organic content actually traps carbon in the soil.

I am a vegitarian and have been a farmer for 30 years. My farm is set up to use what is created with no waste. I have animals currently including a fawn who thinks she is a goat. There have been three of these in 30 years orphaned or abandoned they some how materialize in care of one of my goats. It is also not uncommon for my goats to babysit.

I am of the opinion that the critters know more about this stuff and what nature needs than I do. In my world critters and their choices are to be respected.

We are so divorced from nature always trying to improve on it. Reality is nature does not waste a thing.

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I agree that reducing meat intake would be more healthy for many. However, I think we need to distinguish between the big factory farming operations and small family farms and free range animals.

A good TED talk about free range animals and how they help reverse climate change damage is on YouTube, or can be found at TED.com. Search for Allan Savory. It is a wonderful video for anyone interested in climate change, or in trying to rein in the poisoning of our planet.

I tried to add a link, but this is my first post, and had trouble with it. I got a message that YouTube was not supported? So I don't know what I am doing wrong.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

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Liberal to the core.

Hawkfish's picture

RealClimate had a discussion about him a few years back.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

But that doesn't automatically make him a crank.

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Hawkfish's picture

His heart is certainly in the right place. The trouble is that it is a fine line sometimes.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

pswaterspirit's picture

Is sound science and a farm management technique that goes back thousands of years.

Just a word of advice do not depend on environmental groups anymore than any group you might not agree with to tell you the truth just because they support a good thing. There are not many who have practical experience with any of this. They have theories but they can be without merit. They can get into calcified narrow minded thinking just as easily as anyone else and if one of their pet beliefs is challenged they can and do fight back.

For instance they managed to lock up the last of the Pacific Northwest old growth forests a cause I firmly agree with. To do so they used the spotted owl which is an endangered species they had scientific studies claiming that spotted owls only lived in old growth forests. This is not true I have a pair that live in the tree by my barn it is not old growth nor is the woods that they use for hunting. There has been a pair there for as long as I remember. Each spring there is a crop of little owls. They appear to like earthworms and field mice for food. Any well managed forest suits them. Where they can't survive is in replanted tree plantations that do not have enough deciduous trees to provide leaf mold and soft soil for their burrowing prey.

What actually creates the problem an environmental law that mandates replanting of clear cuts That does not take into account forest diversity or soil needs. These replanted areas are much the same as a giant Midwestern corn field. They can be totally devoid of life because they do not provide the diversity for various members of the food chain.

There are those that may not like what this man has to say because they are heavily invested in getting cattle off certain lands all the while I have a friend making a living repairing damaged land with a herd of 200 chickens and 50 sheep using this exact technique they pay him to improve their pastures. It works so well he has a waiting list.

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Hawkfish's picture

They are a bunch of academic climatologists who (among other things) study carbon budgeting professionally. Gavin Schmidt is pretty well respected.

I was pretty taken by Savory's ideas too until I dug into the literature some more. It's an appealing idea, but if you read the RC article, they point out (among other things) that his claims fail basic math. Usually when the scientific community doesn't like something novel it is because the theory is not factual (environmental groups are another matter.) I've been reading RC for years and they are pretty fair minded and in the interest of truth they patiently tolerate quite a bit of stuff that borders on trolling.

BTW, I live in the PNW too, and I hear what you are saying about forest ecosystems and we certainly don't know everything. But Savory's claims have been pretty throughly looked into and found to be lacking on multiple fronts. I wish it was this easy, but it really isn't.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

mimi's picture

who still live such lives, have to work very hard to get that "meat". They certainly didn't eat too much of it, it was wild life meat, and it is important to get the proteins from that meat or fish.

There is no problem with meat eating in itself, there is a problem of how much, how it's processed and how the animals are raised and the ease with which it is available. Industrial farming is destroying the environment and your own health.

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petral's picture

Much more gatherer-hunters. The victorian ethnigraphers who coined the phrase imagined the ancients to be more like themselves than there is any evidencr for -- and they completely ignored the obvious protein source of shoreline seafood.

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of shells from shellfish they ate. Living on the Florida coast the mounds are very visible in my area (except for the ones paved over by developers for parking lots and condos.)

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There's hardly any of the natural or historical Florida left.

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Haikukitty's picture

Its sheer laziness that has prevent us from doing it. We did it for years, so it can be done.

I don't know that I would go 100% vegetarian at this point, but we could cut consumption down to like 1 day a week.
I just need to get motivated to actually plan meals, and I could do it easily.

Thanks for this information, I had no idea the water consumption was that high....

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Lookout's picture

Here's the 2 min trailer:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV04zyfLyN4]

And here's a ten minute democracy now interview about the movie:
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/7/cowspiracy_as_california_faces_drou...

The idea is that it is farming methods. Most row crops are grown for animal production. I think the ratio is about 20:1. That is 20 calories of plant food are needed to produce one calorie of meat energy.

As an agronomist, I think there are places not suitable for row crops that make sense for perennial pastures and sustainable grazing. Chicken tractors (moveable pens that allow chickens to graze) to produce meat and eggs also makes sense to me. Confinement feeding is the big problem and that involves almost all commercial meat production...often in very sickening and cruel ways.

As far as health, we would all be better off eating more (mainly) plants. It would also help with global warming.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Damnit Janet's picture

in the first planting. No need for cover crops. It actually replenishes the earth. Only recently have farmers been "allowed" to grow some hemp. Most of my hemp protein is from Canada where it's legal.

We eat less meat and have many vegetarian nights. I was vegan for a bit but am no longer non-airy - however I don't drink milk anymore - I use hemp or coconut milk. We really don't need to eat as much meat as we do as a nation. Most of the meat is so nasty and full of hormones and bad conditions anyways. Fewer and fewer places I will even buy meat from anymore. So that helps in cutting back when you can't find good meat that isn't either rotten or a rotten company.

Conserve. Great diary vlb! Thank you.

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"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison

Eat the hemp, get the munchies; eat hemp, get munchies; eat hemp...

Just jokin' wid ya, Janet.

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There is no such thing as TMI. It can always be held in reserve for extortion.

Ken in MN's picture

...because it was either give up meat or give up beer, and being an avid homebrewer it was a no-brainer. I'm also lucky enough to live near the city that claims the country's first vegan "butcher" shop, The Herbivorous Butcher. I met the owners at their very first day of selling at the Minneapolis Farmers Market back in 2014, was blown away at how great there creations were, and now they have their very own bricks and mortar store! They make some really awesome vegan meats and cheeses. Their claim to fame is that they nailed the texture, which is one of the things that keep me eating meat for so long...

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I want my two dollars!

in Dickens and old English novels.

Faux meat and cheese have come a long way in just a few years. It's no problem being vegan for me at all.

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for a vegan cheese that doesn't make me gag. What would you recommend? I'm particularly interested in a good mozzarella, since it's pizza that I miss the most!

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Ken in MN's picture

...but here is something I've found while searching. If you have experience with any of these products please let me know.

Vegan Cheese is Better Than Ever: Try These 11 Brands

I also found a link for making Moxarella cheese at home:

Moxarella Cheese [Vegan]

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I want my two dollars!

...after trying the Daiya and Go Veggie! brands, I'm a bit too shell-shocked to blindly subject my palate and wallet to anything else. I'm not entirely convinced that those are actual food products rather than waste disposal programs.

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DesertRose's picture

I'll ask him what he thinks the best products are. Meanwhile there's this.

http://www.foodandwine.com/blogs/2016/01/01/surrender-to-vegan-cheese-in...

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Ken in MN's picture

Awesome!

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I want my two dollars!

Gerrit's picture

also home brewers. I gave up red wine to avoid gout, but like you say, giving up a cold beer is not gonna happen :=)

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

It is not rare.

It is painful and makes walking very uncomfortable.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

bodysurfer's picture

I'm not veggie entirely. Mostly stopped eating 4 legs, way down on 2 legs and no legs. Bacon is a problem. But I found this video to be very compelling. The guy goes through the top 15 diseases that kill people, and shows science that a plant-based diet slows or reverses those diseases.

Wow.

Besides not smoking, it's probably the best thing you can do to live a healthy and long life. This is a very important and entertaining 55 minutes: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/uprooting-the-leading-causes-of-death/

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All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine. -- Jeff Spicoli

Haikukitty's picture

Thanks so much for sharing it.

Its making me motivated to move up my return to a vegetarian diet, and honestly, making me consider trying to go mostly vegan. That is hard for me, as my favorite foods are cheese, eggs, and dairy products... (and bread, love bread) - all things which are not particularly healthy.

But I figure I can start with cutting out most meat, and then wean down the others so they are not everyday type things.

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Steven D's picture

Thanks for such a timely, important and informative essay.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

After several years as a vegetarian, in January I committed to veganism. I did that for my health (rheumatoid arthritis). Now my entire local family is vegan. Until a couple months ago, I had no idea that we have no hope of getting climate change to slow until we reform our eating habits in this country and now, thanks in part to the US, around the world. It was distressing that I had never read anything about the meat industry's contributions being so incredibly impacting. Thank you for posting the very first reference to that that I have ever encountered on the Internet (without looking for it). It would be nice if more people had the opportunity to learn these facts.

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Kathy Udy

contribution to climate change for many years over at top. Please don't go there to look them up. Here is link to my study in the MIT climate colab, which won 1st prize in 2011.

http://climatecolab.org/plans/-/plans/contests/2011/contest-2011-global/...

I became vegan about 4-5 years ago, after many years of being vegetarian.

Perhaps I'll start writing about meat consumption/climate change again. It's a new audience here Smile

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