How can meat eating be harmful for the environment?

Question

I heard on TV that meat eating accelerates global warming. How can meat eating possibly be harmful for the environment?

Answer 1

well the reason why it is said is not necessarily because you're eating it but because of the damage that is being made to the earth because of all the energy put into raising, feeding, and killing the animals.
the way that we breed the animals for food pollutes our environment while consuming huge amounts of water, grain, petroleum, pesticides and drugs.

there are many reasons but basically:

1) a vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water per day while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 (for the animals that they eat).

2) cattle-ranching is the number one cause of amazonian deforestation. in central america, two-thirds of the rain forests have been cleared, primarily to raise cattle.

3) raising animals for food requires more than one-third of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in the us.

4) the meat industry causes more water pollution in the us than all other industries combined. more than 10 billion animals are raised and killed for food every year in the us alone... they have to eat, and their waste has to go somewhere.

---i'm not by any means trying to make you a vegetarian or anything, but you asked and i know a lot about this subject because i wasn't sure why people would say that either... so i researched it. ---

Answer 2

cows and sheep meat mainly ,

cows need a lot of space
their big flat feet and weight compact the ground and raises the salt to the surface
land ocupied by cows often is over grazed,(sheep do as well) and then turns to dessert ,putting more heat into the system .

and these lands used for animals is usually deforrested land ,and so take away the componants that produce rain humidity ,captiure carbom release oxigen and regulates temperature (forrests absorb heat during the day and release heat at night)
far better to raise antilopes or deer .les cholestarol and they can live with the trees their existance does not harm the environment
so it is not the eating that causes the harm it is the market that is created by the habit of eating meat ,that requires the cattle that damages the land(enviroment ) ,that does the harm
if people changed their diet the presure on the Environment would be less,

The diet in Mexico is killing Mexico
people eat a lot of beef and a lot of Corn ,both are intense mono cultures that leave a dessert behind when the lands are worn out

Answer 3

The basic idea is that meat needs animals to provide it. That adds an extra step that is chock full of plants getting eaten, digested and at least partially- and I'm sorry, there isn't a polite way to say this- farted out.

If you eliminated the middle cow, you would have people eating plants directly and any contribution (that's a funny way to say it, contribution) to global warming gasses that these animals produce. Also, there are activities associated with cattle and domestic animal production that also produce CO2.

This viewpoint looks at meat as a sort of concentrated form of vegetable, one that has certain costs. I cannot say that even though in a sense this is true, that it has any measurable effect.

For instance, I smoke cigarettes. This increases the amount of carbon dioxide I put out into the atmosphere. There are lots of people like me who smoke. That's the fact part. The part that would have to be demonstrated is how much we smokers as a group contribute to global warming.

Answer 4

It's because of the way animals are farmed, it's an extremely unsuistanable practice.

I suggest everyone who has said it's "bull" read The Ethics of What We Eat, by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. It gives excellent information on the impact that factory farming etc has on the world we live in.

Answer 5

Yep. You have to grow an enormous amount of feed plants to feed a cow. It's a really inefficient way to make food. There's emissions from fertilizer production, changes in land use, the animals themselves, and decaying manure.

It's actually significant. More details here.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0220/p03s01-ussc.html

Answer 6

Because if you eat to much meat than the animal will go extinct and the animals that eat them will have nothing to eat and they will die out and on and on in till no more living things but to many plants and grasses. But it has nothing to do with global warming.

Answer 7

cows fart and poop, and pee, the fart goes in the air, you don't want to live next to a cow factory

the pee and poo goes to a pond and they cover the pond with dirt and pretend nothing happened, the waste does not get treated by some hightech waste treatment plant,
so when the wates gets buried it seeps into the ground, and reaches the underground water tunnel, this water will end up under major us city and get treated and then we drink it

i for one is aginst factory farm animal, the free range animals might pollute less, but who knows

Answer 8

well for one, all the grain used to feed cows, etc. can feed a whole lot of hungry and starving humans, much more than the number of people the cows can feed. It is a waste of resources to grow all that grain to feed the cows that produce less food than they eat. Also, cows flatulance and burping actually causes pollution (methane) that gets up into the atmosphere.

Answer 9

I don't know how they reached that conclusion, exactly. I guess it would have something to do with the large amounts of land that need to be cleared to raise cattle to get meat. But it's not a direct correlation, so eat all the meat you want, you're not destroying the planet.

Answer 10

Thats just the MORONS from peta........lol