According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation, and is a major source of air, land, and water pollution and degradation.  The massive amount of animal feces produced by animal agriculture is the source of methane.   Methane traps heat in the atmosphere much more effectively than carbon dioxide.  Pollution from animal wastes, antibiotics, hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers, pesticides contributes to water pollution, the degeneration of coral reefs, and biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency says that factory farm runoff pollutes rivers and lakes more than all other industrial sources combined.  Chicken, hog, and cattle excrement have polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in twenty two states and contaminated ground water in seventeen states.  Animal agriculture produces approximately 86,000 pounds of excrement per second, or 130 times more excrement than the human population, without the sewage system. 

A typical pig factory farm generates a quantity of raw waste equal to that of a city of 50,000 people, but without the sewage system.  According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the runoff from factory farms pollutes rivers and lakes more than all other industrial sources combined.  The meat industry in the United States causes more pollution than all other US industries combined. 

Livestock now use thirty percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including Thirty three percent of the global arable land used to producing feed fir livestock, the report notes.  As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some seventy percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development says that close to 90% of the world’s marine fish stocks are fully exploited, overexploited or depleted.Human water supplies, rivers and streams, are being contaminated by pathogens including fecal coliforms, Streptococcus, Campylobacter, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, as well as viruses, all resulting from the unjust exploitation of other species in animal agriculture.

Agriculture is the main contributor to climate change and environmental degradation. Food production and consumption is responsible for 19 – 29 per cent of all human caused greenhouse gas emissions, up to 70 per cent of the freshwater use, and over 60 per cent of the terrestrial biodiversity loss, with animal-based foods being major contributors to these environmental changes.

Trees and forests combat rising temperatures by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and provide a defense against climate change.  Many forests have been cleared to provide grazing land and land to grow crops to feed unjustly exploited non-humans. 

Meat and dairy is simply unsustainable.  The only way to insure the survival of the planet and all on it is to go plant-based and eliminate animal agriculture!