You’ll save wildlife



11 Loves
Share

Eating animals is the largest contributing factor to species extinction

A growing number of people are eating plant-based foods to help protect the environment.

70% of the planet’s agricultural land is devoted to animal farming[1]. And with a rapidly growing global population, animal farming is the biggest cause of global deforestation, as more and more land is needed[2].

But what if there was a way to live that needed much less land? That afforded space for wild spaces and wildlife habitat to flourish?

There is a way – eating plant-based foods.

“If we really want to reduce the human impact on the environment, the simplest and cheapest thing anyone can do is to eat less meat. Behind most of the joints of beef or chicken on our plates is a phenomenally wasteful, land- and energy-hungry system of farming that devastates forests, pollutes oceans, rivers, seas and air, depends on coal and oil, and is significantly responsible for climate change” – John Vidal, Guardian environment editor

Feeding a meat-eating population demands much more land than we’d need to grow food for a vegan population. For every 100 calories of grain we feed to farmed animals, we get back only about 40 new calories of milk, 22 calories of eggs, 12 of chicken, 10 of pork or 3 of beef. No wonder UK think tank Chatham House describes feeding cereals to animals as ‘staggeringly inefficient’.

In the UK, 85% of land is associated with animal products[3]. But only 48% of total protein and 32% of total calories consumed in the UK are derived from animal products[4]. So what is the impact of animal agriculture on wildlife?

Well, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation says that animal agriculture is the major driver of global deforestation, and one of the leading drivers of land degradation, pollution and climate change[5]. Animal agriculture-driven habitat loss is a contributing factor for most of the world’s threatened species[6].

This means we must wring every drop of nutrient out of the soil that we possibly can. To this end, 5.6 billion pounds of chemicals are sprayed over the planet each year to kill pests that might harm production[7]. These pesticides are linked with an alarming decrease in the number of birds across Europe and North America, with species in agricultural areas suffering the worst losses[8].

Australia has one of the highest rates of species extinction in the world. In the state of Queensland alone, 90% of woody vegetation clearing is driven by livestock production, and this is estimated to kill more than 30 million native mammals, birds and reptiles every year.[9]

The impact of what we eat isn’t restricted to land, either. More than 25% of the world’s fisheries have been pushed beyond their biological limits or are in need of dramatic action to restore them[10], and whole populations are on the verge of collapse[11]. And that’s not all – more than 600,000 marine mammals a year are accidentally caught by the fishing industry, pushing many species to the brink of extinction.

Want to know more about how what we eat affects wildlife? Check out this really helpful article!