Assignment 16 - Naylan James

The term “animal abuse” applies to more than just cats and dogs, hundreds of millions of livestock suffer intense abuse and mistreatment yearly, yet nobody bats an eye. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of global warming. According to the food and agriculture organization of the UN, Livestock is responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas with 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, and which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years.

As we sit in anatomy class, Mr.Rexford brings out a dead cat (wrapped in a bag) to show us what we’ll be dissecting. Although this animal was put down humanely, my classmates are outraged; “we don’t want to see this. Why would they kill that cat.” The irony of it is that every single one of them will eat the product of an animal multiple times throughout that day. They will eat an animal that, unlike the cat, wasn’t humanely put-down. They will eat animals that are brutally killed. Tortured. These animals are kept in cages that limit their movement to none. They are inhumanely mutilated, tails clipped or teeth trimmed without anesthetic. 65% of pigs in factory farms were tested to have pneumonia-like lesions in their lungs, millions of chicks that serve no egg-laying purposes are immediately sent away and are ground up alive daily, calves that will be used for veal are forced to wear heavy chains to stop them from being over active, so their meat can remain as soft as it was when they were born. The abuse these animals suffer would cause anyone to turn their next meal away, but instead, we turn a blind eye and pretend it doesn't happen. As the huffington post published, pigs are as cognitively complex as dogs, so why do we eat pigs but not dogs? Because pigs aren’t as cute? As a former pig owner, I can personally tell you pigs are absolutely adorable when they sleep. Why do we consider one animal less deserving to live than another? How can we, as a country, shame the Chinese for their Yulin dog-eating festival when we treat animals equally as horrible? And for those who reference the hunting and gathering lifestyles of our distant ancestors, the national research center on human evolution found that, “cannibalism was a normal part of daily life around 800,000 years ago among Europe’s first humans.” and that early cavemen would eat the brains of neighboring enemy tribes.

We see commercials begging us to turn off our sinks when we don’t need them. To take shorter showers. Do anything we can to save water, because it’s a limited resource. Yet it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. Where are the advertisements on this? According to the EPA, Forty out of 50 state water managers expect water shortages under average conditions in some portion of their states over the next decade. Why waste this finite resource on raising animals that will soon be slaughtered? Cutting a shower 2 minutes shorter than usual will save roughly 5 gallons of water, whereas passing on a single burger or steak would save between 500 and 1000 gallons of water. According to Dr.Eric Holt-Giminez, a food system researcher, we are currently growing enough food to feed 10 billion people, but instead of allowing these grains to sustain poor areas suffering from intense malnourishment, we use them to fatten our livestock to feed far fewer than could the grain. 82% of starving children live in countries where food is grown and fed to livestock that is then eaten by western countries.

Our climate is changing. Everyone knows this (well, nearly-everyone). Although we’re making progress with environmentally-friendly cars and hybrids, we’re not attacking the biggest beast. Even without fossil fuels, we will exceed our 565 gigaton CO2e (the amount of a concentrated greenhouse gas that will cause the same damage as concentrated CO2) by 2030, solely from animal agriculture. According to the science magazine, methane is 25-100 more destructive than CO2 on a 20 year time frame, and cows produce 150 billion pounds of methane per day. Up to 91% of Amazon destruction is due to animal agriculture. They convert the land they clear for cow grazing. The meat they obtain from these cows is sent back to the US for mass distribution and consumption by the American people. At the current rate of fish farming, our oceans will be fishless by 2048. For every one pound of fish caught, up to five pounds of unintended marine species are caught and discarded as bi-kill. Scientists estimate that as many as 650,000 whales, dolphins, and seals are killed each year by fishing vessels.

Now what can we do to help. It’s difficult to become 100% vegan, but you can implement what is called a flexitarian diet, where you slowly  introduce meat-free meals into your diet and slowly rely less and less on meat. 3.7% of US adults are vegetarian, .5% are vegan. If we help to raise these numbers, the damage we do to our climate will significantly lessen. Vegans use 1/18th of the resources than does the average meat-eater, every day, a vegan saves 1100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 square feet of forested land, and 20 pounds CO2 equivalent. We can’t allow the horror that is animal agriculture to continue. Making the change is not only morally right, but is also necessary if we intend to sustain our Earth much longer. Neither our environment nor our animals can take much more.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Facts and Sources." COWSPIRACY. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Firth, Niall. "Early Man 'butchered and Ate the Brains of Children as Part of Everyday Diet'" Daily Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 01 Sept. 2010. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

"Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options." Livestock's Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

Drew T. Shindell*, Greg Faluvegi, Dorothy M. Koch, Gavin A. Schmidt, Nadine Unger, Susanne E. BauerNASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University, New York, NY 10025, USA.↵*To Whom Correspondence Should Be Addressed. E-mail: Drew.t.shind, Drew T. Shindell, Greg Faluvegi, Dorothy M. Koch, Gavin A. Schmidt, Nadine Unger, Susanne E. Bauer, and Science30 Oct 2009 : 716-718. "Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions." Improved Attribution of Climate Forcing to Emissions | Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.