veganism: Have just read that the British Government wants people to eat less meat and dairy to help the environment. Has any other Government got round to this? They usually copy the U.S. Government.|||-Half of the water used in the U.S. is used for animal agriculture. -Every year in the US an area the size of Connecticut is lost to topsoil erosion--85% of this erosion is associated with livestock production. -Livestock already consume half the world's grain, and their numbers are still growing almost exponentially. -Every kilogram of beef we consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland, requires around 100,000 litres of water. -Approximately 1.3 billion cattle populate the earth at any one time. They exist artificially in these vast numbers to satisfy the excessive human demand for the meat and by-products they provide. Their combined weight exceeds that of the entire human population. By sheer numbers, their consequent appetite for the world's resources, have made them a primary cause for the destruction of the environment. -In the US, feedlot cattle yield one pound of meat for every 16 pounds of feed. It takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat. According to Newsweek, "The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float a destroyer." In contrast, it takes only 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat. Feeding the average meat-eating American requires 3-1/4 acres of land per year. -Feeding a person who eats no food derived from animals requires only 1/6 acre per year.. - Studies by North Carolina State University estimate that half of the some 2,500 open hog manure cesspools (euphemistically termed "lagoons"), now needed as part of hog productions there, are leaking contaminants such as nitrate--a chemical linked to blue-baby syndrome--into the ground water. -Worldwide demand for fish, along with advances in fishing methods--sonar, driftnets, floating refrigerated fish packing factories--is bringing ocean species, one after another, to the brink of extinction. In the Nov., '95 edition of Scientific American, Carl Safina writes, "For the past two decades, the fishing industry has had increasingly to face the result of extracting [fish] faster than fish populations [can] reproduce." Research reveals that the intended cure--aquaculture (fish farming)--actually hastens the trend toward fish extinction, while disrupting delicate coastal ecosystems at the same time. -A scientist, reporting in the industry publication Confinement, calculated in 1976 that the planet's entire petroleum reserves would be exhausted in 13 years if the whole world were to take on the diet and technological methods of farming used in the US. -If tomorrow people in the US made a radical change away from their meat-centered diets, an area of land the size of all of Texas and most of Oklahoma could be returned to forest. -It is estimated that livestock production accounts for twice the amount of pollution in the US as that produced by industrial sources. -Livestock in the US produce 130 times the excrement of the entire US population. Since farm animals today spend much or all of their lives in factory sheds or feedlots, their waste no longer serves to fertilize pastures a little at a time. One poultry researcher, according to United Poultry Concerns literature, explains: "A one-million-hen complex will produce 125 tons of wet manure a day." To responsibly store, disperse, or degrade this amount of animal waste is simply not possible. Much of the waste inevitably is flushed into rivers and streams. -Methane is one of the four greenhouse gasses that contributes to the environmental trend known as global warming. The 1.3 billion cattle in the world produce one fifth of all the methane emitted into the atmosphere. -.Agricultural engineers have compared the energy costs of producing poultry, pork and other meats with the energy costs of producing a number of plant foods. It was found that even the least efficient plant food was nearly 10 times as efficient in returning food energy as the most energy efficient animal food. -Since so much fossil fuel is needed to produce it, beef could be considered a petroleum product. With factory housing, irrigation, trucking, and refrigeration, as well as petrochemical fertilizer production requiring vast amounts of energy, approximately one gallon of gasoline goes into every pound of grain-fed beef. -The direct and hidden costs of soil erosion and runoff in the US, mostly attributable to cattle and feed crop production, is estimated at $44 billion a year. - Each pound of feedlot beef can be equated with 35 pounds of eroded topsoil. -A nationwide switch to a pure vegetarian diet would allow us to cut our oil imports by 60%. -Compared to a vegan diet, three days of a typical American diet requires as much water as you use for showering all year (assuming you shower every day).An acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes, but only 165 pounds of beef. -In the U.S., 260 million acres of forest have been destroyed for use as agricultural land to support our meat diet (over 1 acre per person). -Since 1967, the rate of deforestation has been one acre every five seconds. -Trees are being cut down at an alarming rate in the US, as well as around the world, for meat production. For every one acre cleared for urban development, seven acres are cleared to graze animals or grow feed for them.|||Shut up and hand me that steak!!! But seriously have been reading about that. To do with methane and cows etc etc....ozone layer....perhaps there's something in it after all....not a bad idea!|||Yeah, veganism does help the animals, environment, and your health. Not a bad deal, huh? I'm not sure if the US has gone around to the "veganism theory" yet, but they are preaching the same old same old (the kind that nobody ever follows anyways) - Use less electricity, ride your bike to places instead of using your car, etc. etc. If those actually worked, they wouldn't be preaching them anymore.