Are Vegetarians Really Protecting The Environment?
Plants and animals essentially support life on earth. Humans, as we call ourselves, heavily depend on the growth and development of plant and animal species. The importance for the balance between fauna and flora conservation is usually understated in many contexts.
Carbon dioxide released by animals during respiration is recycled by plants during photosynthesis. With the end product being oxygen, photosynthesis replaces CO2 stock in the atmosphere with oxygen to support animal life.
Aside from the purifying air, plants provide food as well as medicine, clothes, shelter etc. Every plant and animal on earth is indispensable to the environment to an extent that another plants, or animals including man, thrive on. This creates a balance of life that enables the cycle to progress efficiently.
The top 5 reasons for going veggie are:
1. Reduce risk of the Heart Diseases
2. Reduces Global Warming
3. Weight loss and keeping fit
4. Live longer, slow the aging process
5. Avoid toxic meat contaminants
Vegetarians believe that killing animals for food is immoral and harmful to the environment that supports them. At face value, vegetarians contribute to environmental sustainability; scientists on both sides argue that eating beef - though not other meat - has daunting environmental impacts. This because of the amount of grains and land used to produce a pound of beef.
The volume of methane emitted by livestock has adverse environmental implication and stalls the progress made in combating global warming.Of course some livestock may release greenhouse gases, how about species of animals that are not in that class? The environmental impact from beef production dwarfs other animal foods such as dairy products, pork and poultry.
Endangered species at risk due to crop production
Scientifically, giving up meat is not environmental friendly as it seems. Are you asking why?
In 2013, French researchers published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that some diets “containing large amounts of plant-based foods” had the highest levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
Another study conducted by The Cranfield University, commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, found that the amount of foreign land needed to produce meat substitute products – and the potential destruction of forests to make way for farmland – outweighs the negatives of rearing beef and lamb in the UK.
Similar results in Australia indicates that producing wheat and other grains results in at least 25 times the killing of sentient animals per kilogram of usable protein. Growing corn, wheat or soy (which are currently all genetically modified unless organic) in formally grassland areas destroy animals’ natural feeding grounds.
Modern industrial agriculture conglomerates destroy the delicate ecosystems surrounding them including topsoil, streams and rivers that are home to both terrestrial and aquatic animals as well as birds that feed on them. Traces of agrochemicals leach into surface and ground water posing huge threats to the ecological health of native plants and animals (including Homo sapiens).
Wholesome fauna and flora species serve a generic purpose and so are humans created omnivores. The move of vegetarianism increases dependence on plant or meat substitutes offsetting the ideal equilibrium of the ecosystem.
Humans must assume a better role to care and protect the earth and all living organisms that depend on it. Sources of food from all natural categories like grass fed animals, wild game, and naturally processed by smoking, fermentation, or curing also help in creating a balance for nature’s ecological integrity.
Note: This post is does not target people who are vegetarians for religious or medically recommended reasons.