Eating meat is dangerous

[XxMallyPrydexX]

I will quote two exerpts from Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, one which explains how meat contributes to world hunger and poverty and the other how the meat industry is contributing to the greenhouse effect...

The implications of all this for the world food situation is staggering. In 1974 Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council estimated that if Americans were to reduce their meat consumption by only 10 percent for one year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption - or enough to feed 60 million people. Don Paarlberg, a former U.S. assistant secretary of agriculture, has said that merely reducing the U.S. livestock population by half would make available enough food to make up calorie deficit of the nonsocialist undeveloped nations nearly four times over.

It will, however, be the squanderings of the forests that turns out to be the greatest of all follies caused by the demand for meat. Historically, the desire to graze animals has been the dominant motive for clearing forests. It still is today. In Costa Rica, Columbia, and Brazil in Malasia, Thailand, and Indonesia, rainforests are being cleared to provide grazing land for cattle. But the meat produced from the cattle does not benefit the poor of those countries. Instead it is sold to the well-to-do in the big cities, or it is exported. Over the past twenty-five years nearly half of Central Americas tropical rainforests have been destroyed, largely to provide beef to North America. Perhaps 90 percent of the plant and animal species on this planet live in the tropics, many of them still unrecorded by science. If the clearing continues at its present rate, they will be pushed into extinction. In addition, clearing the land causes erosion, the increased runoff leads to flooding, peasants no longer have wood for food, and rainfall may be reduced.

We are losing these forests just at the moment when we are starting to learn how truly vital they are. Since the North American drought of 1988, many people have heard of the threat posed to our planet by the greenhouse effect, caused mainly by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Forests store immense amounts of carbon; it has been estimated that despite all the clearing that has taken place, the world's remaining forests still hold four hundred times the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by human use of fossil fuels. Destroying the forest releases the carbon into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. Conversely, a new, growing forest absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locks it up as living matter. The destruction of living forests will intensify the greenhouse effect; in large scale reforestation, combined with other measures to reduce the input of carbon dioxide, lies out only hope of mitigating it. If we fail to do so, the warming of our planet will mean, within the next fifty years, widespread droughts, further destruction of forest from climatic change, the extinction of innumerable species unable to cope with the changes in their habitat, and a melting of the polar ice caps, which will in turn raise sea levels and flood coastal cities and plains. A rise in one meter of the level of the sea would flood 15 percent of Bangladesh, affecting 10 million people; and it would threaten the very existence of some low-lying Pacific islands nations such as the Maldives, Tuvalu, and Kiribati.

Forest and meat animals compete for the same land. The prodigious appetite of the affluent nations for meat means that agribusiness can pay more than those who want to restore or preserve our forests. We are, quite literally, gambling with the future of our planet - for the sake of hamburgers.

These are just two of the many reasons why I refuse to eat meat... <3

[Brandon]

I'm a meatatarian, and you only need one reason to eat meat: because it's friggin' delicious!

[XxMallyPrydexX]

Ok then... that was rude

[Maloo]

Not really, just not helpful to the topic lol. I don't really have anything I can say about it because 1. There was at least one typo in the quote and that bothered me, and 2. There's nothing I can do to change it

[XxMallyPrydexX]

Ok, well sorry I actually took the time to type out both of those so there are bound to be a few typos. Can people who are going to post please just think about whether they are contributing to the discussion or just trying to harass me for my beliefs? Thanks.

[Maloo]

I'm not harassing you at all. First, when someone says something is a quote, you assume it's word for word, so I'm sorry. Second, the last part of my post wasn't harassing you, let alone even rude. I eat so little meat as it is, and it's not like I own a cattle farm, so I'm just saying there is nothing I can do about the problem.

[TigerTank77]

If I don't eat it, then PETA will probably execute it.

So at least this way, it isn't wasted.

[BDF]

I was expecting this to be a thread quoting some new epidemic spreading through meet processing plants or something, that everyone's gonna die tomorrow.

[chickenonsteroids]

Do you refuse to use paper? Do you refuse to be driven or drive anywhere? Actually why are you using energy now?

The thing with the whole ' i refuse to eat meat blah blah blah' is that it really doesn't do anything. The demand for meat will only drop if there is a mass movement that stops millions of people eating meat. The same cow will die regardless of whether you eat it or not.

All these arguments single out one thing and make it sound like if no one eats meat the world will never die.

I'm not advocating 'i don't give a shit about the planet' mindset i just don't see enough reason to stop eating meat because it won't do anything. It's different from energy as you can save energy but you don't cut the leg off a cow and let it live. The same energy will be used.

I guess its the same reason why disarmament will never happen

[chickenonsteroids]

Plus, i just realised the link between my name and this thread

[XxMallyPrydexX]

Ok seriously guys? All I'm doing is giving you information. I'm not telling you that you can't eat meat. So stop being rude.

[thebigmole]

I really love meat. I remember during a mad cow scare when my mother wouldn't let us eat red meat, drove me crazy I went out one night just to secretly eat a hamburger. So really I would just propose that they find another way to get grazing land. I mean why do they keep needing more anyway, if so many people are eating meat how is there such an abundance of cattle that they need to clear more space for them.

[Ngikhona]

Thread closed at OP's request.