Nevertheless, compared to a plant-based diet, animals remain energy intensive and ineficient at converting solar energy to food. A Bangladeshi family living of rice, beans, vegetables and fruit can subsist on an acre of land or less. Meanwhile the average American, who consumes 270 pounds of meat a year, could require as much as twenty times that. If you examine the inputs necessary to produce a pound of soy protein compared to animal protein, the latter uses twelve times as much land, thirteen times as much fossil fuels and fifteen times as much water – and soy is a famously ineficient non-meat product.
Nearly a third of the useable surface area of the planet is given over to livestock either directly or indirectly, with animal feed accounting for the majority of global crop production. One study by Cornell University found that while 302 million hectares were given over to livestock in the United States, only 13 million hectares were allocated to vegetables, rice, fruit, potatoes and beans. Such a huge gap shows that animal products are a highly ineficient way of using finite resources to produce food.
What’s more, livestock farming contributes to 14 per cent of all human caused greenhouse gas emissions and, according to a 2006 report by the UN, generates greater amounts of CO than cars. Meanwhile 69 per cent of the world’s freshwater withdrawals are committed to agriculture, most of which is in meat production, with the average cow consuming 11,000 gallons of water a year. That means the average pound of ground beef requires 440 gallons of water, while a dozen eggs need an astonishing 636 gallons. And all in a world where 3.4 million people die every year from water-related disease.
Most remarkable of all is that after using all this water, energy, land and labour – not to mention the greenhouse gas emissions created as a by-product – we dispense with as much as half of the animal’s carcass. A heifer weighing a thousand pounds will, on average, produce 610 pounds of ‘hanging weight’, with this falling to 430 pounds of retail cuts after the removal of bone and fat. Once you factor in skin and hooves, two years of digestive processes, consciousness, respiration and just moving around, food from a living cow starts to look incredibly wasteful as a means of transforming solar energy into beef and milk.
Food Without Animals
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