Sobering Statistics About Factory Farming

Sobering Statistics About Factory Farming
Why It's Smart to Go Vegan
by Ardeth Baxter
June 18, 2007
(full article - link is below)


It's a frightening reality that more than two-thirds of our original American topsoil is now gone, with 85% of this loss attributed to livestock production. To create a meat-centered economy, 260 million acres of forest have been cleared for cropland. Seventy-eight calories of fossil fuel are required to produce only one calorie of beef protein; in contrast, only two calories are needed to produce one calorie of soybean protein. Almost half of the total amount of water used annually goes to grow feed and provide drinking water for cattle and other livestock.

According to the General Accounting Office, more plant species have been eliminated or threatened by livestock grazing than any other cause, and cattle grazing harms about 20% of endangered and threatened species. Some $37 million of taxpayer money is used to trap, poison, gas, and gun down almost one million wild animals and birds each year for livestock protection and pest control.

In the United States, every year 10 billion land animals and countless billions of fish raised at fish farms or taken from the wild are killed for food. The factory farming industry treats animals not as the sentient creatures they are, but rather as profitable commodities. They live in crowded cages and enclosures, are deprived of a normal social or family life, and spend their short lives largely without seeing daylight or being able to walk on the ground.

Forty million cows and calves are killed annually.

To read the full article: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/274046/sobering_statistics_about_factory_farming.html?singlepage=true&cat=22