"A diet that can lead to heart attacks, cancer, and numerous other diseases cannot be a natural diet," writes Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook.  "A diet that pillages our resources of land, water, forests, and energy cannot be a natural diet.  A diet that causes the unnecessary suffering and death of billions of animals each year cannot be a natural diet."

I understand there are conservative Christians who fear vegetarianism...which is kind of like being afraid of nonsmoking, nondrinking, or recycling.  Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain fed to livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

A pamphlet put out by Compassion Over Killing says raising animals for food is one of the leading causes of both pollution and resource depletion today.  According to a recent United Nations report, "Livestock's Long Shadow," raising chickens, turkeys, pigs, and other animals for food causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks and other forms of transportation combined.  Researchers from the University of Chicago similarly concluded that a vegetarian diet is the most energy efficient, and the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by not eating animal products than by switching to a hybrid car.

A 2007 journal published by the American Dietetic Association found "meat protein production required 26 times more water than vegetable protein on rain-fed lands."  The journal further states that dieticians "can encourage eating that is both healthful and conserving of soil, water, and energy by emphasizing plant sources of protein and foods that have been produced with fewer agricultural inputs."

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems.  Urgent action is required to remedy the situation." 

---Union Nations' Food and Agriculture Association

A single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day, which is equivalent to that of 20 to 40 humans.

70% of the grain grown and 50% of the water consumed in the U.S. are used by the meat industry.  (Audubon Society)

On average 990 liters of water are required to produce one liter of milk.  (United Nations)

Over 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow grain for livestock.  (Greenpeace)

It takes nearly one gallon of fossil fuel and 5,200 gallons of water to produce just one pound of conventionally fed beef.  (Mother Jones)

Farmed animals produce an estimated 1.4 billion tons of fecal waste each year in the U.S.  Much of this untreated waste pollutes the land and water.

  The number of animals killed for food in the United States is 70 times larger than the number of animals killed in laboratories, 30 times larger than the number killed by hunters and trappers, and 500 times larger than the number of animals killed in animal pounds.
“If anyone wants to save the planet,” says Paul McCartney in a PETA interview, “all they have to do is stop eating meat. That’s the single most important thing you could do. It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty. Let’s do it! Linda was right.  Going veggie is the single best idea for the new century.”

Thanks for all your comments, Vasu. You clearly support the meat is hands-down bad for the planet argument. But what do you think about the thesis of this blog post you're responding to -- that sustainable agriculture is impossible without livestock, and that in some circumstances livestock can actually improve the health of the environment by restoring decimated ecosystems? Let's get a conversation going about the gray areas here. . .

You're right, Katherine:  I don't think livestock agriculture is ecologically sustainable, except (perhaps) on a small scale. 

According to the editors of World Watch, July/August 2004:

"The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future--deforestization, topsoil erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities and the spread of disease."

Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, similarly says:

"...the survival of our planet depends on our sense of belonging--to all other humans, to dolphins caught in dragnets to pigs and chickens and calves raised in animal concentration camps, to redwoods and rainforests, to kelp beds in our oceans, and to the ozone layer." 

Regarding vegetarianism vs. veganism, man is the only species that drinks the milk of another species. All other species drink the milk of the mothers of their own species until they are weaned. Cow's milk is the perfect food—if you're a baby calf!

To mass produce cow's milk on a large scale via factory farming, cows have to be kept continually pregnant, giving birth, and lactating. The cows are genetically bred to produce excess cow's milk for humans. Male cows (bulls) are useless to the dairy industry, so they become veal. By supporting the dairy industry, one indirectly supports cow killing.

Vegetarians do cause far less animal cruelty than meat-eaters, but a nonviolent philosophy would carry greater weight from vegans than from vegetarians.

The meat-eaters, especially, exactly, are ready to find fault with us in this regard: do we love all animals, or only some animals (e.g., cows) and not others? And if we really do love the cows, why do we contribute to their death and suffering just to drink their milk?

Can children be raised without cow's milk? YES! Half the world's population (blacks and Asians in particular) are lactose intolerant, and can't digest milk after infancy. Dr. Michael Klaper has written books on vegan nutrition, pregnancy, and childbirth.

One of the first books I read on the subject of vegetarianism while in college was A Vegetarian Sourcebook by Keith Akers (1983). Describing the environmental damage caused by raising animals for food: topsoil erosion, deforestization, loss of groundwater, etc. as well as the economic inefficiency and waste of energy and resources in raising animals for food in an age of exploding human population growth, Keith Akers foreshadowed John Robbins' Diet for a New America (1987), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

In A Vegetarian Sourcebook, Keith Akers writes:

"Using grasslands for livestock agriculture creates great environmental problems, which greatly limit its usefulness. Grazing systems require ten times more land than feedlot agriculture, in which animals are simply given feed grown on cropland. Grazing systems have to be extensive in order to avoid the catastrophic consequences of overgrazing—which renders a piece of land unsuitable for any purpose.

"Overgrazing and the consequent soil erosion are extremely serious problems worldwide. By the most conservative estimates, 60% of all U.S. rangelands are overgrazed, with billions of tons of soil lost each year. Overgrazing has also been the greatest cause of man-made deserts.

"Even if we grant grazing a role in a resource-efficient, ecologically stable agriculture, milk should be the end result, not beef.  Milk provides over 50% of the protein and nearly four times the calories of beef, per unit of forage resources from grazing.

"'When only forage is available, then egg, broiler and pork production are eliminated and only milk, beef, and lamb production are viable systems,' state David and Marcia Pimentel, scientists and authors of Food, Energy and Society. "Of these three, milk production is the most efficient.'

"An ecologically stable, resource-efficient system of grazing animals for human food could not be anything faintly resembling today's livestock agriculture," concludes Akers.  "It would be a smaller, decentralized, less intensive system of animal husbandry devoted to milk production."

This is what the Vedas say as well: an acre of land, a cow and a bull, and you're all set!  The Vedas also warn that when a population is sinful, their land becomes a desert...and overgrazing does lead to topsoil erosion, which in turn leads to desertification. So it may be possible to have animal agriculture (devoted solely to milk production) on a small scale—like the Amish.  But the rest of humanity, with an exploding population in the billions, will have to be vegan.

"Nor can fish provide any help here," notes Keith Akers.

According to a national Vegetarian Resource Group Poll conducted by Harris Interactive, nearly 15 percent of Americans say they never eat fish or seafood.

The pacific sardine lives along the coasts of North America from Alaska to southern California. Sardines, once a major part of the California fishing industry, are now considered to be "commercially extinct." Another species classified as "commercially extinct" is the New England haddock. Ecologists have also been concerned about the significant reduction in finfish, the Atlantic bluefin tuna, Lake Erie cisco, and blackfins that inhabit Lakes Huron and Michigan.

Over 200,000 porpoises are killed every year by fishermen seeking tuna in the Pacific. Sea turtles are similarly killed in Caribbean shrimp operations.

 Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock.  Producing eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the average household for a year.

Factory farm pollution is the primary source of damage to coastal waters in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.  Scientists report that over sixty percent of the coastal waters in the United States are moderately to severely degraded from factory farm nutrient pollution.  This pollution creates oxygen-depleted dead zones, which are huge areas of ocean devoid of aquatic life.

The World Conservation Union lists over 1,000 different fish species that are threatened or endangered. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate, over 60 percent of the world's fish species are either fully exploited or depleted.  Commercial fish populations of cod, hake, haddock, and flounder have fallen by as much as 95 percent in the north Atlantic. 

It makes sense to eat lower on the food chain.  Some animals are killed because, as carnivores, they compete with the human predator for the right to kill other animals for food, including wild game and domesticated species raised by livestock ranchers. Alaskan hunters are eager to reduce the wolf population in their state because this animal is a predator of moose.

The United States government spends $10 million each year to kill an estimated 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, badgers, bears, and mountain lions just to placate ranchers who don't want these animals killing their livestock.  The cost far outweighs the damage to livestock that these predators cause.

Nor can fish provide any help in alleviating global hunger. There are signs that the fishing industry (which is quite energy-intensive) has already overfished the oceans in several areas. And fish could never play a major role in the worlds diet anyway: the entire global fish catch of the world, if divided among all the world's inhabitants would amount to only a few ounces of fish per person per week.

The American Dietetic Association reports that throughout history, the human race has lived on "vegetarian or near vegetarian diets," and meat has traditionally been a luxury. Studies show the healthiest human populations on the globe live almost entirely on plant foods--useful data, given our skyrocketing healthcare costs. Nathan Pritikin, author of The Pritikin Plan, recommended not more than three ounces of animal protein per day; three ounces per week for his patients who had already suffered a heart attack.

In A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), author Keith Akers observes:

"Much has been made over the virtues of chicken and fish in comparison to red meats such as beef and pork.  It has been said that eating chicken and fish will aid in the prevention of heart disease, because these meats are relatively lower in fat and contain more unsaturated than saturated fat, thus helping to lower cholesterol levels.  Unfortunately, these claims are not supported by the evidence. Studies in which human volunteers switched from diets including beef and eggs, to one including fish and chicken showed that serum cholesterol levels were not appreciably lowered by switching to chicken and fish. 

"And an examination of the nutritional data suggests an explanation:  while it is true that chicken and fish contain less fat than beef, it is also true that chicken and fish contain about twice as much cholesterol per calorie as does beef.  Indeed, some seafoods (such as crab, shrimp, and lobster) are exceptionally high in cholesterol content.

"All of these diverse theories have roughly the same dietary implications.  Meat is high in cholesterol, saturated fat, and total fat. Plant foods, by contrast, are usually low in saturated fat and total fat, and contain zero cholesterol.  Vegetarians have lower levels of serum cholesterol than do meat-eaters, with total vegetarians (vegans) having the lowest levels of all."

Obviously, then, the idea of providing the entire world with a Western diet is quite absurd. But what about satisfying today's demand for meat--which provides only a fraction of the population with a Western-style diet? If the world population triples in the next 100 years, and meat consumption continues, then meat production would have to triple as well. Instead of 3.7 billion acres of cropland and 7.5 billion acres of grazing land, we would require 11.1 billion acres of cropland and 22.5 billion acres of grazing land.

But this is slightly larger than the total land area of the six inhabited continents! We are desperately short of forests, water and energy already. Even if we resort to extreme methods of population control: abortion, infanticide, genocide, etc...modest increases in the world population during the next generation would make it impossible to maintain current levels of meat consumption.  On a vegetarian diet, however, the world could easily support a population several times its present size. The world's cattle alone consume enough to feed over 8.7 billion humans.
 
Lester Brown of the Overseas Development Council calculates that if Americans reduced their meat consumption by only 10 percent per year, it would free at least 12 million tons of grain for human consumption--or enough to feed 60 million people.

My friend Dave Browning, a conservative pro-life Republican in San Diego, posed a similar question, when I forwarded him an e-mail from PETA  several years ago challenging those who think they can still be "meat-eating environmentalists" to go veg, for the sake of the planet.

I can't say how accurate your assertion is, that "without livestock, organic farming would be impossible."  In Diet for a New America, John Robbins advocates a vegan diet AND a return to organic farming.  He says:

We produce pesticides at a rate some 13,000 times faster than we did in the 1950s. Our environment is being flooded by pesticide compounds.

Poisons used to kill insects accumulate on crops, in the soil and in greater concentration in the tissues of living creatures higher on the food chain. The EPA's Pesticide Monitoring Journal reports that "Foods of animal origin (are) the major source of pesticide residues in the diet."

In his Pulitzer Prize nominated book, How to Survive in America the Poisoned, pesticide authority Lewis Regenstein writes: "Meat contains approximately 14 times more pesticides than do plant foods...Thus, by eating foods of animal origin, one ingests greatly concentrated amounts of hazardous chemicals."

A 1976 study by the EPA found the breast milk of mothers who consume animal products to be 50 to 100 times more contaminated by pesticide residues than the milk of vegetarian or vegan mothers.

Organic farming and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) are getting more attention today. These utilize natural insect controls, such as predatory insects, weather, crop rotation, pest-resistant varieties, soil tillage, and other environmentally safe practices.

A 1979 Department of Agriculture task force of scientists and economists came to "...positive conclusions on the importance of organic farming and its potential contributions to agriculture and society." Until the end of the Second World War, American farmers produced bountiful harvests without relying on pesticides. There is no reason why America cannot do so again.

Because a vegan diet consumes fewer resources and uses far less energy than a meat-centered diet, this would mean less consumption of fossil fuel energy.  And there are alternatives to petrochemical products as well. 

According to Ed Rosenthal, hemp has many economic uses. It contains the longest fiber in the plant kingdom and is one of the strongest and most durable. It can be used for commercial and industrial applications, including insulation, textiles, clothing, and rope. The fiber and pulp can be used to manufacture nondeteriorating paper using a relatively pollution-free process. The plant can also be used for biomass applications.

Using modern processing techniques, hemp can be used in place of petrochemicals. Instead of synthetic plastics made from oil, we can use natural fiber and processed bioplastic derivatives. Plastics and polyester rely on foreign oil, while cotton consumes enormous amounts of water, fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides.

Industrial hemp is very clean, easy to grow and is one of the most environmentally sound sources of industrial fiber in the world. Environmentally friendly detergents, plastics, paints, varnishes, cosmetics, and textiles are already being made from it in Europe. Industrial hemp can meet our fiber needs while also revitalizing our struggling rural economies.
Hemp is already being used in place of trees for pressboard, particleboard, and core concrete construction molds. Paper made from hemp is acid-free, stronger and lasts far longer than paper made from trees. Hemp fabrics are far stronger and more resistant to mold than any other natural fiber.

Builders in France and Germany use hemp for construction material, replacing drywall and plywood. Hemp can be used to manufacture plastic plumbing pipe, replacing such toxic materials as polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Hemp fiber is already being used in place of glass fiber in surfboards and snowboards. Hemp could also provide the resin itself.

Hemp requires no herbicides or pesticides and needs much less water than cotton. It is an extremely vigorous annual and high yielder, producing up to five tons of usable material per acre.

You've posed an interesting question!  I hope I've answered it.  If not, I'll have to do research, and get back to you.

I believe it is at least as "sustainable" to grow food with veganic (stock-free organic) methods as it seems to be to, say, grow enough pasture-fed cattle to meet public demand.

And I wish more organic farmers would go stock-free, and label their produce accordingly, if they do.

Until veganic agriculture becomes more well-known and widespread in this country, I will continue to expand my garden so I can try to raise my own food.

http://www.goveganic.net/

http://www.veganorganic.net/

http://animalrights.change.org/blog/view/veganic_farming_a_sustainable_and_compassionate_solution

This IS interesting, but I'd argue that these conditions aren't realistic, and while this type of farming would be acceptable, I'm SURE that we couldn't feed the world the amount of meat and dairy it currently demands from these practices.

People inevitably have to make huge cutbacks on their consumptions of these products, or even eliminate them altogether.

I think people don't realize how intensively the land can be farmed via grass farming, aka management-intensive grazing. It's a very involved technique that requires intimate knowledge of the gowth cycles of the various grass species in your pasture in addition to the needs of your animals, resulting in a LOT of food coming off of a comparitavely small amount of land. Traditionally cattle need a couple dozen acres of "unimproved" prarie per head, but a lush poddock can support just one or two acres per head, and using management-intensive grazing can improve your per-acre production another 20-40% on top of that. Add in a mix of species grazing at the optimum times and you can have gains of up to 80% production per acre! (primary source)

It's also important to keep in mind that the primary reason we have a "meat-based" diet in America today is the subsidizing of cheap corn, grown with petroleum fertilizers, fed to animals on feedlots. As these practices are entirely unsustainable, they will inevitable end (I hope sooner rather than later), and meat prices will rise to , making it the more the seasoner, garnish, or special-occasion centerpiece it always was before.