Vegetarianism, Anyone?

 

This picture, which originally appeared on the cover of Patrick Duncan's Liberal Party magazine Contact 1, no. 15 (August 23, 1958), was taken at the Cape Town Municipal Abatoir that year (when Amolosh was involved in trying to organize a nonracial meatworkers' union). The pile in the background is entrails. The stuff in the foreground is tripe.

Things are less messy now, of course (at least I hope so). Nonetheless, as Kathy Freston notes (link above):

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:

● 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;

● 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;

● 70 million gallons of gas -- enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;

● 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;

● 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

● Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;

● 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;

● 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;

● Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions.

A recent United Nations report titled Livestock's Long Shadow concluded that the meat industry causes almost 40 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world's transportation systems--that's all the cars, trucks, SUVs, planes and ships in the world combined. The report also concluded that factory farming is one of the biggest contributors to the most serious environmental problems at every level--local and global.

Nous sommes
le 14 Germinal, An 217