There are also environmental benefits. Millions of cows raised for meat are belching out tremendous amounts of methane, far more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. The environmental impact of meat production needs to be taken much more seriously. It is thought this meat could be appearing in supermarkets in just a few years. Studies have shown that growing meat in labs would substantially cut down on the land and water required for traditional livestock production.
It also found that greenhouse gas emissions would be dramatically reduced, saturated fats can be lowered and the meat would be free from antibiotics and growth hormones.
Much of the world has access to an incredible range of vegetables, which are relatively cheap and plentiful. So, for those of us who have ruled out going vegetarian or vegan, there are still positive choices that we can make. We are not a vegan or vegetarian organisation, but we do understand the huge effect that eating less, but higher welfare meat can have on the lives of farm animals, your health and the planet.
So make your pledge to cut back on cruelly produced pork and other meat. I have. World Animal Protection! The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. How animals become meat and why the vegan diet helps animals.
Modern high-pressure agriculture commonly keeps cows, calves, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other animals in overcrowded stalls, cages, crates, or sheds where they are often unable to turn around or take even a single step for their entire lives. Deprived of veterinary care, exercise, sunlight, and even the feel of grass beneath their feet, these living, breathing, thinking, feeling beings, whose senses are so much like our own, suffer and die at the rate of millions per day just so that we can have burgers, patties, nuggets, and wieners.
Deciding what we will eat means choosing between the horrors of factory farming and respect for animals. Pigs, cows, and chickens are individuals with feelings - they experience love, happiness, loneliness, and fear, just as dogs, cats, and people do. More than 25 billion animals are killed by the meat industry each year - in ways that would horrify any compassionate person. The average American meat-eater is responsible for the abuse and death of about 90 animals per year.
Watch video: Meet Your Meat. In modern factory farms, animals are routinely injected with hormones and stimulants to make them grow bigger and faster. Many dairy ranchers use recombinant bovine growth hormone rBGH to enhance milk production, despite the fact that this chemical - which has been implicated in causing cancer and other diseases - shows up in milk. Feedlots are crowded, filthy, stinking places with open sewers and choking air. The animals would not survive at all but for the fact that they are fed huge amounts of antibiotics.
In some farms, cattle are fed "renders" - dead and grounded up cows. To induce and increase egg production, chicken are kept in tight cages and kept awake under bright light 24 hours a day. Consider eating vegan and eliminating all animal products from your diet. Watch: The Meatrix. Hundreds of thousands of animals are poisoned, blinded, and killed every year to test shampoos, household cleaners, cosmetics, hair sprays, and other personal-care and household items.
These tests are not required by law, and they often produce inaccurate or misleading results - even if a product has blinded an animal, it can still be marketed to you. Some corporations force substances into animals' stomachs and drip chemicals into rabbits' eyes. What goes on behind the doors of laboratories is horrific.
Animals are also unnecssariyly being trapped, caged, hurt, and even killed to make clothing, accessories, and furniture for human use. Learn more about how you can make a switch to cruelty-free: Vegan Fashion. All the arguments to prove human superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering, the animals are our equals. A vegan diet reduces the destruction of tropical rainforests, wildlife habitat, and help to save endangered species!
Rainforests are vital to life on earth - they regulate the global climate and the water cycle, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and provide humans with medicines, food, and much more. Sadly, rainforests are cut down to make room to raise cattle.
Every second, one football field of rainforest is destroyed in order to produce hamburgers. The following pie charts depict the numbers of these animals in the proportion we eat them. Aquatic animals we eat come to us through at least four different means: commercial landings caught in the wild, brought ashore and then sold , aquaculture farmed aquatic animals , imports and recreational fishing.
The sum of these minus the exports yields the total that enters the US supply as food. The most recent compilation of this data can be found in the Fisheries of the United States report, released by the Fisheries Statistics Division of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Based on this data for , but excluding US-produced aquaculture and recreational fishing, the National Fisheries Institute has released numbers on the per capita consumption of sea animals by United States residents. US-produced aquaculture data are not yet released for , but we can reach a reasonable approximation using the data from the Fisheries of the United States report.
With this adjustment to the data from the National Fisheries Institute and using the conversion factors and the methodology employed in my post on the fish we kill to feed the fish we eat , Table 3 below estimates the number of sea animals killed for direct consumption by the US civilian resident population in The consumption is reported in terms of live weight , the weight of the whole animal while alive.
In Table 3 above, the mean weights of the individual fish are derived from the mid-point of the estimated means compiled in two reports produced by fishcount. The mean weights used in the table are appropriately weighted by the estimated proportion of each species of animal used in our diet.
For example, the mean weight of salmon in Table 3 is based on the mean weights of farmed Atlantic salmon and the mean weights of the most-caught Pacific salmon: pink salmon and chum salmon.
As another example, the mean weight of tuna is similarly based on the proportional mean weights of the most-caught species of tuna: skipjack tuna, yellowfin tuna, bigeye tuna, and longtail tuna.
The assigned proportions rely on US production data reported in the Fisheries of the United States: document and on the total global fisheries production reported in the FAO Yearbook on Fishery and Aquaculture Statistics Shrimp are sold categorized by the count of heads-off shrimp per pound, ranging from extra small at count per pound to extra colossal at under 10 count per pound.
The relative sales numbers of these categories are not recorded by any regulatory body, but the and higher counts are among the most popular. The weight of the shrimp I use is conservatively estimated at 26 heads-off shrimp per pound, with a live weight to heads-off weight conversion factor of 0. The mean weights of shellfish shrimp, clams, crabs, oysters, lobsters, and scallops are similarly obtained based on conservative high estimates of the weight of individuals of a species, weighted by the proportion of each species that enters the US supply.
For example, the mean weight of clams is based on the mean estimated weight of Manila clams, Atlantic surf clams, quahog and ocean quahog clams, and softshell clams, in the approximate proportion in which they enter the US supply as reported in the Fisheries of the United States: document.
As Table 3 makes apparent, besides about shrimp, a vegetarian saves more than 12 fish and more than 10 other shellfish. It is important not to forget the wild fish we catch, then kill and process into fishmeal ground up dried fish and fish oil to feed to the fish, the shrimp, the pigs and the chickens we eat. Yes, we feed wild-caught fish products to the pigs and chickens we eat!
The sea animals we kill to feed the pigs, chickens, and aquacultured animals we eat is treated in detail in another of my posts: the fish we kill to feed the fish we eat. The aquacultured animals in the American diet who are fed fish products include shrimp, salmon, tilapia, pangasius, catfish, and crabs. As derived here , American consumption of aquacultured fish and shrimp demands the capture and death of 45, million to 92, million wild-caught sea animals each year!
Assuming a US resident civilian population of ,, in , the number of wild sea animals captured and killed to feed the aquacultured animals eaten by the average US consumer is between I reproduce here the pie chart which depicts the proportions of their numbers amongst those species of which more than , metric tonnes per year were captured in worldwide.
The numbers we have calculated above do not include bycatch , the fish and the crustaceans we unintentionally catch and then throw back into the sea dead or dying. Dolphins caught in tuna nets and turtles hooked by fishing gear have garnered well-deserved attention, but large numbers of less popular fishes and crustaceans routinely encounter commercial fishing gear and end up hauled on ships and discarded.
But, this bycatch rate is not uniform across all the species of sea animals we capture. The most destructive are shrimp trawlers , which use enormous nets towed by ships to capture all species of animals in their path indiscriminately.
According to the FAO study, Most of these discards are small fish and crustaceans who are dragged along in the net unable to escape. They also include larger animals like turtles, stingrays, and even sharks. The impact of American consumption of sea animals is particularly harsh, given that shrimp is the top sea animal, both in terms of their numbers and the edible weight, that Americans eat.
Because of the unusually oppressive impact of shrimp trawling and the high shrimp consumption in the United States, in this post I will compute the bycatch numbers for shrimp separately from the bycatch numbers for all other animals. Based on estimates derived here , we know that 1, million pounds of wild-caught shrimp are eaten by American consumers the rest being aquacultured shrimp.
As mentioned earlier, the estimated weight of the shrimp we eat is about 0. It is a reasonable assumption that the mean weights of the species of animals unintentionally caught by shrimp trawlers are approximately the same or larger than the mean weight of the shrimp we intentionally catch to eat. Given that shrimp trawlers drag along animals of all species indiscriminately, the mean weight of the bycatch animals can be estimated as the mean weight of all sea animals we catch equal to or larger than the size of the shrimp we eat.
Using the same sources as earlier, this mean weight ranges between 0. The total number of animals caught in the bycatch from shrimp trawling for US consumers, therefore, is between 11, million and 24, million.
The per capita bycatch number for American consumption of wild-caught shrimp, therefore, is between Again from this study , the average bycatch rate for sea animals other than shrimp is about 6. The mean weight of sea animals unintentionally caught during commercial non-shrimp fishing can be reasonably estimated as the mean weight of all sea animals intentionally captured by commercial fisheries but who are larger than shrimp.
Considering only the species of which , metric tonnes or more were caught in and using data from the FAO Yearbook on Fishery and Aquaculture Statistics , this mean weight lies between 0.
The number of individual animals in this bycatch, therefore, lies between 3, and 8, million. The per capita number lies between Adding this to the bycatch from shrimp trawling, the average American causes the unintentional capture of 46— sea animals who are discarded dead or dying.
Table 4 below summarizes the proportional impact, in terms of numbers of animals, of the American consumption of animals. From the table above, a vegetarian saves — animals each year. Using the mid-point of the ranges in the table above, the pie chart below depicts the proportional numbers of animals killed in service of the American consumption of meat.
Yes, a vegetarian saves at least an animal a day! As large as these numbers are, the larger scandal is not in how many animals we eat but in how much suffering we impose on them during their lives and during slaughter.
On factory farms for chickens and pigs and on factory farms for fish, the animals live a dreary existence weighted by both physical and mental suffering. The vegetarian, by withdrawing her contribution to this grim industry, saves her conscience too. Meat industry advertising. As a vegan, I know this applies to some people in my life.
One thing I have wondered is if lacto-ovo vegetarians eat more eggs and dairy products than the average meat-eater, because they replace the meat with other animal products. I'm sure this varies from individual to individual, and is, thus, hard to calculate. I encourage anyone adopting a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet to make sure that meat is replaced by beans, seitan, tofu, and other plant foods, keeping the amount of eggs and dairy the same as before - or, even better, lower - if they want to meet or exceed the numbers mentioned.
I do not know if vegetarians tend to eat more eggs and dairy than meat-eaters. If there is credible data available on it from any recent scientific polls, it will be easy to incorporate it in the formula I use. Interesting blog! I'd like to mention that these numbers are VERY conservative. These numbers do not include: 1. Foer's "Eating Animals" but not the this source of his numbers therein. One question - you're talking just about vegetarians in the U.
Just want to make sure of that. Yes, Kenny, I am only considering the US in my analysis. I am sure the worldwide numbers would be different. My daughter is almost two and she doesn't like meat at all! Thank you so much I love it! What about vegans? No chickens or cows suffering - that's saving animals too.
I'd like to see those numbers, just saying. I think the numbers are way off, if my calculations are right. Even if you were eating small animals like doves or shrimp, that is still to much of a number. I love meat, but I eat steaks once or twice a week, I eat a burger every other day or so, and snacks throughout the day. I don't think any human being consumes as much meat as this posts likes to say. Thank you for this, I really enjoyed reading!
Sometimes I feel disheartened and feel like I'm not even making an impact by refraining from eating animal products, this really helped to quantify things. Thank you for writing this. However, I didn't cite your page as my source because of the title - the people with whom I'm debating would have immediately dismissed the information as propaganda.
In retrospect, I should have asked for your permission first. I did forward the link for your page to another vegan. Isn't the number of animals saved offset to some degree by the number of animals killed to support the increased intake of plant-based foods? This is the oft-raised retort that vegans still kill animals incidentally through harvesting plants. So meat-eater kills X animals directly and indirectly in raising feed and Y animals indirectly.
It would seem your estimate while conservative for other reasons is inflated by ignoring incidental kills. So I shouldn't say your number is inflated; it just doesn't account for incidental kills when it probably should at least talk about it. Thank you for this article. I had been thinking recently about the number of animals saved by going vegetarian or vegan.
We always hear the number 95 and I was thinking how that number would be even greater if the person was a big eater. I, myself, began my vegan journey pushing lbs. Given how much I and my husband would eat in one sitting, I imagine we might be saving almost twice the number of the average person which one day we hope will balance that high number we ate if only karmically. Thanks for the honest effort, Harish. I don't like including shellfish, because that, I think, just distracts from the issue of suffering.
Although not "vegan," eating a clam is very much like eating a plant. And eating "vegan" foods like wet-grown rice kills plenty of vertebrates. Many vegans I know don't need ego help; they cut themselves off from the public and thus hurt animals with their sanctimony and moralizing. None of us are perfect, and we can all improve -- we can all do more for the animals.
But there are many other environmental tragedies that vegetarians are commiting due to lifestyle choices. Theoretically I could walk to the farm where my steak was raised so very little transport pollution, whilst your bananas and other tropical fruits on which you depend, currently organic or not involve vast fossil fuel use, and their organicness if any is a result of MASS poison kill-offs of entire islands of most small creatures.
For instance St. Lucia is almost entirely devoid of life smaller than a cat due to historic poisoning. No birds, butterflies, etc. On top of that meat is almost all mechanically harvested corn grain etc whilst your pretty fruit and vegetables involve flying exploited minorities thousands of miles from their countries to hand pick ever thing you put in your mouth If you eat plants to be healthy, so be it, but if you are in any way saving animals This weekend I was able to look through your data and it was very interesting for me to see how someone else was approaching the same problem.
It is obvious that much hard work has gone into the ADC analysis. A difference between my post and the ADC analysis is that my post comes up with finfish and the ADC analysis comes up with a much smaller Each pound of, say, farmed salmon we eat is grown using at least 8 smaller fish 1. This multiplicative factor significantly expands the number of fish we kill for our food and should be applied to all of the aquaculture products we eat.
If these two facts are accommodated into the ADC analysis, the numbers of finfish estimated by the ADC analysis and this post would get much closer. Anna, thank you for sharing the data from this post. It is perfectly fine if you did not link to it. I completely understand your concern re: propaganda. CAW, thank you for your comment. I had received the same feedback privately from others as well.
Michael, the number of fish we kill for our food is not the same as the number of fish that pass through our lips. This doesn't answer the question of whether lacto-ovo vegetarians eat MORE eggs and dairy than non-vegetarians, but it is interesting further reading for anyone who hasn't seen it:.
It lays out the animal foods that kill the most animals per calorie, and the least. It does not include all animal products, such as fish, goat, lamb, etc. In summary, eating chickens and eggs kills the most animals per calorie, of those foods being considered; dairy kills the least. Hi Tracye, thanks for the link. The article on the Measure of Doubt site compares eggs to beef and then inexplicably jumps to the conclusion that a vegetarian kills more animals than a meat-eater. It lists but conveniently ignores the chicken eaten by meat-eaters and its very high death count per calorie.
But yes, it is certainly possible for a vegetarian to kill more animals than a typical meat-eater by eating an insane number of eggs. This is terrific stuff. I once read something about it taking lbs of grain to produce 1 lb of meat or something along those lines; forgive my laziness here.
Thanks so much for this. I appreciate how comprehensive it is, and the fact that you include sea creatures. As a vegan since and a vegetarian since I hadn't really thought of it in terms of saving lives. I had hoped that my commitment reduced suffering and environmental damage, but I had never researched any statistics. Also, I appreciate your inclusion of the effects of those who have reduced their consumption of animals flesh. None of my friends are vegan and only one is a vegetarian, but many now eat animals much less than they used to.
I completely disagree with the comment made by Michael. Shellfish are animals and as such have rudimentary nervous systems. Therefore they do experience pain.
Being boiled alive must cause them pain. And to make a sweeping claim all that vegans uniformly "cut themselves off from the public and thus hurt animals with their sanctimony and moralizing" is a ludicrous, untrue, and disrespectful thing to say. Hi Harry, very nice article! One more thing to add to the equation pops into my mind: grass fed animals. What percentage of cows in the US are grazing on pasture lands?
What would grazing change in the numbers above i suppose it would increase the number of wild animals saved by vegetarians, and decrease the number for vegans - but by how much?
I thought about this some time ago, but never got myself to analyze that thoroughly. IMO, it's an interesting thing to consider. In short, vegan beats local - but why not do both?
Nearly all meat comes from factory farms which use tremendous amounts of water, fuel, and land indirectly, for feedcrops. Grazing displaces native wildlife, and ranchers, with the aid of the US government, kill even mre wildlife. At least the animals killed by plows a figure which is largely unknown might be of any age and had a normal life up until then.
Again, carnists also eat vegetables and indirectly eat most of the grains in the developed world. Slaughterhouse workers are similarly exploited, and it is one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.
Recent studies also show that the mere presence of slaughterhouses drives up the crime rate in surronding areas. So there are lots of potentially complicatng factors. Harish has done a very thorough job investigating the core numbers. I doubt he has "forgotten" anything but chose to focus on central factors since that in itself is quite complicated and lengthy.
If we are going to look at additional factors, let's not cherry-pick only the ones that support our lifestyle. If we're concerned about harming animals, let's first stop intentionally harming them, and then let's work on ways to minimize our unintentional impacts, e. No doubt, if we put our minds to it, we can make progress in that area, too.
But we can stop raising animals just to kill them immediately. Thank you, Gary, for the very comprehensive comment. It is a great response to some of the questions posed and arguments made in defense of eating meat. Love your site. I also love animals and I have a site that has current issues that need signatures, and a lot of education for people about animals.
I love it if you would check it out and pass it on! Michael - there are scientific studies showing that not only do fish feel pain, but it's also likely that prawns, shrimp, and other decapod crustaceans also feel pain - or something similar, so I think many would agree they should remain in this type of calculation. I'm less familiar with similar work with bivalve molluscs. Very many animals die from dairy and egg farms each year so you can't use the amount of animals that die for "food".
Your numbers do apply to vegans though. Daniel, I suppose you meant to write "vegetarians" instead of "vegans"? Yes, these are numbers calculated for vegetarians, not vegans because I do not take into consideration eggs and dairy in this post. But, vegans are vegetarians too, so these numbers do apply to vegans as well just that a more accurate number for vegans will be slightly larger.
Thanks for crunching these numbers. Do you think you'd be calculating how many animals eating vegan not living vegan would save? Bettina, it's great that you are trying out a vegan lunchbox month!
A vegan reduces the suffering of animals by quite a bit more than a vegetarian because egg-laying hens probably endure more prolonged and intense suffering than most farmed animals. But, the number of additional animals saved by a vegan is small likely less than 2 on top of the or so animals already saved by going vegetarian.
These calculations, however, do not take into account less direct impact on the animals such as wild animals killed in producing grain for the animals. Hi, it's a great analysis, i especially liked the fact that you tried to keep it conservative, it's better to know the minimum in this case rather than going the advertising route and saying that vegan saves "up to" some number.
Great job. Also i would like to thank you for keeping all the troll posts here, like the people who argue that vegans don't care about environmental issues or that eating some animals is like eating a plant. The stupidity our their arguments actually go to further our goals. Keep up the great work. Hi Harish. Great article. Well done for all your hard work in reasearching the numbers. My only question is in relation to a comment you made Wouldn't the lives of all the male calves from the dairy industry make a bigger difference between vegetarian and vegan than you suggest?
Dairy breeds are mostly unsuitable for the beef market so these are just 'by-product deaths' which vegetarians cause by supporting the dairy industry but vegans don't. The number of male dairy calves killed each year must surely be considerable?
Neal, Here is a rough calculation to answer your question. There are no more than 10 million dairy cows in the US.
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