Conventional meat - eg. beef, poultry, pork, dairy, and farmed seafood - is the #1 cause of global warming in our food system. A recent study from Carnegie Mellon University indicates that almost 60% of greenhouse gas emissions from food are from animal products. Animals in industrial systems are fed foods they can not biologically process. They are confined to unhealthy and overcrowded cages - conditions that contribute to malnutrition and disease. In an attempt to keep animals healthy they are sprayed with over 2 million pounds of insecticides, and their cages are sprayed with over 360,000 pounds of insecticides every year. They also ingest an astounding 84% of all the antimicrobials, including antibiotics, used annually in the United States.
Every year, livestock consume about half of all of the grains and oilseeds that are grown in the U.S., thereby consuming over 14 billion pounds of fertilizers and over 174 million pounds of pesticides. Producing all of these chemicals requires huge amounts of energy and is a major cause of global warming.
To Be Cooler
Limit your consumption of conventional meat, dairy, and farmed seafood. Buy organic, local or grass-fed meat and dairy whenever possible, since these foods are produced without energy-intensive synthetic pesticides and herbicides and may use fewer fossil fuels, and look for wild (not farmed), local seafood.
