The animal farming industry has a huge and wide-reaching impact on our world and on our lives even if we don’t always recognize it. It affects our health, the climate, the lives of wild animals, forests, food prices, and the safety of our communities. And so, as we work towards a vegan world, we should be reminded just how much there is to gain from ending the public and political support of this reckless and destructive industry.
A Stable Climate
The breeding, rearing, and slaughtering of animals for meat, milk, and eggs is a leading cause of climate breakdown and is estimated to be responsible for 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Red meat is the worst offender but all meat, dairy, and eggs are worse for the climate than almost every plant food. Dr. Hannah Ritchie from Our World in Data advises us not to get sidetracked by industry claims that we should just eat local meat and other animal-based products instead. “Transport typically accounts for less than 1% of beef’s GHG emissions,” she writes. “Eating locally has minimal effects on its total footprint.” But when we switch to plant-based food we will see our climate start to stabilize.
Cleaner Waters
All over the world, rivers are filthy with pollution and the number of ocean dead zones is growing. Much of the problem is caused by animal farms. There are many times more farmed animals than people on the planet, and that means the amount of waste they produce is gargantuan. There is nowhere for all that slurry to go and when it leaks out of storage tanks and “lagoons” or is dumped onto land, it filters into the waterways, fueling algal blooms that kill wildlife. There is no solution to this other than to stop farming animals. And when we do that, we will remove all that antibiotic-contaminated poop, and all those chemicals used on animal feed crops from our waterways. Then, not only can aquatic life flourish, but we can safely enjoy spending time in the water, swimming, surfing, or kayaking with our families.
Cleaner Air
Almost all farmed animals are reared in intensive facilities which are a major source of air pollution and linked to serious diseases. Studies have shown that living close to intensive animal farms is associated with an increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and leukemia. It’s a scandal that just living close to an animal farm can cause cancer! If we stop farming and eating animals, the air quality will improve, and along with it, our health will improve, too.
Forests Regrow
Deforestation is an environmental crisis that cannot be solved while we still eat meat. This is because farming animals needs a lot more land than eating foods made from plants. And to create that farmland, forests and other important habitats are destroyed. We need trees to help us combat the climate crisis, but they are also valuable in their own right, providing food and habitats for communities and populations of animals, fungi, and other plant life. If we stopped funding animal agriculture, we would reduce global land use for agriculture by 75 percent, which means three billion hectares could be returned to nature. To put that into context, that’s around three times the size of the United States.
Wildlife Flourishes
Between 1970 and 2020, wildlife populations declined by 73 percent. The steepest declines were in Latin America and the Caribbean and the degradation was driven mainly by the food system. And the most damaging aspect of the food system is categorically meat and dairy. The most impactful thing we can do to restore the natural world and to help wild birds, animals, and fish populations is to switch to a plant-based diet. When rivers run clear, when forests are allowed to grow, and when the highly polluting fish farming industry stops wreaking its own ecological damage, wild-living populations have a chance to flourish.
Healthier People
It’s not just the air pollution from animal farms that causes cancer in people; it’s eating animals. Red meat and all processed meat has unequivocally been shown to cause cancer. Studies are also finding correlations between fish and chicken and some cancers, while conversely, plant-based foods are cancer-protective. People who eat a balanced plant-based diet also have a lower risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and they tend to live longer. It is clear that a huge health burden is caused by the animal agriculture industry, and our families and loved ones would be safer without it.
Healthier Populations
Animal agriculture is also disastrous from a public health perspective. Intensive pig and poultry farms in particular are breeding grounds for diseases that have the potential to cause a global pandemic. In fact, at least eight types of bird flu, all of which can kill people, are currently circulating around the world’s intensive farms. To try and keep the animals alive in appalling industrial conditions, they are given a lot of drugs, including antibiotics. But, of course, the overuse of antibiotics has a devastating impact on human health because it creates antibiotic resistance. At least one million people a year die due to antibiotic resistance and the rate of drug-resistant infections is increasing. Without animal farms creating these public health crises, we would all be safer.
Better Quality of Life
People who switch to a plant-based diet commonly report positive changes in their wellbeing which can manifest almost immediately. These include improvements in their digestion, sleep, energy levels, and skin. Any one of these can have a profound impact on our quality of life, but there is another interesting aspect which relates to our mental health. This is connected to something psychologists call “cognitive dissonance”, the mental health impacts of holding two conflicting views at the same time. This could be “I love animals, but I eat them” or “I want to protect the planet but I still eat meat”. By removing this internal conflict, people often experience an unexpected clarity and a deep peace of mind.
Cheaper Food
Meat is expensive, and we pay for it three times over. First we pay for it to be produced through subsidies which we fund through our taxes. Then we buy it at the store where, despite the subsidies, it is still among the most expensive items there. And finally, we pay for the damage the industry causes, again through our wages and taxes. The bill the industry leaves us with includes the cost of cleaning rivers and oceans, mitigating climate breakdown, and funding healthcare. Analysis by the Office of Health Economics in the UK found that if everyone in England ate a plant-based diet, the National Health Service could save around £6.7 billion over a year. Meat and dairy are products that society cannot afford.
Animals Would Not Be Bred To Suffer
We know that farmed animals are complex, sentient beings who share many traits, not just with our beloved dogs and cats, but with us, too. And we know that they suffer horrifically on farms and in slaughterhouses. Their suffering is physical, emotional, and psychological, and it is so severe that most of us look away when confronted with it. Despite knowing there is cruelty, we keep on paying for it. Animals do not deserve the injustices we heap on them, and the only way to right this wrong is to stop eating animals.
Creating Compassionate Societies
Children have a natural affinity for animals and an innate understanding of justice. And so perhaps it is not surprising that a study by the University of Exeter found that British children aged 9-11 thought that farmed animals should be treated the same both as pets and as people. For them, there is no moral hierarchy between the different species who share this planet. They believe in true equality. Just imagine what our world would be like if such compassion for others was not tricked, pressured, and “educated” out of us as we grew up. Imagine if we fostered societies that did not discriminate against any one community because of differences, but instead saw the shared values and the intrinsic worth of every being.
Workers Would Be Safer and Healthier
There are few more dangerous industries for workers than animal agriculture. Those who work in animal farms are at a higher risk of respiratory disorders, including bronchitis and lung disease. Farm workers also have a significantly elevated risk of a fatal accident through contact with farm machinery, chemicals, and from the distressed animals themselves. People who work in leather tanneries are exposed to a cocktail of toxic chemicals that cause cancer. And slaughterhouse workers navigate physical danger every day, and experience a high rate of injury and death, while also suffering mental health disorders, such as PTSD and depression. Withdrawing our support for the farming and slaughter industry is good for people, as well as animals and the environment.
Safer Communities
Paying people to control, subdue, and cut the throats of animals every day has a powerful impact on their mental health, and that creates very troubling impacts for wider society. Research has shown that slaughter work is associated with an increase in criminality, violence (including familial violence), and sexual offenses, including rape. It should not come as a surprise that workers become desensitized to suffering, screaming, and the bloodiest scenes. If we did not ask people to do work so traumatic that most of us cannot even bear to look at it, our communities would be safer.
A Kinder, Safer, Healthier World
There are just a handful of industries that cause vast amounts of damage to people, other living beings, and the planet: mining, fossil fuels, and of course, animal agriculture. While the meat, egg, and dairy industries together rake in trillions of dollars, communities, families, and individuals continue to suffer the consequences. There are no downsides to ending our support of this reckless industry, and only gains to be made. We would be healthier, our societies kinder, and our planet and communities safer if we withdrew our support and switched from eating animals to eating plants.
We can imagine such a world. Can you?
