Today's factory farms are taking an environmental toll that generations to come will be forced to pay. America's meat addiction is steadily poisoning and depleting our land, water, and air. Many mainstream environmental groups, including the National Audubon Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists, are recognizing that meat-eating is one of the worst things we do to the planet and are encouraging people to adopt vegetarian diets.

Consider this:

Raising animals for food consumes more than half of all water used in the U.S. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 25 gallons to produce a pound of wheat. A totally vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day.

Producing just one hamburger uses enough fossil fuel to drive a small car 20 miles. Of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in the U.S., more than one-third are used to raise animals for food.

A typical pig factory generates raw waste equal to that of a city of 12,000 people. In fact, the meat industry is the single greatest polluter of U.S. waters. In December 1997, the Senate Agricultural Committee released a report stating that animals raised for food produce 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population, roughly 68,000 pounds a second. A Scripps Howard synopsis of the report (April 24, 1998) stated: "It's untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and disease-bearing organisms. ... It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and sickening people. ... Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated. ... Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick." This excrement is also generally believed to be responsible for the "cell from hell," pfiesteria, a deadly microbe, the discovery of which is detailed in Rodney Barker's And the Waters Turned to Blood.

Of all agricultural land in the U.S., 87 percent is used to raise animals for food. That's 45 percent of the total land mass in the U.S. About 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to produce our meat-centered diet.

The meat industry is directly responsible for 85 percent of all soil erosion in the U.S., because so much grain is needed to feed animals being raised for food. In the U.S., animals are fed more than 80 percent of the corn we grow and more than 95 percent of the oats. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people -- more than the entire human population on Earth. According to the Worldwatch Institute, "[T]he easiest way to reduce grain consumption is to lower the intake of meat and milk, grain-intensive foods. Roughly two of every five tons of grain produced in the world is fed to livestock, poultry, or fish; decreasing consumption of these products, especially of beef, could free up massive quantities of grain and reduce pressure on land."

Each vegetarian saves one acre of trees every year! More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to grow crops to feed animals raised for meat, and another acre of trees disappears every eight seconds. The tropical rain forests are also being destroyed to create grazing land for cattle. Fifty-five square feet of rain forest may be razed to produce just one quarter-pound burger.

There are a variety of books that address the environmental consequences of America's meat-based diet, including:

Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating
by Erik Marcus
Diet for a New America
by John Robbins