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Why I chose to be Vegan
The reason itself is not complex (reducing my impact on the
environment) however for this reason to make sense it requires the
reader to have an understanding of livestock food chain and all it
entails. It's been my experience that many people do not have this
understanding.
Lets use cheese as an example, to someone cheese is just something
they have picked up from the supermarket in a packet, unless
specified otherwise said cheese has come from factory farmed
cattle.
The Block
---------
You hold a 500g block of cheese in your hand. At face value, it
looks small, simple, and self-contained. The cute picture and the
plastic wrapping hiding the enormous chain of environmental costs.
The Cow
-------
To make 500g of cheese, around 5 litres of milk are needed.
A dairy cow (lets call her Daisy) has to be kept pregnant and
lactating to produce this milk.
Her body requires a constant intake of food and water, and her
digestive system produces large amounts of methane — a greenhouse
gas far more potent than Carbon Dioxide.
Feeding Daisy
-------------
Cows don't just eat grass (in fact due to industrial farming the
soils are so depleted of nutrients a cow couldn't survive on
grass). Therefore modern dairy cows are fed a mixture of grass
silage, corn, and soy meal all fortified with additional B12 and
hormones to increase yield.
Soy is often imported from countries like Brazil, where vast areas
of rainforest are cleared to grow it. Only 7% of all the soy
produced is used by humans. Rainforest destruction releases huge
amounts of stored carbon, destroys biodiversity, and displaces
Indigenous communities. Growing soy (and corn) also requires
fertilizers, pesticides, and water, each with its own footprint.
Inefficiency
------------
Instead of humans eating plants directly, those crops are cycled
through the cow. A cow must eat many kilograms of feed to produce a
single litre of milk. Most of the calories and protein are lost in
the conversion process.
That means the block of cheese embodies not just the milk, but all
the plants (and land, water, energy) consumed to sustain the cow
during her lifetime.
Transport
---------
Milk has to be cooled, transported, and processed into cheese —
each step using energy, refrigeration, and packaging. Then it is
transported again to warehouses, supermarkets, and eventually your
home, all adding carbon emissions.
If you zoom out, the block of cheese represents:
- Deforestation (soy and feed production)
- Methane emissions (cow digestion)
- Nitrous oxide (from fertilizer use on crops)
- Water use (to grow feed and hydrate the cow)
- Energy use (for transport, refrigeration, processing)
All of this for a product we don't need. There is nothing our body
needs from cheese that could not replaced with plant-based
alternatives. Not only that the plant-based alternative wouldn't
have the added health implications that come with dairy as well as
skipping the inefficient step of feeding crops to animals.
This example doesn't even begin to cover all the additional
environmental costs:
- non recyclable packaging
- microplastics in the environment and consequently food chain
- the formula production for Daisy's calves to replace the milk
being taken by humans
- addition strain on environment to feed Daisy's young
- industrial farming depleting the land
- growing enough food to feed 80 billion animals whilst we can't
feed 8 billion humans
This is the tip of the iceberg just looking at the environmental
factors of one block of cheese...not to mention the health
implications of a meat and dairy heavy diet.
...So when people ask I will just say "environmental factors", 9/10
they're not really interested in why I'm vegan or what my
motivations are they just want to tell me I'm wrong, I need more
protein, "we're hunters" and a myriad of other justifications for
their decisions. But I thought I'd take the time to write it down
and tell you as you were interested enough to click the link. I
think the cruelty and suffering (both animal and human) in the
livestock industry is abhorrent, but my main motivation for being
vegan has always been the environment.