Recently I read the book Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. It is an intensive look at how devastating the effects of animal agriculture are on our environment, our health, and on our daily lives. While reading, I decided to take notes on some of the of the facts I found surprising. Please understand that on top of the 3 years Foer spent researching this book, he also had two independent fact-checkers verify the validity of his claims as well as has every single fact cited and sourced in the appendices.
450 billion animals a year are factory farmed.
10 billion land animals are slaughtered in North America each year.
50 billion birds are killed each year.
1/3 of the land on earth is used for animal agriculture.
Animals agriculture is a 140 billion dollar a year industry.
Chickens lay 300 eggs per year.
KFC buys 1 billion chickens per year.
A cow is slaughtered at 12-14 months.
99% of milk and egg production is factory farmed.
Each American eats 21,000 animals in their lifetime.
Meat eaters produce 7 times the greenhouse gasses than vegans do.
Meat on average travels 1500 miles.
According to the UN, Animal agriculture makes up 18% of all global warming. 40% greater than all transportation in the world combined
According to the EPA, animal excrement has polluted 25,000 miles of waterways in 22 states.
Land degradation due to factory farming has cost americans 26 billion dollars in property value.
A typical pig farm will produce 7.2 million lbs of shit annually, Chicken farm: 6.6 million lbs and a typical cattle feed lot: 334 million lbs.
All farmed animals in the U.S. produce 130 times more raw waste than the human population
In the U.S. animals produce 87,000 of shit per second.
People and pigs shit about the same amount. About 281 lbs. per year.
It takes between 6-26 calories of food to produce 1 calorie of animal flesh.
Animal agriculture uses 756 million tons of grain and corn per year, much more than enough to feed the 1.4 billion humans who are living in dire poverty.
98% of the 255 million ton global soy crop is fed to animals.
Due to bycatch (the catching of untargeted animals while fishing), 26 lbs. of animals are killed to catch 1 lbs. of shrimp.
By 2050, the world’s livestock will consume as much food as 4 billion people.
Studies show vegetarians and vegans meet or exceed their daily protein requirement.
Excess animal protein can lead to osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones and some cancers.
Vegetarians have lower blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and lower BMI than meat eaters.
Children raised on the grounds of a typical hog farm have asthma rates exceeding 50%
Due to the industrial expansion on factory farming, half a million independent hog farmers have gone out of business in the last 25 years.
Factory farm and slaughterhouse employees, which are made up substantially of immigrant labor, have an annual turn over rate of 150%
Cow slaughter workers have the highest work related injuries of an job at 27% annually.
Farmers are 4 times more likely to commit suicide.
2 generations ago virtually all farms were family farms.
In 1950 one farm worker supplied 15.5 consumers. today its 1 to 140.
Vegetarianism will prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural america, improve public health, and help eliminate the systematic animal abuse in world history.
Less than 1% of animal meat comes from family farms.
There isn’t enough non-factory farmed chickens in the country to feed the population of Staten Island and not enough Non-factory farmed pork to feed New York City.
Factory farming relies on their customers having a nostalgic image of farming.
Thanksgiving day accounts for 18% of Turkey consumption.
Americans spend less percentage of their income on food than any civilization in history
In perspective terms, the genetic manipulation of chickens has increased its growth rate so much that it would be equivalent to a child weighing 300 lbs. by the age of 10 from only eating granola bars and vitamins.
Modern turkeys cant walk, jump or naturally reproduce.
83% of poultry contains Campylobacter or Salmonella at time of sale.
In the U.S., consumers ingested 3 million lbs. of antibiotics each year. Farm animals were fed 24.6 million lbs. of antibiotics which only account for preventative use.
Pigs have complex social hierarchies and social groups.
A person who regularly consumes animal products cannot call themselves an environmentalist without divorcing it from its meaning.
Every time you purchase an animal product you are farming by proxy.
Taste shouldn’t exempt ethics. A horny person has as much right to rape an animal as a hungry person has to kill and eat it.
If an equally more advanced creature started treating us like fish, what would our argument be to not being eaten?
Cows, pigs, chickens and many sea animals are as smart as dogs
3-4 million cats and dogs are killed each year
if you let dogs unrestrictedly multiply and eat the unwanted dogs you have a high producing, low input method of animal protein production that puts the best farms to shame.
Euthanized cats and dogs are sold farms to factory farms to feed livestock.
