How does Plant-Based Meat Help Our Climate?

Most of the vegetarians I know aren’t vegetarian for a diet. Like I discussed in the health article about plant based meat, fake meat and real meat have about the same effects for your health. If they have the same health effects as real meat, then why not stick with real meat? Whether you know it or not, meat manufactures of toady are one of the leading causes for climate change.

Why is it morally incorrect?

Today the average American male eats 4.8 ounces and American women eats 3.1 ounces of meat per day. There are 328.2 million people living in the United States right now. That’s almost 100 million pounds of meat being eaten a day by American men alone! Since in America the meat demand is so high, farms require huge acres of farm land to raise the 94.4 million cows living in the U.S. The biggest meat supplier company in the whole world, JBS has their land located in Colorado. JBS promises that their massive amount of cows all live Colorado. Where do they find the space? They don’t. JBS in recent years was caught in a scandal where they were exposed for forcing Brazilian cow famers to expand their land into the Amazon Rainforest. The Brazilian cow farms started to deforest the rainforest, the home of billons of animals/plants and native people. The company caught deforesting the rainforest was AgroSB, a known supplier of JBS. The protectors of the rainforest (Ibama) ended up suing AgroSB for 18 million dollars, which at that point JBS had turned their backs away from the situation. This case paints the obvious picture of a very successful company that still makes immoral decisions only for their benefit.

Why is meat farming bad for the Environment?

94.4 millions cows currently live in America. That massive number is only because cow farmers breed that many cows just to be killed and feed to you. But even in the time of the cows short and miserable life on earth, they leave a negative impact on the environment. It is shown that 9% of greenhouse gas emission released comes form agriculture; which one third of that percent gas is methane from cows. A cow releases 250-500 L of methane a day! Now that farmers are mass breeding cows and their numbers have almost reached a billion in America alone, that’s around 500 billon L of methane produced a day! But we can fix this!

It starts with you eating less meat, which I know for some people is hard. I personally think eating animal eat is gross, but my goal isn’t to make eating meat illegal. My goal is to save the world from climate change. So I simply ask you to stop buying/eating as much meat as you do. If enough people slow down their meat consumption, the large meat companies will stop raising as many cows to kill. Therefore there will be less methane coming from cows. Big companies that mass produce cows also have to use 308 gallons of water for every pound of meat they make. Image the gallons of water Americans could be saving. I’m not saying you have to have tofurkey for thanksgiving, I’m just asking you to slow down your meat consumption.

“The United States Meat Industry At A Glance“. 2021. Meatinstitute.Org.

Johnson, K. A., and D. E. Johnson. 1995. “Methane Emissions From Cattle“. Journal Of Animal Science 73 (8): 2483-2492. doi:10.2527/1995.7382483x. Wasley, Andrew, Dom Phillips, and Alexandra Heal. 2019. “Revealed: Rampant Deforestation Of Amazon Driven By Global Greed For Meat“. The Guardian.