March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Meat eating criticized as harmful to Earth

WASHINGTON — So you thought you did your part on Earth Day by picking up litter? Now the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine claims that if you are going to be an environmentalist (76 percent of Americans say they are), you’ve got to be a vegetarian (that’s 3 percent).

In other words, chew vegetables and eschew hot dogs to save the world.

“If you’re a meat eater, you are contributing to the destruction of the environment, whether you know it or not,” says Neal D. Bernard, 36, a 1980 graduate of George Washington University Medical School and president of the 30,000-member committee. “Clearly the best thing you can do for the Earth is to not support animal agriculture.”

He cited statistics to make his point:

Producing enough food to feed a meat-eater requires 4,200 gallons of water a day; to feed a vegetarian requires 300 gallons.

Nearly 4 billion tons of topsoil are lost each year in the United States, chiefly because of overgrazing by livestock and unsustainable methods of growing feed.

It takes 39 times more energy to produce beef than soybeans having the same caloric value.

Tropical rain forest is being cleared in Latin America to raise cattle; a pound of hamburger represents 55 square feet of burned-off forest.

Bernard’s group observed Earth Day by passing out recipes for such dishes as black beans and rice and vegetarian chili.

Bernard said most environmentalists don’t “catch the connection” between eating meat and polluting the earth, but are “pretty sympathetic” when it is spelled out.

“They picture a pastoral scene, a few cows grazing and a few chickens clucking,” he said. “Little do they know that cows are raised on enormous feedlots for a portion of their lives and you can’t keep the manure from running off into streams. By and large, raising animals for food is a very unfriendly industry from an environmental viewpoint.”


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