This document is a curation of the many ways in which animal agriculture is harmful to the planet, communities, human health and animals. You are welcome to make pull requests to help me keep this document updated and fill in any missing pieces. If you are interested in doing so, please refer to the Contributing section below.
Animal agriculture is one of the most destructive forces on this planet. While hunting and eating animals may have been a necessity for our ancestors when plant foods were hard to come by (e.g. during winter, or droughts), for most people on earth today that is not the case.
The goal of this document is to curate the scientific evidence and arguments that have been presented over the years to show animal agriculture is harmful and to encourage consumers and producers to move toward plant-based food choices.
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Plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss.
Tags: food waste, nutrition, sustainability, food security
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“These companies are some of the world’s biggest contributors to climate change,” said Oliver Lazarus, one of the study’s three authors. “They’ve spent a considerable amount of time and money downplaying the link between animal agriculture and climate change.”
Tags: USA, JBS, Cargill, Hormel, Fonterra, Smithfield
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The greatest Shift potential [in mitigating the worst effects of climate change] would come from switching to plant-based diets.
Tags: IPCC, global, mitigation
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The increase in meat and dairy production in Europe over the past decade has made farming a much greater source of emissions, but while governments have targeted renewable energy and transport in their climate policies, initiatives to reduce the impact of food and farming on the climate have lagged behind.
Tags: EU, Europe, Greenpeace
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"Restoring native forests could buy some much-needed time for countries to transition their energy grids to renewable, fossil-free infrastructure,” said Matthew Hayek, an assistant professor in New York University and the principal author of the new study.
Tags: transition, global, carbon capture, restoration
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Replacing 50% of all animal-based foods with plant-based alternatives – leads to 224 MMT less emissions per year in 2030, a reduction equivalent to the annual emissions of 47.5 million of today’s average passenger vehicles.
Tags: USA, mitigation
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Organic livestock are not fed imported fodder and are often grass-fed, but this means they produce less meat and grow more slowly, therefore spending longer emitting greenhouse gases before slaughter, the researchers said. Plants grown organically have half the climate costs of conventional produce as they do not rely on chemical fertilisers, but all plants have far lower emissions than animal products.
Tags: organic, free-range, regenerative, holistic
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At the family level, youth climate activism may begin at the dinner table. By refraining from eating foods that violate their beliefs about the well-being of animals, children would also be acting in a manner consistent with their moral views of the environment. In addition to reducing their own carbon footprints, children's principled eating behaviors may also influence those of their parents.
Tags: children, meat paradox
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Curbing the world’s huge and increasing appetite for meat is essential to avoid devastating climate change, according to a new report. But governments and green campaigners are doing nothing to tackle the issue due to fears of a consumer backlash, warns the analysis from the thinktank Chatham House.
Tags: UK, carbon budget
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To have any hope of meeting the central goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit global warming to 2°C or less, our carbon emissions must be reduced considerably, including those coming from agriculture. Clark et al. show that even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target. Thus, major changes in how food is produced are needed if we want to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Tags: Paris Agreement, global temperature limit
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Our latest research shows that consumers are embracing alternative[/plant-based] proteins and that protein transformation is one of the best tools available to combat the climate crisis... It all points to an untapped opportunity that everyone can embrace.
Tags: plant-based meats, alternate protein
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More than one-third of U.S. land is used for pasture—by far the largest land-use type in the contiguous 48 states.
Tags: USA, pasture, animal feed
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While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein.
Tags: global, protein
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the ongoing failure to protect the world’s largest rainforest from rapacious cattle ranching is no longer Brazil’s alone, a Washington Post investigation shows. It is now shared by the United States — and the American consumer.
Tags: Brazil, rainforest, deforestion, ranching, USA
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the bill could quash scientific research done by laypeople, often called citizen science, and serves to hide environmentally harmful practices, much like "ag-gag" laws in many states prevent whistleblowers from exposing hazardous work conditions, animal abuse, or possible food contamination within factory farms and slaughterhouses.
Tags: Wyoming, ag-gag
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Sixty-five million gallons of cows’ milk are produced in Sonoma County every year. It takes about 1,000 gallons of water to make a gallon of cows’ milk meaning 65 billion gallons of water are used to support the dairy industry in Sonoma annually.
Tags: California, Sonoma, dairy
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The production of animal protein requires significantly more water than the production of plant protein. Although US livestock directly uses only 2% of the total water used in agriculture, the indirect water inputs for livestock production are substantial because of the water required for forage and grain crops. Each year, a total of 253 million t grain are fed to US livestock, requiring a total of about 66,000,000,000,000 gallons of water.
Tags: USA, grain, animal feed
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“As people switch to eating animal-based protein diets, we eat more and more nitrogen, and then we excrete almost all of it out,” lead author Cascade Tuholske, a geographer and postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, told The Daily Beast. In a nutshell, he said the findings show, “Hey, you're eating a ton of burgers. And some of those ecological impacts are methane emissions, land-use change, [agriculture] runoff, but it's also having a huge impact just from our wastewater.”
Tags: runoff, wastewater, nitrogen, sealife
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In North Carolina, the number of pigs on factory farms nears the total population of people in the state. The contamination from North Carolina pig farms has yielded dangerous concentrations of groundwater nitrates, a leading cause of blue baby syndrome: a condition in which a baby’s skin turns blue due to insufficient oxygen in their blood, which can lead to death. Hydrogen sulfide has also caused noticeable increases in respiratory ailments near these sites. And because of the location of these farms, those affected most are low-income Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.
Tags: California, North Carolina, San Joaquin Valley, Tulare County, pig farms, dairy
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The beneficial effects of plant-based diets, including the protection they offer against premature mortality, provide strong evidence for public health guidelines recommending healthful plant-based diets as a means to prevent and control noncommunicable diseases.
Tags: WHO, world health organization, Europe, healthcare costs, environment
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"It's a very broad and dangerous ag-gag bill because it doesn't just affect agriculture. It affects nursing homes, daycares, veteran facilities, anywhere where you have people that are vulnerable."
Tags: North Carolina, ag-gag
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A report by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group verified by StateImpact shows at least $40,000 for Pruitt’s 2010 campaign was contributed by executives of poultry companies and lawyers of firms representing the companies named in a high-profile pollution lawsuit filed by his predecessor Drew Edmondson.
Tags: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tyson, chicken
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A bill called the “Fair Agricultural Reporting Method Act” proposed to free most livestock operations from having to report the air-borne toxins emitted from the manure they accumulate. These gases, which include ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, can trigger ill health effects in neighboring communities, including eye irritation, chronic lung disease, and olfactory neuron loss. The pork, beef, and chicken trade groups all hotly supported the measure, which is now the law of the land.
Tags: Tyson, Kansas, North Carolina
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Bolsonaro told the tribes of Roraima state what he planned to do in Raposa Serra do Sol, a large indigenous territory recognised in 2005 after years of bitter conflict with cattle ranchers: “We are going to rip up Raposa Serra do Sol and give guns to all the ranchers…”
Tags: Brazil, indigenous people, ranching
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Students in census tracts where poultry CAFOs (aka chicken factory farms) are based and where nitrate levels in the water exceed 5mg/L have tended to score lower on math and English proficiency tests.
Tags: Delaware, Mississippi, Maryland
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One of the Tyson Foods managers fired for betting on how many workers would contract COVID-19 at an Iowa pork plant said the office pool was spontaneous fun and intended to boost morale.
Tags: Tyson, Iowa, slaughterhouse workers
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A strain of the superbug MRSA has emerged in pigs that is highly resistant to antibiotics and a growing cause of human infections. University of Cambridge researchers said this particular strain of MRSA has shown up in livestock over the past 50 years, probably due to widespread antibiotic use in farming. They said it is a potential threat to public health.
Tags: Antibiotic resistance, pigs
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Approximately 23.3 million land animals are killed in the United States every single day according to the U.S. Animal Kill Clock, which also reports that when also including shellfish and other sea life, this number jumps to over 150 million.
Tags: fish, land animals, USA
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Native species like wolves, elk and prairie dogs are intentionally killed to protect meat-production profits, while other species like turtles, bees and butterflies are driven to the brink of extinction by our outsized appetite for meat and dairy.
Tags: native species, USA
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global dietary patterns need to converge around diets based more on plants, owing to the disproportionate impact of animal farming on biodiversity, land use and the environment. Such a shift would also benefit the dietary health of populations around the world, and help reduce the risk of pandemics.
Tags: biodiversity, deforestation, habitat loss, pandamics
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“Globally, pigs and chickens alone consume six times the amount of seafood as US consumers and twice that of Japan,” lead author Jennifer Jacquet told UBC. “Ultimately these farm animals have a greater impact on our seafood supplies than the most successful seafood certification program.”
Tags: fisheries, livestock, feed
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What’s really remarkable about this “vegan” farm is the size of its vegetables. Organic yields are typically 20-30% lower than farms that use synthetic fertilisers and chemical pesticides. But Oiko Bio has had a spectacular harvest this year. One hokkaido plant has produced nine squashes; plants often produce only two. This 0.2-hectare (0.5-acre) field produced 1,500kg of courgette: 7.5 tonnes per hectare. The previous year, on the same field, with similar weather, it was five tonnes.
Tags: veganic, farming, stock-free
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Data from Kantar’s usage panel, which records online weekly meal diaries from around 11,000 people in Britain, showed that for the 52 weeks ending August 2020 a mail meal containing meat or fish cost an average of £1.77 per person. A plant-based meal cost an average of £1.06 per person. The savings where ‘fairly equal’ across lunch and dinner.
Tags: cost, price, Britian, affordability
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A Dutch city will become the first in the world to ban meat adverts from public spaces in an effort to reduce consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Tags: advertisement, reduction, Europe
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Please use exist formatting above as examples when adding your own content. (This section will be updated as other contribution criteria become necessary.)
- Why is old information not removed?
Using older news articles shows a pattern of neglect of people's health, environmental degradation, and animal abuse that has largely gotten worse with the progression of time.
In additiona, many issues reported in the older articles are still relevant today, e.g. ag-gag laws enacted several years ago are still in effect in many U.S. states. - Why don't resources link directly to research instead of news articles?
This collection is designed for general public who may have a difficult time parsing research papers. News articles often link to the original should one want to read the original research on which the article is based.