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Animal-Free Diets Celebrate Earth Day Year Round

For Immediate Release:

12 April, 2001

Contact:

Jason Baker (0) 98201 22602

Mumbai – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has written to many India’s environmental organizations, urging them to make their Earth Day 2001 celebrations all-vegan—and to adopt policies advocating meatless and dairy-free diets. PETA will also offer an advertisement about the negative impacts of meat production to environmental organizations to print in their newsletters and other publications.

India’s increased use of intensive livestock rearing, modeled after the western world’s "factory farming" methods, is wreaking havoc on the environment. PETA’s pro-veggie position is supported with staggering facts and statistics:

• The meat industry wastes precious water. The water requirement of one major slaughterhouse in India (480,000,000 litres of potable water), has caused an acute shortage of drinking water in the entire area around the plant—villagers must trek 10 to 15 kilometres a day to get water. Meat production also uses tremendous amounts of water: A pound of meat requires 2,500 gallons of water to produce but a pound of wheat requires only 25 gallons. And a vegan diet requires 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-based diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day.

• Animal-based agriculture pollutes water. Intensive animal farming and slaughterhouses foul water with blood and animal excreta, which contains nitrates, antibiotics, parasites, heavy metals and pesticides. Untreated waste is often dumped into streams, rivers and groundwaters. Many villagers have reported that blood from nearby slaughterhouses spills out of the handpumps they depend on for drinking water.

• Meat-eating promotes hunger. India, home to one-third the world’s hungry population, adds 17 million people every year. Harvard nutritionists have estimated that reducing meat production by just 10 percent will free up enough grain and vegetables to feed 60 million people.

• Raising animals for is also causing topsoil depletion. Already in India, deforestation and desertification can be found over wide areas. Forests are cleared for cattle-grazing—the loss of trees leads to loss of valuable, nutrient-rich topsoil, increases the risk of flooding and drought and causes climatic imbalances. Loss of topsoil and a drying-out of the land lead to desertification.

"Meat-eating is destroying our environment," says PETA’s Jason Baker. "Vegans truly are the Earth’s best friends—adopting a vegan diet is the easiest, most effective way to help save our planet, three times a day."

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