The Meat Industry’s Assault On America

The meat industry is an industry that is never percieved as harmful, but one that engages in practices worse than virtually any other formal market in the economy. I will not discuss animal cruelty, but abuses of environmental and human rights are impossible for any person to try to rationalize or condone.

Livestock is responsible for 14.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, nearly 65% of which is caused by cattle. In fact, nearly 86% of animals are humans and livestock, a startling figure of just how massive the demand for meat has grown. The loss of habitat is also tremendous: nearly 90% of Amazonian logging is conducted for the purposes of raising beef, and more grain goes to feeding animals than people, using tremendous land and food that could go to hungry nations. It also takes 3-9 times as much water to make beef or pork as it does to make fake meat, and agricultural runoff from cattle is responsible for massive dead zones, most notably in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to these issues, air pollution results.

This does not even take into account the fishing industry (yes, fish is meat). Up to 300,000 whales and dolphins are killed each year as bycatch in the fishing industry, as are sea turtles, and all species caught are put at tremendous risk. Abandoned fishing gear accounts for nearly half of all marine trash by mass, compounding an already pervasive problem. The alternative, aquaculture, is responsible for mass pollution and the transmission of viruses to wild fish species.

The human rights violations are equally atrocious. In the fishing industry, for example, human and drug trafficking are common. This was most famously revealed in Southeast Asia, but it is a worldwide problem. One vessel arrested off the coast of Tanzania had shark fins, and the crew reported that the captain would threaten them with his firearm if they caught too few fish. The captain, agent, and owner were later arrested and each received 20 years in prison (and the vessel a $1.2 million fine) after pleading guilty to 1 count of shark finning. Even in Hawaii, longliners famously dock in ports with human slaves aboard, and fisheries observers in the Pacific are routinely murdered. Even in slaughter houses, human rights violations occur. These industries target low-income communities where people have no choice but to seek employment there, and said employees have been documented with an increased risk for mental health issues and even suicide.

We need to transition away from meat. Whether or not you care about animal rights or even the environment (the survival of the planet we inhabit), the human rights issues add to the plethora of justifications for this argument.