Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:
>
> Avoiding meat and dairy is 'single biggest way' to reduce
> your impact on Earth
>
> Biggest analysis to date reveals huge footprint of
> livestock -- it provides just 18% of calories but takes up
> 83% of farmland
>
> By Damian Carrington, Environment editor @dpcarrington
> The Guardian, theguardian.com
> Thursday, May 31, 2018
>
> [Caption] Cattle at an illegal settlement in the Jamanxim
> National Forest, state of Para, northern Brazil, November
> 29, 2009. With 1,3 million hectares, the Jamanxim National
> Forest is today a microsm that replicates what happens in
> the Amazon, where thousands of hectares of land are prey of
> illegal woodcutters, stock breeders and gold miners.
> Photograph: Antonio Scorza/AFP/Getty Images
>
> Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way
> to reduce your environmental impact on the planet,
> according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive
> analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.
>
> The new research shows that without meat and dairy
> consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more
> than 75% -- an area equivalent to the US, China, European
> Union and Australia combined -- and still feed the world.
> Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of
> the current mass extinction of wildlife.
>
> The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide
> just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast
> majority -- 83% -- of farmland and produces 60% of
> agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions. Other recent
> research shows 86% of all land mammals are now livestock or
> humans. The scientists also found that even the very lowest
> impact meat and dairy products still cause much more
> environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and
> cereal growing.
>
> More than 80% of farmland is used for livestock but it
> produces just 18% of food calories and 35% of protein
> [Chart]
>
> The study, published in the journal Science, created a huge
> dataset based on almost 40,000 farms in 119 countries and
> covering 40 food products that represent 90% of all that is
> eaten. It assessed the full impact of these foods, from
> farm to fork, on land use, climate change emissions,
> freshwater use and water pollution (eutrophication) and air
> pollution (acidification).
>
> "A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce
> your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but
> global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water
> use," said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK,
> who led the research. "It is far bigger than cutting down
> on your flights or buying an electric car," he said, as
> these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.
>
> Humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of
> wild mammals -- study
> Read more
> https://www.theguardian.com/environm...-mammals-study
>
> "Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of
> environmental problems," he said. "Really it is animal
> products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding
> consumption of animal products delivers far better
> environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable
> meat and dairy."
>
> Continues at:
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/environm...mpact-on-earth

Say "No!" to meat and chicken!

Congress wanted to know just how commonly meat in the
United States today is infected with salmonellosis. They
summoned Dr. Richard Novick, of the Public Health Research
Institute, and asked for his expert testimony. The
authority didn't mince his words:

"The meat we buy is grossly contaminated with both coliform
bacteria and salmonella."

One of the reasons our meat supply is so heavily
contaminated with these disease agents is the way the
animals are handled today. To begin with, they are sick
creatures, due to how they are kept, and thus susceptible
to just about any disease that comes down the pike.

Then they are fed contaminated byproducts from the
slaughterhouse, and crowded into cages, feedlots, trucks
and holding pens which are perfect environments for disease
to spread. And as if that weren't enough, the
slaughterhouses themselves could hardly be better designed
for the spread of disease.

It is not just food reformers and vegetarians who are
concerned. The Journal of the American Veterinary
Association surveyed a cattle slaughterhouse and found a
very high percentage of the carcasses were contaminated
with salmonellosis.

When 60 MINUTES asked the head of the USDA Inspection
Service, he answered (in March, 1987) that if you go into a
supermarket anywhere in the United States and buy a
chicken, the odds are better than one in three it will be
contaminated.

Alarmed, 60 MINUTES conducted its own test, and the results
brought no peace of mind. Over half the birds they
purchased were found to be contaminated with salmonellosis.
Amazed, they interviewed a number of meat inspectors, who
publicly acknowledged on national television that the
inspection system provides no protection to the consumer.

Even the industry acknowledges this is the case. Poultry
Science, a journal of the poultry trade, reported that 90%
of the dressed product from a poultry processing plant was
contaminated with salmonellosis. The National Research
Council, evidently not believing things could be this bad,
conducted its own survey, and found out things were worse.
No less than 90% of the poultry from a federally-inspected
plant they examined were contaminated with salmonellosis.

o Statement by Richard Novick, Hearings before the
Subcommittee on Agricultural Research and General
Legislation of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and
Forestry
September 21, 1977

o "Salmonellae in Slaughter Cattle"
Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association
160(6):884, 1972

o "Salmonella Contamination in a Commercial Poultry
Processing
Operation," Poultry Science, 53:814-21, 1974

o Robbins, John, "Diet For A New America"
Stillpoint Publishing, Walpole, N.H., 1987, pgs. 302-303

o Wellford, H., "Sowing the Wind"
Bantam Books, 1973, pgs. 133-134
"Twelve years after the chemical was banned in the United
States, researchers checked 27 bottle-nosed dolphins found
dead off the coast of California. They found `extremely
high' concntrations of DDT in every one."
- "DDT and the Dolphin," ANIMALS' AGENDA, 1985.
Quoted in DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA by John Robbins, 1987.

o "On June 26, 1980, the U.S.D.A. revealed that turkey
products from Banquet Foods Corporation contained
intolerable levels of dieldrin. Eventually two million
packages of frozen turkey dinners, turkey pies, and other
turkey products were recalled."
- Associated Press, "Banquet Foods Recall Turkey,"
WASHINGTON POST, June 27, 1980.
Quoted in DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA by John Robbins, 1987.

o "Even in the few cases where the use of a pesticide has
been restricted, the poison simply does not disappear from
the environment. Quite the contrary, toxic chemicals like
DDT take decades or even centuries to degrade. Even if by
some miracle we stopped all pesticide use today, these
chemicals would remain with us, contaminating our
environment and our food chains for the foreseeable
future."
John Robbins in his book DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA, 1987.

o "DDT, one of the earliest pesticides, is one of a mere
handful of these poisons that has actually been banned [in
the USA.] Yet four years after the moratorium on DDT had
been declared, the government tested soils in Arizona that
had once been treated with DDT and found no measurable
decrease in the amount in the soil."
- THE 6TH ANNUAL REPORT, COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY,
1975.
Quoted in DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA by John Robbins, 1987.

o "Researchers from the National Cancer Institute [USA]
assured Congressmen that it might be possible for only one
molecule of DES in the 340,000,000,000,000 present in a
quarter pound of beef liver to trigger human cancer."
- Food and Drug Administration biochemist Jacqueline
Verret, 1974.
Quoted in DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA by John Robbins, 1987.

o "In the 1970's, mounting public concern [in the USA]
overrode pressures from the chemical companies, and forced
the passage of the Toxic Substances Control Act. But this
Act has not in practice turned out to be the boon to
environmental health it was intended to be. More than three
years after the Act became law, the agency responsible for
its administration had not yet ordered testing for a single
one of more than 50,000 toxic chemicals on the market."
- Severo, R., NEW YORK TIMES, May 6, 1980.
Quoted in DIET FOR A NEW AMERICA by John Robbins, 1987.

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
https://tinyurl.com/jaimaharaj