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Become a member of Mercy For Animals today and stand strong alongside our thousands of other supporters as we defend the rights of animals.

Your tax-deductible contribution to MFA sustains and expands our life-saving programs. Thank you for your generosity!

anotherinconvenienttruth:

meat productionis a leading cause ofglobal warming

So bike, walk, and take public transportation. Use compact fl uorescent light bulbs and energy effi cient appliances. But, please don’t neglect the need to eliminate animal products from your diet.

Visit ChooseVeg.com for tips on transitioning to vegetarianism, hundreds of delicious vegetarian recipes, and to request your free Vegetarian Starter Kit.

The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most signifi cant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.

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-The United Nations

you can make a difference!Luckily, all of us can help fi x this problem by changing our diet. According to a 2006 study done by researchers at the University of Chicago, an American can reduce more greenhouse gas emissions by becoming vegan than by switching to a hybrid car.

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How does eating animals cause global warming? There are a number of factors. Here are a few:

Manure - The tens of billions of farmed animals of the world produce massive amounts of manure, which emit greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide, methane, and carbon dioxide.

Deforestation - Forests are being destroyed to grow grain and soy to feed chickens, pigs and cows, or to create grazing land for cattle. When the trees are killed, the CO2 they store is released into our environment.

Cow Burps - Ruminant animals such as cows and sheep, emit huge quantities of methane via burping and flatulence.

Burning Fossil Fuels - The meat industry uses fossil fuels to heat and cool the buildings that house animals, to produce crops to feed the animals, and to transport, process, and refrigerate meat. Cornell ecologist David Pimentel estimates that creating animal protein demands about eight times as much fossil fuel as creating a comparable amount of plant protein.

Synthetic Fertilizer - The majority of corn and soy grown in the U.S. is fed to farmed animals. Fossil fuels are used to create the synthetic fertilizers that are used to grow the crops, and this process emits a tremendous amount of CO2. The fertilizers themselves release the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.

which causes moreglobal warming?

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transportation

meat

which prevents moreglobal warming?

x

driving a prius

adopting a vegetarian diet

chew on these facts: The livestock sector now occupies 30% of the land surface of the planet, much of that land used to be forests or rainforests that were clear-cut.

Animal farming is responsible for 65% of human-caused nitrous oxide emissions, a greenhouse gas 296 times more powerful than CO2.

Animal farming is responsible for 37% of human-caused methane emissions, a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than CO2.

In total, animal farming accounts for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, surpassing the entire global transportation sector, which accounts for 13.5% of total emissions.

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why should we care?Global warming could have devastating long-term consequences. As the National Resources Defense Council notes, if we don’t do something soon to halt its progress, “Sea levels will rise, flooding coastal areas. Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense. Droughts and wildfires will occur more often. Disease-carrying mosquitoes will expand their range. And species will be pushed to extinction.”

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x

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Many of these changes have already begun; think Hurricane Katrina, the 2003 European heat wave that killed 52,000 people, and Australia’s epic seven-year and counting drought.

According to a groundbreaking 2006 United Nations report titled Livestock’s Long Shadow, the tens of billions of farmed animals (and the energy used to raise, feed, transport, slaughter them, and refrigerate the meat) is one of the main contributors, if not the main contributor, to almost every major environmental problem we see today: climate change, deforestation, land degradation, water and air pollution, water shortage and loss of biodiversity.

Think those monstrous, gas-guzzling SUVs are the biggest threat to the environment and the main cause of global warming? Think again. An even greater threat to our planet is our collective appetite for chicken wings, burgers, and sausages.

How can our appetite for animals cause so much environmental damage?