To be or not to be…To be or not to be…

A vegetarian…A vegetarian…

That is the question.That is the question.

Meat or No Meat…

““All sentient beings All sentient beings possess the buddha possess the buddha

nature, we cannot bear to nature, we cannot bear to consume their flesh.”consume their flesh.”

— —The BuddhaThe Buddha

““If anyone wants to save the If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That’s just stop eating meat. That’s

the single most important the single most important thing you can do.”thing you can do.”

— —Sir Paul McCartneySir Paul McCartney

2006 United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization Report

“ Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

It is a It is a matter matter of the of the entire entire planet…planet…

Estimated number of animals Estimated number of animals killed each year:killed each year:

United StatesUnited States = 27 BILLION= 27 BILLIONWORLDWIDE WORLDWIDE = 100 BILLION= 100 BILLION

BILLIONS BILLIONS more are killed that are more are killed that are food-relatedfood-related

Not to mention the number of sea creatures that could not even be

counted.

The meat industry contributes 18% of all the greenhouse gases…

…more than all air, land, and water traffic COMBINED.

SWITCHING TO A VEGAN DIET FROM AN AMERICAN

DIET …

Is even more effective than …

From an American car.From an American car.Switching to a Switching to a hybridhybrid……

13,000 gallons of water produces only ONE pound of beef.

A pound of soy beans takes only 250 gallonsA pound of soy beans takes only 250 gallons

17 TRILLION gallons of water is used EVERY YEAR…

……to produce to produce feed for U.S. feed for U.S. livestock.livestock.

While MILLIONS have no

FOOD

or clean WATER each day.

Factory farms are responsible for

173,000 miles of polluted rivers and streams.

In the U.S. Animal waste = 130 TIMES human waste

3 TRILLION pounds of waste from factory animals is a greater source of pollution for our rivers and lakes…

… than ALL other industries COMBINED.

125,000 SQUARE MILES of tropical forest are lost each and every year.

We may have no more rain forests

in a hundred years.

Millions of pounds of antibiotics are given to livestock regularly.

Contributing to zoonotic diseases like bird flu & H1N1… and drug-resistant pathogens.

If we fed the 756 million tons of grain used for livestock to the

1.4 billion hungry people globally…

They would have TWICE the amount needed to survive.

GOING VEGGIE JUST 1 DAY A WEEK…

IN ONE YEAR, YOU WILL: save 84,000 gallons of water

save 7,700 sq feet of rain forest save 87 square feet of topsoil from erosion

… AND YOU WILL:

save 15.5 gallons of gasolinereduce over 400 pounds of manuresave 245 pounds of grain

If every American skipped ONE MEAL of chicken each week…

… the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than

HALF A MILLION CARS off U.S. roads.

IF EVERY American went vegetarian just for

ONE DAY,

We save 100 BILLION gallons of water, enough to

supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months…

1.5 BILLION pounds of

CROPS otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed

the state of New Mexico for more than a year…

Regular

Unleaded

V-Power

70 MILLION gallons of gas—

enough to fuel all the cars of CANADA & MEXICO combined

with plenty to spare…

And…

And we PREVENT…

Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to

1.2 MILLION1.2 MILLION tons of CO2, tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France.as much as produced by all of France.

“Perhaps in the back of our minds we

already understand, without all the science, that something terribly wrong is happening. We know that it cannot possibly be healthy... If someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film.

We perhaps know more than we care to admit... When we eat factory-farmed meat, we live on tortured flesh. Increasingly, those sick animals are making us sick.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer, “Eating Animals is making us sick”

To be or not to be?To be or not to be?

Pledge to go veggie one day a week at http://groups.to/goveggie

Buddha Mind Monastery

Data compiled from many sources, including but not limited to the following. Pictures are downloaded from the web. Please notify us of copyright issues.

Chung Tai Zen Center of Sunnyvale (http://groups.to/goveggie)Richard Corliss et al, “Should We All Be Vegetarians?” Time Magazine, July 15, 2002 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1002888-7,00.html)

Jonathan Safran Foer, “Eating Animals is making us sick,” CNN Opinion, October 28, 2009 (http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/10/28/opinion.jonathan.foer/index.html)

Kathy Freston, “The Breathtaking Effects of Cutting Back on Meat,” Huffington Post, April 1, 2009 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/the-breathtaking-effects_b_181716.html)

www.goveg.com

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009)

www.nationalgeographic.com

www.nytimes.com

http://vegetarian-resources.com/Vegetarian_Statistics.html