

I’m not a vegetarian because I feel bad for how animals are treated when they’re slaughtered for our next meal. Call me Satan, but the idea of Wilbur being forced into a slaughter house to meet his maker never tugged on my heartstrings. I care about animals, but I care about other things more. I care about our environment and how global warming is probably going to be what ends us all. It might sound odd, but that’s why I’m a vegetarian. Did you know the number one cause of air pollution in the world is animal agriculture or that they use the most water out of every other food producer? Did you know that animal agriculture manipulates and controls our legislature so much that if you try to come after them, you will fail (Andersen)? The entire business of the meat industry disgusts me, quite frankly. They pollute our air and water and leave us unable to do anything about it due to their tight hold on our government. Agribusiness is the biggest polluter of our atmosphere, and there’s not much we can do to stop them because of their power in our government. We need to stop this and spread this message. But if this is such an issue, then why is no one talking about it? The topic of global warming being linked to the meat industry has been a taboo subject for decades. People have tried to cover up the facts to keep their business safe, and only in the past two decades have people really begun to force this information out. I’m not saying it was never out there. It was out there, people just swept it under the rug. 

The meat industry is hurting our environment. Raising and killing animals has an effect on our global temperature. It seems like a stretch, and it seems highly unlikely, but the science speaks for itself, specifically chemistry and gases. Fertilizers are a standard in most farms, especially those that mass produce meat and grains. Today’s fertilizers are able to produce corn and grains to feed cows at extremely fast rates, while also growing grass for the cows to graze on as well. The fertilizers we use today have dozens of chemicals in them, but the one we want to look at is ammonium and nitrogen. When ammonium and nitrogen react with certain chemicals, it releases a gas called N2O, which is like CO2 but on steroids (Parton). N2O, “has a heat trapping greenhouse effect that is approximately 310 times greater than that of CO2” so it traps more heat for a longer period of time in our atmosphere (Parton). Well, what causes these chemicals to react this way? It sounds comical, but its cow feces. Cow feces react with these chemicals in the ground and create this N20 gas (Parton). Farmers use these fertilizers because they produce faster crops and help grass grow faster for the cows to graze and “do their business” on. Not only do cow feces give off heat trapping gases, but cows themselves do as well. “The next leading source [of greenhouse gases] is the emission of methane (CH4) by ruminant livestock, especially cattle, through their burps and other digestive out gassings” (Parton). Comical, I know, but cow burps and farts are damaging our atmosphere as well. You have to realize, there are thousands of cows on dairy farms and beef farms, so their gases are going to create a big enough affect to do some damage to our atmosphere. In fact, “global agriculture—dominated by livestock production and the grains grown to support it—accounts for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions” (Hyner). This is larger than the emissions from cars and electricity, which is what many people think is the main producer of greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Methane is extremely toxic for our environment as it, “has a global warming potential 86 times that of CO2 on a 20 year time frame” (Andersen). So to put that in perspective, the methane gases that were released when most of us were born are just now leaving the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is even worse. It takes 150 years to completely vanish from the atmosphere (Andersen). 150 years ago Alaska wasn’t even a state, women couldn’t vote, and the south was just starting to rebuild. Luckily farmers in 1867 didn’t use fertilizers with nitrogen and ammonium bases, so their gases aren’t in our air, but the gases we are producing now will be. Your great, great grandchild will breath the same toxins that you did, but they won’t get to see and experience the same earth that you did. Parts of the earth that we know now, won’t be there for our kids and grandkids to enjoy. I know, broad statement that doesn’t sound logical at all, but hear me out. “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”), predicts that by 2080, 33% of the world’s coastal wetlands will become open water. The IPCC also estimates that melting glaciers will raise global sea levels by up to two feet in the next century, consuming an area equal to the size of Massachusetts and Delaware combined” (Winebarger). 2080 isn’t far away. I’ll be 82 by then, and most of you reading this will be close to that age as well. Hopefully we’ll all be alive and well then, so we will all see this rise in water levels and loss of our wetlands happen. It’s no longer something that will become our kids’ problem and we won’t have to deal with it or see it because we will see it. We will deal with it, and we will face the consequences that everyone told us were coming but we ignored. 


Big problems like these are even closer than that. “Scientists predict that by 2030, 20 million people in Bangladesh alone will be displaced by land succumbing to rising sea levels” (Winebarger). 2030 is thirteen years away, which is not long. In thirteen years, we could be having children, and those children won’t get to see parts of a country because it’s underwater now. Not to mention that fact that 20 million people will be having to move somewhere else because their homes are underwater. That’s the size of Florida’s population having to pack up and move. Florida is not a small state, so it’s no longer affecting small populations of people and local villages. It’s starting to really chip away at our earth on a larger scale, and people aren’t the only ones suffering.    

The heating up of the planet is killing our wildlife too because some of them can’t survive in these conditions. Animals are losing their homes due to deforestation to make way for farms. Rainforests in Brazil are being torn down to make way for cattle farms and fields to grow the crops necessary to feed these cows (Andersen). Not to mention that some animals simply can’t reproduce fast enough to meet our demands, like fish. Due to our extreme over fishing to produce enough food to meet our worlds demand, we may have fishless oceans by 2048 (Andersen). You could no longer be able to go diving and see Nemo and his friends because they would be dead. They wouldn’t exist anymore because they couldn’t reproduce fast enough. Our world has such a high demand for fish, that it’s wiping out species. Agribusiness isn’t just heating up the planet, but it’s wiping out species as well. 

This isn’t the end, however; none of this has to come true. We can still reverse some of our damage and save the wildlife we have left. The best solution would be for everyone to live off of a plant based diet, because then there wouldn’t be any meat factories or cow farms  producing these gases. I try to be as plant based as I can in my diet, but I haven’t gone completely vegan, which is a 100% plant based diet, so I know it can be hard for people. And some people just don’t want to change. They like their steak and burgers and fried chicken, so why change? For those people out there, there is a solution for you. If people want to be conscious of our earth but still eat meat, then they should only eat beef from cows who were raised on farms with stable fertilizers. “Research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has shown that stabilized fertilizers can produce similar yields with lower emissions of greenhouse gases” (Parton). All farmers need to do is substitute their fertilizers, so why don’t they? While these fertilizers are better for the environment, they don’t produce fast enough. They produce enough for small scale farming to keep up with their demands, but unfortunately the meat industry wants the fastest drug possible. Our world consumes massive amounts of meat, therefore, the meat industry needs to produce these crazy amounts. What the average person eats in meat for one meal, is what a person should be eating for a whole day in meat (Andersen). As a global society, we’ve been conditioned to think we need giant steak, burgers, or chicken breasts for every meal to stay healthy, but we don’t. Yes, it’s healthy to have protein in every meal, everyone knows that, but you don’t need it in such large amounts. Another way to be conscious of our environment and still eat meat, is to try to go one or more days a week without meat. If enough people start to cut back on their meat consumption, farms won’t be producing as much meat, therefore not as many greenhouse gases will be produced. This can also help lead to switching to the stable fertilizers, since producing massive amounts of meat won’t be as much of a problem if people start cutting back because then the meat industry won’t have as high of a demand. However, meat industries don’t want either of these solutions to happen   because if they do there’s a high risk of the companies loosing money. Money is what drives this business, and money is what keeps it untouchable.  

Lobbying is not uncommon in America. Different forms of it have been around since we started making laws. Lobbying is defined by Merriam Webster as “an organized group of people who work together to influence government decisions that relate to a particular industry, issue, etc.” so it’s essentially a system of people who persuade lawmakers to make laws or fight against laws to benefit the specific organization that is doing the lobbying. The meat industry has spent the most amount of money on lobbying in America, with a grand total of $126,242,202 spent for Agribusiness in 2016 (“Annual”). This money is a glorified version of bribery. The companies come in and pay senators or congressmen millions of dollars to do whatever they tell them to, whether it be right or wrong. For example, in the documentary Food Inc. it shows how in 1998 the USDA stated that if a meat plant was found to have salmonella and E. coli in any of its products on multiple occasions, it would be shut down, but the meat and poultry association didn’t like that. They took the USDA to court, and, “the USDA could not shut down a plant solely based on salmonella levels in ground beef” (Johnson). Now the USDA no longer has the power to shut down any meat plant on accounts of salmonella and E. coli. People have died from consumption of the salmonella and E. coli that has come from these plants, but the meat industry doesn’t care. As long as they’re making money, they’ll do and pay whoever to keep that from ending. The film also touches on how some of these people who are in charge of keeping our food safe, are actually allies with the meat industry. During the Bush administration, the chief of staff of the USDA was the former leading lobbyist for the beef industry, and the head of the FDA was the former VP for the National Food Processors Association (Food, Inc). Even today,  Trump’s pick for head of the USDA, Sonny Perdue, was once heavily involved in agriculture as he sold fertilizers, received “donations” from agribusinesses, and owns a global company that trades agriculture supplies (Philpott). Not only is the meat industry paying people to lean the laws in their favor, but they’re seeping through the cracks and becoming leaders of organizations that are supposed to have our environment’s and our people’s best interest in mind. It’s brilliant, really, how efficient they are when it comes to manipulation and finding loopholes, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay. They can even manipulate people in the media. In 1996, Oprah stated on her show that she would never eat beef again after hearing about mad cow disease and how easy it is for the cows to get infected, therefore getting us infected. Beef sales dropped tremendously, and Texas cattle farmers sued Oprah and won (“Oprah”). There are legitimate laws out there that protect the meat industry from being criticized such as the Food Libel Laws (Food, Inc.). They can, and will sue anyone that says negative comments about them on any platform. Even if the person posts about it on a small scale, like a blog, they will still get sued (Food, Inc.). The meat industry doesn’t even do this for the money. They do it just because they can. They want people to be afraid to speak up so they can continue doing what they have always been doing to make money. That’s the effect of lobbyists. They keep people silent, and they keep people compliant. They silence anyone’s voice who isn’t saying what they want to hear. That is why most people never knew that meat production was so bad for our environment. That is why so many people eat meat every day that could possibly come from an infected factory and never know. This is the problem. This needs to stop. 

I want to hold the meat industry accountable for their actions. I want them to understand that their greed and corruption has far reaching consequences that they need to recognize. This   isn’t just a problem of melting ice caps and wiped out species anymore. It’s a problem of our own safety. The meat you’re eating could be infected and cause you to become extremely ill, or the meat you’re eating could have been the last straw for the atmosphere and now your favorite beach is gone. Either way, neither of those outcomes sounds appetizing. We as a society need to pull the covers off of the meat industry and show the world what’s really happening and how we can fix it. If not, then maybe it was best for Wilbur to go when he did. 
