The changing climate of our planet is a topic that is hotly debated in everyday media, politics and science. The different opinions surrounding this issue vary on a wide spectrum. Some argue that climate change is not human induced, but rather happening due to Earth’s natural cycle of heating and cooling. Others argue that climate change can be attributed to the significant amount of pollution created by man. Some even argue that climate change is myth, and is not even occurring at all. While both arguments can be tentatively substantiated since science still does not have completely concrete evidence, it becomes more clear all the time that humanity’s impact on the environment is undeniable. However, within that argument, smaller discrepancies exist. Pollution is generally thought of as emissions from transportation and factories, or pollution from litter. But there is one major contributor that is often overlooked: the meat industry. Meat production has an enormous negative impact on the environment, a fact that many are unaware of. With continued research, it is being found that emissions from farm animal waste may be the largest contributor to greenhouse gasses. Aside from emissions, the meat industry is also responsible for environmental issues such as deforestation to create more farmland, and overfishing to the point of species and ecosystem endangerment. Both of those practices are also causes of climate change, and when coupled with greenhouse gas emissions, the meat industry’s impact starts to appear fairly immense. According to The Guardian’s environmental journalist Fiona Harvey, lowering the percentage of meat consumed in the United States could cut down on pollutants and emissions by nearly 66 percent, which she explains in her article “Eat Less Meat to Avoid Dangerous Global Warming, Scientists Say.”. Climate change is an issue that effects every species on this planet; it is time that meat consumers understand the consequences of their dietary choices.

There are many climatic downfalls associated with meat production that the people of the United States need to become more aware of. The United States is one of the leading producers and consumers of meat, which consequentially means they are also one of the leading producers of animal related emissions. This is a fact that needs to be addressed by both consumers and producers. According to the US National Library of Medicine, a 2011 study showed that meat consumption is continuing to rise in the United States, with red meat remaining the most highly consumed, at a rate of 58 percent. To make matters worse, 22 percent of all meat consumed by United States citizens is processed. Processed meat creates significantly more pollution than organically produced meat would. Meat consumption is showing no signs of slowing despite research proving its environmentally destructive nature. In 2010 the United Nations, following a report by NASA stating that the decade of 2000 was the warmest decade on record, conducted a study that stated that 18 percent of all greenhouse gasses were produced by animal emissions due to factory farming. That statistic puts meat production as the most significant contributor to greenhouse gasses, producing more emissions than all transportation pollution combined. This is a serious statistic that is not communicated to the consumers of meat in the United States. A common misconception is that transportation creates the most atmospheric pollution, when in reality the food being served around the country is truly to blame. It is time that the consumers become educated on the impact that processed, factory farmed meat has on climate change.

While it is widely accepted that animal emissions create greenhouse gasses, there has been some dispute over the data presented by the United Nations. Following their study, skeptical scientist Frank Mitloehner conducted a study of his own that found only 3 percent of emissions to be caused by animal waste, a stark difference from the UN’s 18 percent. Mitloehner claims that the UN’s data is misleading, and attributes a larger amount of emissions to animal waste than what is true. He argues that the UN manipulated the data to show a larger percentage of emissions being animal related, without disclosing that some of the emissions within that 18 percent may come from other forms of pollution. This information from Frank Mitloehner was published by Paul Armstrong on CNN, in the article "Scientist: Don't Blame Cows for Climate Change". While this data discrepancy is interesting, it does not invalidate the argument that animal emissions are contributing to greenhouse gasses. J.D. Wood and C. Rowlings of the Nottingham University Press, report in their scholarly, peer-reviewed electronic book, Nutrition and Climate Change: Major Issues Confronting the Meat Industry, that a major contributor to climate change and greenhouse gasses are the emissions released as a result of factory farming in the meat industry. Animal waste, specifically from cattle and sheep, contains mass amounts of methane which pollute the air enormously. Since meat production is detrimental to the environment, and meat consumption can be detrimental to health, the book argues that a vegetarian diet can solve both of these issues. Regardless of the percentage, animal waste polluting the atmosphere is a fact. A percentage of 3 percent or 18 percent both support my argument that meat production is negatively impacting the environment, since even 3 percent is still a negative impact. 

Factory farming creates a myriad of environmental issues that expand well beyond greenhouse gas pollution. The land suffers just as much as the atmosphere, as farming is very demanding and taxing for the earth. In Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn’s documentary Cowspiracy, the extensive consequences of factory farming are detailed. The effects of animal emissions on the environment are chronicled throughout this film, while the filmmakers simultaneously delve into other facets of climate change as well. Among these aforementioned environmentally destructive effects of farming is deforestation. Forests are continually being cut down in order to create more land to farm on. This is due to the huge demand of corn required to feed all of the animals being raised on factory farms. While farming is not the only motivating force behind deforestation, it still rivals the deforestation caused by the lumber and construction industries in amount of forest destruction. This contributes to global warming because the oxygen emissions from trees would aid in counteracting increasing air pollutions; the removal of trees is a catalyst in heating the earth. This also causes habitat loss for woodland creatures, which is damaging to the ecosystems that exists there because it disrupts what is natural. Topsoil erosion also becomes an issue from excessive farming. The meat industry justifies these actions with the motive of needing to feed the people of the world. This creates enough issues on its own, but even more issues come into play with the need to feed the enormous quantities of animals that are being farmed. What seems like a necessary step in order to meet the demands of consumers in turn creates a trickledown effect of complications. The greenhouse gasses emitted by meat production are merely one portion of the whole issue of the meat industry’s impact on the environment. 

The meat industry is not limited to just animals who live on land, just as well as climate change is not only limited to the changes that occur on land. As global temperatures rise, the sea levels also rise due to the melting of polar ice caps. If global warming can be traced back to farm animals, then sea level rise is consequentially also effected by the meat industry, both from land animals and its very own sea animals. Fish are a substantial source of protein for consumers across the planet. Fish are always in high demand, which is the reason that overfishing to the extent of species endangerment has become a worldwide epidemic affecting numerous species of fish. This issue is explored in the scholarly, peer-reviewed journal “Coastal Waters Need Action” by Jerald Schnoor. Schnoor claims that the declining state of the ocean is partly due to overfishing various species of fish. This is creating an impact on the oceans ecosystems, as the endangerment of species disrupts natural food chains. According to GreenPeace.Org, some of the fish that are at the greatest risk of endangerment include various types of halibut, tuna, and salmon. If the fishing industry continues to progress in this direction, those species will face inevitable extinction. The oceans are already in a precarious state. Efforts need to be made to protect not only the oceans waters, but also the creatures that live inside of it.

The environment is defined as “the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by human activity”. The natural world is made up of the earth and the things that inhabit it. So in a paper discussing the meat industry’s impact on the environment, it only makes sense to mention how all of the practices of the meat industry impact the animals themselves. Common practices in factory farming include the manipulation of livestock, such as stimulation with antibiotics and growth hormones, over breeding and the modification of birth patterns, and more, as reported by Michael Moss in The New York Times article “U.S. Research Lab Lets Livestock Suffer in Quest for Profit”. Factory farms are unconcerned with the well-being of their animals; they operate solely on profitability. Growing animals larger and more muscular with growth hormones, GMO’s, and antibiotics mean that each animal will yield more product for them to sell, despite the fact that it inhibits the animal’s ability to move and exist properly. By overbreeding animals, they are able to continually generate new offspring. Factory farms find ways to modify birth patterns to ensure that animals become pregnant with more offspring than what is natural to them, which leads to birth defects. Farms also have begun to feed their cattle corn, rather than grass, which is what their stomachs are designed to process. This has led to not only health complications for the cattle, but also for the consumers of the cattle, since this can lead to the outbreak of the E. Coli virus. These are all strategies implemented by the meat industry are purely for the sake of saving money and making more profit. However, these practices have real environmental implications, both on the earth and on the human consumers. These animals are a part of the earth’s ecosystem and when humans begin to alter them, there are sure to be unforeseen implications in the future.

Many experts believe that if people cut back on how much meat they have in their diets, if could be beneficial to the environment. If mass amounts of people began to incorporate veganism or vegetarianism into their routine diets, not only could climate change be slowed, but some of it could even be reversed. In Fiona Harvey’s article published by The Guardian, “Eat Less Meat to Avoid Dangerous Global Warming, Scientists Say”, the conversion to veganism by a significant amount of American citizens could cut down on emissions by nearly 66 percent. If meat became less in demand, there would be less farming of the animals that create the pollution, so concurrently, there would be a higher demand for plants, which in many cases the growing of plants would actually be beneficial to the environment. Cultivating plants also requires significantly less water than maintaining livestock does. According to Graham Hill in his Ted Talk “Graham Hill: Why I'm a Weekday Vegetarian”, beef production uses 100 times more water than growing crops does. This is another way that a plant based diet has less of an environmental impact. Although the evidence is there to support the argument for veganism benefitting the earth, the odds of American citizens becoming convinced to abandon their meat centric diets are small. The meat industry implements clever uses of propaganda to convey the production of processed meat in a positive light, and for decades that has substantiated it’s support in American households. However, the consequences of their diets and the impact that it has on the environment should be considered when choosing what they eat. 

Some scientists argue that it is not the animals that are responsible for the pollution, but rather it is the way they are brought up and attended to that creates all of the environmental problems. If animals were raised the way they were intended to be- free range, organic, no artificial growth hormones, eating the foods their bodies were meant to process- there would be nothing destructive about farming. In Simon Fairlie’s book Meat: The Benign Extravagance, he makes the claim that if livestock was raised and produced in a natural way, it would not significantly impact the environment. Fairlie is a farmer who works first hand in the industry. It is true that factory farming does significantly more damage than a small, organic farm would. However, the meat industry has become so powerful and so profitable through the practices that they use, that there is little to no likelihood that there would ever be a digression that reverted farming to its natural form. Even if meat was produced in a more humane and natural manner, this would only assuage some extent of the issues that come with using animals as a source of food.

The meat industry has monopolized the food industry for decades now. Their influence extends into the realms of the economy, health, and ethics, in ways that are not always obvious to everyday consumers. What most consumers do not know is that it has also contributed significantly to the way our planet is changing. From global temperature rise, deforestation, sea level rise, species endangerment; the list of environmental damages is extensive, and each one can be traced back to the destructive practices implemented by factory farming. The people of the United States need to become more cognizant of their environmental impact whilst choosing their diets. The only way to reverse the cycle is to create less of a demand. For the sake of the planet, the people, and the animals, the vicious cycle of meat production and consumption must be broken.
