About this website
The purpose of this website is to provide information/news about Veganism and animal abuse/welfare/rights. It is hoped this information will be used for research and prompt a consideration of why Veganism is so important, particularly at this time. While Veganism is concerned with diet and the environment, it must always be animal-centered. Veganism, which is not animal-centered, is not Veganism...
"Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."
(Vegan Society)
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"Veganism is associated with restraint and discipline...The accomplished vegan therefore signals a wealth of knowledge in a society where educational attainment has high social value." Source: https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2019/09/being-vegan-says-so-much-more-about-you-than-just-your-ethics |
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"Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. More than three-quarters of this is used for livestock production, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world’s protein and calorie supply. There is also a highly unequal distribution of land use between livestock and crops for human consumption. If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein." Source: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture |
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Food for thought...
"It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle...Plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable than diets rich in animal products because they use fewer natural resources and are associated with much less environmental damage. Vegetarians and vegans are at reduced risk of certain health conditions, including ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, certain types of cancer, and obesity."
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/
"Vegetarianism and Veganism are not pathological or any form of mental disorders, they are not a cause for mental disorders nor characteristic of people with depression or mood disorders. They are moral choices. Moral and responsible choices of people with a healthy and sensitive heart, clear thought and the courage to change. They are leaders, courageous to be the first; healthy people in a world often disturbed and ill."
Source: https://psychcentral.com/blog/veganism/2019/10/is-veganism-a-mental-disorder#1
"Conclusion: There is a strong relationship between the amount of animal-based foods in a diet and its environmental impact, including GHG emissions, land use, water use, eutrophication and biodiversity. Dietary shifts away from animal-based foods can make a substantial contribution to reduction of the UK environmental footprint."
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w
"Research by Kristof Dhont and Gordon Hodson has shown that there is a direct link between the way people think about human supremacy over animals and the attitudes people have towards human inequality. People who tend to think it is our right to dominate other species also tend to believe that there is natural order to society, with some individuals at the top and others at the bottom. In other words, viewing the world in terms of natural hierarchies not only fuels our beliefs about human supremacy over animals, it can perpetuate inequality within society as well."
Source: https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/four-ns-meat-justification
 By Jo Frederiks |
"Climate change emissions from meat production are far higher than currently estimated, according to a controversial new study that will fuel the debate on whether people should eat fewer animal products to help the environment. In a paper published by a respected US thinktank, the Worldwatch Institute, two World Bank environmental advisers claim that instead of 18 per cent of global emissions being caused by meat, the true figure is 51 per cent. They claim that United Nation's figures have severely underestimated the greenhouse gases caused by tens of billions of cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry and other animals in three main areas: methane, land use and respiration."
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/study-claims-meat-creates-half-of-all-greenhouse-gases-1812909.html
"How can we grow enough food to feed a skyrocketing population, while still leaving some room for nature? To find out, researchers ran hundreds of food production simulations under different conditions—like organic versus high-yield farming, and plant-based versus meat-based diets. They recorded whether each combination of strategies was "feasible"—whether enough food could be produced to feed the estimated 2050 world population without expanding the area of farmland people already use. Diet was the biggest determinant of success, the team reports today in Nature Communications. Of the scenarios that included everyone in the world eating a diet consisting entirely of plants, 100% were feasible. But because of the amount of land it takes to raise animals for meat—about twice as much as for crops—only 15% of the scenarios with typical meat-heavy Western diets were feasible. No other factor had that large of an effect, not even switching to farming practices like extra fertilizer use to make land more productive."
Source: https://www.science.org/content/article/veganism-could-save-world-new-study-argues
"According to a study by Beyond Meat and the University of Michigan, Americans – who eat an average of 3 burgers per week – could save the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by 12 million cars, simply by swapping one of those weekly meals with a plant-based alternative. Plant-based “meat” production also uses up to 99 per cent less water, up to 95 per cent less land, and generates up to 90 per cent fewer harmful emissions than regular beef burgers, whilst consuming nearly half the energy."
Source: https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/11/1025271
"Today, and probably into the future, dietary change can deliver environmental benefits on a scale not achievable by producers. Moving from current diets to a diet that excludes animal prducts (table S13) (35) has transformative potential, reducing food’s land use by 3.1 (2.8 to 3.3) billion ha (a 76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land; food’s GHG emissions by 6.6 (5.5 to 7.4) billion metric tons of CO2eq (a 49% reduction); acidification by 50% (45 to 54%); eutrophication by 49% (37 to 56%); and scarcity-weighted freshwater withdrawals by 19% (−5 to 32%) for a 2010 reference year. The ranges are based on producing new vegetable proteins with impacts between the 10th-and 90th-percentile impacts of existing production. In addition to the reduction in food’s annual GHG emissions, the land no longer required for food production could remove ~8.1 billion metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year over 100 years as natural vegetation reestablishes..."
Source: https://josephpoore.com/Science 360 6392 987 - Accepted Manuscript.pdf Dr Joseph Poore, Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Food Sustainability Analytics
"The problem with eating all this meat is that animal products – and beef in particular – have an outsized impact on the planet. A study of 40,000 farms in 119 countries published in the journal Science found that although livestock provide just 18 per cent of the calories we eat globally, farming them uses 83 per cent of all farmland...According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) an estimated 33 per cent of all croplands are used to grow livestock feed...
Beef is way out in front in terms of its water use. Lamb consumes 8,763 litres per kilogram while pigs and chickens consume 6,000 and 4,300 litres respectively. Vegetables, on the other hand, require just over 300 litres per kilogram while cereal crops require 1,600 litres. Water pollution from animal waste and fertilisers can also end up choking lakes of oxygen, poisoning fish and degrading water supplies...According to the FAO, during the 1990s 94,000 square kilometres a year of forest were destroyed mostly to crow crops and for grazing livestock..."
Source: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/vegan-diet-environmental-carbon-impact
"Climate researchers continue to urge consumers to make discerning purchases and to opt out of meat. A study conducted by Oxford University in Great Britain indicates that one-fourth of global greenhouse gas emissions is caused by food production, and 80% of that results from animals."
Source: https://www.dw.com/en/do-vegans-help-prevent-climate-change/a-49992593
"Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. More than three-quarters of this is used for livestock production, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world’s protein and calorie supply. There is also a highly unequal distribution of land use between livestock and crops for human consumption. If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein."
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/global-land-for-agriculture
"Researchers at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment found that 53 percent of all plant protein being grown in the world is fed to animals. This plant protein, which could go to starving people around the world, is used to feed animals. These animals don’t produce as many calories as the original plant protein would have. It takes about 13 pounds of grain to create a pound of meat. A lot more people can be fed with 13 pounds of grain than one pound of meat. The more people who transition to a vegan diet, the more awareness is called to this issue."
Source: https://ffl.org/articles/veganism-positive-effects/
"...In recent years, the looming specter of climate change has given meat eaters an additional dilemma to consider: cattle and dairy farming, climate scientists have warned, is unsustainable, generating high levels of greenhouse gases at every stage of the production process. For many vegetarians and vegans, the climate factor has provided yet another powerful argument for leaving meat behind."
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/10/05/got-beef-heres-what-your-hamburger-is-doing-to-the-climate/l
"More than three-quarters (77%) of global soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. Most of the rest is used for biofuels, industry or vegetable oils. Just 7% of soy is used directly for human food products such as tofu, soy milk, edamame beans, and tempeh. The idea that foods often promoted as substitutes for meat and dairy – such as tofu and soy milk – are driving deforestation is a common misconception."
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/soy
"Meat demands more of all these resources than crops do. Animals need to eat, so farmers must use fertilizers, machinery and land to grow feed for their animals. Animals, especially cattle, also need a lot of land. The large majority of deforestation in the Amazon region, for instance, is due to farmers clearing land for cattle ranching. Meat also contributes to climate change in one way most plant-based foods do not: animals (especially ruminants like cows and sheep) directly release the greenhouse gas methane as they digest their food. Methane is a short-lived greenhouse gas, but it’s also a powerful one: while it persists in the atmosphere, it traps around 100 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Taken together, this all means that meat produces far more greenhouse gases than plant crops do. A recent study showed that a pound of beef produces, on average, around 15 times as much CO2 as a pound of rice3—and around 60 times as much as a pound of wheat, corn or peas."
Source: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-have-i-heard-eating-meat-bad-climate
"In 2018, scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage of farming to the planet found avoiding meat and dairy products was the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet. The research showed 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."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/apr/25/going-vegan-can-switching-to-a-plant-based-diet-really-save-the-planet
"Since the dawn of humanity, our species has caused the loss of 83 per cent of wild animals, and around half of plants. Meat production uses around 82 per cent of the world’s farmland and produces 60 per cent of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. In total, around 30 per cent of all land in the world which is ice-free is used to grow grains, fruits and vegetables that are directly fed to the chickens, pigs and cattle that we eventually eat. On rugged terrains, such as the UK’s uplands, millions of sheep not only produce methane, but also eat the shoots of plants which prevent forests regenerating, and biodiversity returning. In other areas, deer have the same landscape-stripping effect. Scientists have said avoiding meat and dairy products from your diet is the single best way an individual can cut down their own impact on the environment and help tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis."
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/veganism-meat-environmental-impact-diet-b1901628.html
"The global production of food is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases emitted by human activity, with the use of animals for meat causing twice the pollution of producing plant-based foods, a major new study has found."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/meat-greenhouses-gases-food-production-study
"If the world were to end all meat and dairy production and transition to a plant-based food system over the next 15 years, it would prevent enough greenhouse gas emissions to effectively cancel out emissions from all other economic sectors for the next 30 to 50 years. That’s according to new research published today in the journal PLOS Climate. The paper’s authors say such a shift would “substantially alter the trajectory of global warming,” as animal agriculture is estimated to account for around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions."
Source: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22905381/meat-dairy-eggs-climate-change-emissions-rewilding
"The worldwide phase out of animal agriculture, combined with a global switch to a plant-based diet, would effectively halt the increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases for 30 years and give humanity more time to end its reliance on fossil fuels, according to a new study by scientists from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley...Based on the model, published in the open-access journal PLoS Climate, phasing out animal agriculture over the next 15 years would have the same effect as a 68 percent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions through the year 2100. This would provide 52 percent of the net emission reductions necessary to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, which scientists say is the minimum threshold required to avert disastrous climate change."
Source: https://earth.stanford.edu/news/could-going-vegan-help-reduce-greenhouse-gas-emissions
"Going vegan could be the “single largest approach” to lessen your environmental impact on the planet. By cutting meat and dairy from their diet, an individual reduces up to 73% of their carbon footprint. Whether you think veganism is a trend or a food revolution, the number of people who do it has gone through the roof. There are now more than 20 million vegans in the US alone, which is a massive increase of 600% in 4 years."
Source: https://www.intelligentliving.co/how-does-veganism-help-the-environment/
"Changing to a vegan diet is one of the most effective things you can do if you want to help the planet...As a somewhat extreme choice, this ‘nuclear option’ of the diet world has a surprising number of parallels with nuclear power itself. If you think about it though, when you eat beef you are eating an animal which has already eaten a huge amount of grain. It is obviously a lot more efficient to simply eat the grain yourself. Taking this shortcut also saves a lot of water, energy, space, time and additional products like pharmaceuticals. It’s a decision that brings a serious boost to resource efficiency..."
Source: https://www.neimagazine.com/opinion/opinionveganism-the-nuclear-option-10562120/
"The composition of the biosphere has been altered by human activity such that our planet now looks visibly different when seen from space. The deep green of rainforest has given way to the grey of urban sprawl and the yellow of agricultural monocrop. The Great Barrier Reef has markedly shrunk. Blooms of phytoplankton have flushed the ocean an unusual shade of blue, while the Arctic has grown greener, the result of enormous ice-melt and global heating. These planetary alterations have been driven in large part by agriculture – and especially by animal farming. The way that we eat has transformed every facet of the living world. Around 77 per cent of all agricultural land today is used for livestock or the crops that feed them...."
Source: https://www.bigissue.com/news/environment/earth-day-how-our-diet-has-to-change/
"Europeans should eat ‘as little animal products as possible’, to reduce their impact on climate change. That is according to scientists who formally advise the European Commission on food and agriculture policy. The comment came from the chair of the Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA) Working Group, Professor Erik Mathijs, as the group published its latest report, Towards Sustainable Food Consumption. The European Commission requested the report to support the revision of the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy, the Commission’s flagship agri-food initiative which was designed to make food systems more sustainable and healthy."
Source: https://www.veganfoodandliving.com/news/eat-little-animal-products-fight-climate-change-scientists/
"A recent study by the University of Oxford in the UK shows that veganism, compared to diets high in meat consumption, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 75%, and contributes to reduced water pollution and soil depletion. The study also indicates that veganism cuts the loss of wildlife by 66% and reduces water consumption by as much as 54%. This is yet another report that has been published in recent weeks (on 28 June, the SAPEA report ’Towards sustainable food consumption’ was published on behalf of the European Commission), which indicates that a switch to a plant-based diet is essential in dealing with today’s and tomorrow’s crises associated with the current food system, which is unsustainable. The results of the study were published as part of an article in Nature Food on 20 July 2023, and the study’s leader himself, Professor Peter Scarborough of Oxford University, stressed that reducing the amount of meat and dairy in the diet could have a big impact on the food footprint we produce."
Source: https://en.futurefood4climate.eu/science-says-veganism-will-save-the-world
"High-meat diets produce four times more greenhouse gases than vegan diets, a new study has found. The eating habits of 55,000 people were analysed by researchers from the University of Oxford who found meat-free eating to have a much lower environmental impact on land use, water pollution risk, water use and biodiversity loss. Professor Peter Scarborough, the lead author of the study, concluded that “cutting down the amount of meat and dairy in your diet can make a big difference to your dietary footprint”. Agriculture is a major source of deforestation and biodiversity loss while around three-quarters of ice-free land has been adopted by humans, according to the UN."
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/meat-greenhouse-gases-vegan-diet-study-b2378754.html
"Having big UK meat-eaters cut some of it out of their diet would be like taking 8 million cars off the road. That's just one of the findings of new research that scientists say gives the most reliable calculation yet of how what we eat impacts our planet. The Oxford University study is the first to pinpoint the difference high- and low-meat diets have on greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say."
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66238584
"Eating a vegan diet massively reduces the damage to the environment caused by food production, the most comprehensive analysis to date has concluded. The research showed that vegan diets resulted in 75% less climate-heating emissions, water pollution and land use than diets in which more than 100g of meat a day was eaten. Vegan diets also cut the destruction of wildlife by 66% and water use by 54%, the study found. The heavy impact of meat and dairy on the planet is well known, and people in rich nations will have to slash their meat consumption in order to end the climate crisis. But previous studies have used model diets and average values for the impact of each food type."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/20/vegan-diet-cuts-environmental-damage-climate-heating-emissions-study
"More than 650 academics have called on British universities to commit to 100% plant-based catering to fight the climate crisis, saying that the institutions have 'for centuries, been shining lights of intellectual, moral, and scientific progress'”.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/04/hundreds-academics-call-for-meat-free-meals-british-universities
"Cows are often described as climate-change criminals because of how much planet-warming methane they burp. But there’s another problem with livestock farming that’s even worse for the climate and easier to overlook: To feed the world’s growing appetite for meat, corporations and ranchers are chopping down more forests and trampling more carbon-sequestering grasslands to make room for pastures and fields of hay. Ruminants, like cattle, sheep and goats, need space to graze, and animal feed needs space to grow. The greenhouse gases unleashed by this deforestation and land degradation mean food systems account for one-third of the world’s human-generated climate pollution...Climate policies and investment focus heavily on fossil fuels and the energy sector, but slashing agricultural emissions is also crucial to keeping planetary warming below catastrophic levels..."
Source: https://sentientmedia.org/new-study-meat-deforestation/
“My body will not be a tomb for other creatures.”
– Leonardo Da Vinci
“Animals are my friends and I don’t eat my friends.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“Every person that I have met who has gone vegan says it is the best decision they have ever made.”
– Lewis Hamilton
