Plant, Animal, Lab Grown...?

Plant vs Animal

Lab Grown Meat

Plant-Based Substitutes

You may not be ready for a "Vegan 4 Life" tattoo, but every time you put a plant in your mouth instead of an animal, you're helping lower overall greenhouse emissions.  So come on, let's save the world one bite at a time!

Plant-Based and Vegan Recipe Sources

Organic or Not?

Hands On Organic Learning Opportunities

• Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, USA (WWOOF USA) "is part of a worldwide effort to link visitors with organic farmers, promote an educational exchange, and build a global community conscious of ecological farming practices.
  
  Visitors, or 'WWOOFers', share in daily life with their host and learn about organic agriculture, while spending about half of each day helping out on a farm."

Local/Seasonal?

Emissions

Carbon

Methane

Methane from Food Production

Impact by Location & Food Type

Evidence has surfaced that the food production of 5 countries out ways the ecological impact of other countries "... India, China, the United States, Brazil, and Pakistan—account for 43.8% of the global cumulative impact of producing food... 

Of this, terrestrial food production contributes a larger cumulative pressure than do aquatic sources of food. And yet, despite providing just 1.1% of global nourishment, food from the ocean causes a surprisingly large 10% of cumulative environmental pressure, due to the effects of habitat disturbance, the researchers found.  

... Beef production is widely accepted as being the worst for the planet because of the associated emissions—but when factoring in water use and pollution, pig farming actually has the larger cumulative environmental footprint. Similarly, some types of fish pose bigger environmental pressures than chicken does."

The Impact of Transporting Food

Most people know that our food costs us in emissions, water, and fertilizer, but there are some other issues that people are often unaware of.

GHG Emissions

According to this Oxford report, the majority of livestock emissions are from feed production and the animals themselves, with only 6% of their lifetime emissions coming from transport and processing.

As you can see from the graph below, animal products tend to produce much larger quantities of GHG emissions than plant-based foods.

Transmission Risk of Zoonoses (Animal to Human Sickness)

All this feces plus handling sick, infected animals poses a growing danger to humans working with or consuming the animals, as wells as wildlife who live in the areas where livestock waste or even corpses are thrown overboard. 

These dangers include:

• Anthrax

• Brucellosis

• Escherichia coli (E-Coli) 

• Ringworm is actually a fungal infections which generally spreads from livestock and pets to humans, but also from person to person via skin contact. "A point to note is that cattle ringworm is the most serious form of ringworm in Humans."

• Scabby Mouth ("orf" in humans) is a highly contagious pox virus that is common in sheep shearers due to contact with infected animals. It's common around Victoria, Australia due to the sheep industry.

• Septicemia which is a serious bloodstream infection that occurs when a bacterial infection enters the bloodstream from the skin, lungs, kidneys, bladder or other parts.

• Tuberculosis "Bovine tuberculosis is a chronic bacterial disease of animals caused by members of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, primarily by M. bovis. It is a major zoonotic disease, and cattle are the main source of infection for humans. It also affects other domesticated animals such as sheep, goats, equines, pigs, dogs and cats, and wildlife species such as wild boars, deer, and antelopes. The name ‘tuberculosis’ comes from the nodules called ‘tubercles’, which form in the lymph nodes and other tissues of affected animals and humans." although under control in many regions "Bovine tuberculosis remains a serious problem for animal and human health in many developing countries. "

• Q Fever

Livestock Drugs in the Water from Livestock Corpses & Manure

"Australian veterinarians are required to treat sick and injured animals, and so excrement and carcasses can contain traces of treatment drugs. The residue from one drug commonly used, Oxytetracycline, can be present in the animal’s body for 90 days, and Australia’s meat export industry must observe and declare a withholding period of 90 days between medicating an animal with this drug and human consumption. More typically though, residues from other drugs dissipate in less than two weeks."

"Carcasses are thrown overboard whole, in part, or after being mechanically processed in equipment such as a grinder. Based on death rates for 2015, Australian live export voyages would have resulted in approximately 12,500 sheep and 1,300 cattle carcasses being disposed of at sea last year."

...

"“Unless post-mortems are conducted, the usual practice is to throw all dead sheep overboard entire. You can often watch them bobbing on the water’s surface in the ships wake as you steam on.”

Simpson says that whole, slit or part carcasses don’t sink straight away, and when they do, they can bloat and rise to the surface again."

- https://maritime-executive.com/features/live-export-following-the-effluent-trail

Grants

International

• Farmed Animal Funders "Our group is open to all individuals and foundations giving more than $250,000 per year to end factory farming."

North America

• Food for Thought "We have several grant opportunities to help you make these goals a reality!"

USA

• Eat The Change "ETC Impact™ is a grant program working to promote and expand access to climate-friendly foods. We're donating more than $1.25 million over three years to support a diverse group of changemaking nonprofit organizations."

• Vegan Hacktivists: Grants "We connect you with funders providing up to $1,000 USD in seed funding for animal rights activism! We seek individual and grassroots groups whose primary purpose is to help reduce suffering for farmed animals."