The cost of flesh

The environmental costs of raising animals to eat — in particular, poultry, beef, and pork — are immense. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports that animal-food production adds 7.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per year — that’s 14.5% of all greenhouse gases produced by humans. The industry eats up 30% of the earth's land mass, including 80% of what used to be the Amazon rain forest. 70% of the grain grown in the U.S. is consumed by food animals, and runoff from factory farming has created 230 "dead zones" along the east coast of the U.S. Producing one pound of animal protein requires “12 times as much land, 13 times as much fossil fuels, and 15 times as much water as it does to produce one pound of soy protein,”