Facts on Animal Abuse

• The livestock sector is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions globally. Cows emit vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere – and the impact of these emissions is greater than that of CO2 from cars.
• Animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 130 times more excrement than the human population.
• Each and every year, factory farms dump 220 billion gallons of hormone-, antibiotic- and bacteria-laden animal waste onto farmland and into waterways.
• Pfiesteria, a microscopic organism that feeds off the phosphorus and nitrogen found in manure, is a lethal toxin harmful to both humans and fish. In 1991 alone, 1,000,000,000,000 (one billion) fish were killed by pfiesteria in the Neuse River in North Carolina.
• Since 1995, an additional one billion fish have been killed from manure runoff in estuaries and coastal areas in North Carolina, and the Maryland and Virginia tributaries leading into the Chesapeake Bay.
• Overuse of antibiotics in animals is causing more strains of drug-resistant bacteria, which is affecting the treatment of various life-threatening diseases in humans.
• Raising animals for food consumes more than half of all the water used in the U.S. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 25 gallons for a pound of wheat.
• Raising animals for food is the number one cause of deforestation around the world, thanks to the huge amounts of land needed for grazing and growing animal feed.
• Animal feed is grown by intensive farming operations that use massive quantities of pesticides while producing problems such as pesticide resistance in insects and weeds, and pollution of nearby water supplies with toxic chemicals. Those pesticide residues also accumulate in animals’ fatty tissue.
• 20 times more land is required to feed a meat-eater than to feed a vegetarian.
• Overgrazing has turned a fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.