Land
Farmers will have to produce for a growing world population, but agriculture simply cannot meet the desire by some 5 billion people to consume more livestock products. World population increased from 2.7 billion in 1950 to 6.3 billion in 2006 (233%). Meanwhile, world meat consumption increased from 47 million tons in 1950 to 260 million tons in 2005 (553%). Consumption of milk and eggs has also risen. In every society where incomes raise, meat consumption raises too, although it’s a highly inefficient way of feeding people.

The efficiency with which different animals convert grain into protein varies widely. For cattle it takes roughly 7 kg of grain to produce a 1-kg gain in live weight, but the ratio can be as high as 16:1. For pigs, the figure is close to 4:1, for poultry it is just over 2:1, and for farmed fish it is less than 2:1. To produce a kilogram of beef requires about 100 times more energy than producing one kilogram of potatoes. Meat production also pressurizes the scarce water resources. The kilogram of beef uses 15 m3 of water, whereas it only costs 0.4 - 3 m3 water to produce a kilogram of wheat.

In 2005, the world ’s farmers produced 220 million tons of soy beans. Of this, only some 15 million tons were consumed directly. 144 million tons of soy bean flour is fed to cattle, pigs, chicken, and fish. Besides soy, animal feed contains maize and other energy-rich cereals as well, all provided by the mono-culture agriculture industry.

At the U.S. level of using 800 kilograms of grains per person per year for food and feed, the 2-billion-ton annual world harvest of grain would support 2.5 billion people. Of the 800 kilograms of grain consumed in the US, only 100 gram is eaten directly, the other 700 grams is eaten indirectly through animal proteins. At the Italian level of consumption of close to 400 kilograms per year, the current harvest would support 5 billion people. At the nearly 200 kilograms of grain consumed per year by the average Indian, it would support a population of 10 billion.

Health
pig: "Man, are all these people overweight! They have all the choices in the world and still...What ’s the problem? Maybe it’s not so strange if you think of how much they eat of us animals. High meat consumption can never be good. Funny to see how they take lazy car rides to buy their meat. Don’t they get it?"

In industrial countries, life-style diseases such as obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancers are widespread. There is an abundance of data showing that a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk for these diseases. Nevertheless, meat, sausages, and fish are still considered to be a part of the normal diet. The myth that these are especially healthy and valuable foodstuffs is still widespread and many members of the medical profession also still believe that meat is a vital force in your diet. There are claims that modern humans need to eat meat because 2 million years ago they did. But any difficulties in getting sufficient nutrients and calories through other means were erased 10,000 years ago with the widespread adoption of agriculture. In fact, today our problem is clearly the reverse – many people get too many calories and are suffering from overweight related problems. Modern agriculture provides plenty of everything we need when relying only on plant foods. There are no health-supporting components in meat that cannot be obtained in a healthy vegetarian or vegan diet. On the contrary, in modern epidemiological models, a low intake of vegetable foodstuffs is now considered a risk factor for many tumor diseases, cardiovascular disease and degenerative diseases. For which the pharmaceutical industry spends millions every year trying to find suitable chemically produced medications (tested on animals). Obviously it would be healthier and cheaper if we all just stopped eating animal products.

A diet including meat also confronts us with various food-borne illnesses. The most common are the pathogens found in contaminated meat, like Salmonella, Campylobacter, pathogenic E. coli and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BS), which are all world wide diseases. The avian flu looms currently, while there are no adequate medicines to stop it. The WHO (World Health Organization) blames the potential avian flu outbreak on “intensive poultry production.” The head of the Centre for Disease Control in Thailand opines: “The world just has no idea what it’s going to see if this thing comes“, changing it to “When, really. It’s when. I don’t think we can afford the luxury of the word ‘if’ anymore. We are past the ‘if'.”

Sources:
Brown 2006,
Milieudefensie “Voer tot nadenken”, www.milieudefensie.nl/landbouw/publicaties/infobladen/voer-tot-nadenken....
www.dfwnetmail.com/earth/realistic-look-meat-dairy-consumption.htm
www.heimat-fuer-tiere.de/english/articles/med/meat_makes_you_sick.shtml