Is the World Ending Because of Animal Products?

Is the world ending because of steak? According to many in the "health food" industry and among the world's population of vegans, the answer is yes. According to the vegan documentary Cowspiracy, “Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions." According to Vegan Street, it takes 1800 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef. And according to numerous vegan websites, red meat causes (gasp!) cancer! Oh, the humanity! So where does the madness end?! The world is ending, and animal products are to blame! Hide your children, hide your dogs, hide your tofu! We must go vegan to end the madness! No one is safe!

Now stop. Take a deep breath. The world isn't ending, and no matter what you see on the internet, you don't have to go vegan to save the world. There are massive problems with each of the three "facts" I listed above. Is there truth to each one? Sort of. The problem is that they're from dubious sources, or they've been manipulated by people who have an agenda. Agriculture Today tells you the cold, hard truth (read our mission statement. It's pretty neat!), so I did a little digging, and read all the scientific literature so you don't have to. I will, however, link every bit of source material I used to respectfully call B.S. on all this, so that you can read them and form your own opinions if you so desire.

Climate Change Concerns

To recap, a certain vegan documentary called Cowspiracy, livestock are the single biggest polluter of the atmosphere, accounting for 51% of the world's GHG emissions. Why is the statistic so high? It comes from a paper written by a couple of guys named Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang. They claim that the FAO's estimates for how much of GHG emissions are caused by livestock are inaccurate because they don't account for respiration and other factors. I read the entire paper, and there were several glaring flaws that poked out at me. First, these guys have no clue about how animals are actually raised, nor do they fully understand the science involved. Second, they didn't cite any sources for a couple of the claims they made. The most notable is where they claim deforestation destroys valuable carbon sinks (which it does. I won't argue about that) and that deforestation is because of livestock and livestock feed. I'll buy about 25% of the second part of that statement. NASA lists poverty as an important cause of deforestation for agricultural use. This is because the overwhelming majority of deforestation occurs in developing countries where people are more worried about staying alive than how much carbon they're putting in the atmosphere. I seriously doubt many of them have even heard of climate change because believe it or not, some people don't have the internet. These people are mostly subsistence farmers, or people who farm other crops and just happen to have some animals for milk, fiber, etc. The beef you buy at your local grocery store more than likely didn't come from Africa, Indonesia, or the edge of the Amazon. If you're American like me, it probably came from America. If you're European, it probably came from Europe. If you're in South America, it probably came from Argentina. The problem with deforestation is that rainforest soil isn't very good for growing things besides giant trees and huge flowers that smell like death. So the land gets abandoned when it no longer grows crops, and more rainforest is destroyed for crops such as palm oil, which is the largest cause of deforestation in Indonesia. In total, logging, cash crops such as oil palms and rice, and subsistence farming account for the largest total of deforestation, not animal agriculture. Although, in the interest of fairness, grazing cattle does account for a decent sized chunk, too. Just not the majority. And most of that is the government's fault, according to NASA. Stopping meat production in developed countries with no rainforests (like the entire U.S.A. with the exception of Hawaii) won't fix problems caused by poverty in Brazil where people just want to stay alive.

Secondly, they count the animals' breath in that statistic. Ironically enough, they don't bother listening to the FAO's reasoning, which the paper actually cites. Here's a quick copy/paste: "Respiration by livestock is not a net source of  CO2…. Emissions from livestock respiration are part of a rapidly cycling biological system,where the plant matter consumed was itself created through the conversion of atmospheric CO2 into organic compounds. Since the emitted and absorbed quantities are considered to be equivalent, livestock respiration is not considered to be a net source under the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, since part of the carbon consumed is stored in the live tissue of the growing animal, a growing global herd could even be considered a carbon sink. The standing stock livestock biomass increased significantly over the last decades…. This continuing growth…could be considered as a carbon sequestration process (roughly estimated at 1 or 2 million tons carbon per year)." So basically, they breathe out what they consume. The paper claims this is trivial because of deforestation, but we already went over the fact that industrially raising cattle isn't the main cause of deforestation. And why are we picking on cattle? I want to see the numbers for pigs, chickens, and seafood. I also want to see the numbers for how much carbon gets pulled out of the atmosphere by crops like corn. See, this number is flawed because the authors of the paper only considered cattle, and conveniently left out pigs, chickens, and farmed seafood, which don't account for deforestation, and would indeed act as a carbon sink for this reason. It just doesn't add up, and while it sounds like a really good reason for these guys to add it to their statistic, it really isn't, because you have to factor in ALL of the agriculture sector to get net carbon outputs. Which brings me to my third point.

According to the EPA, the agriculture sector (not including forestry, which actually offsets the percentages by 11% because it's a carbon sink) accounts for a measly 9% of GHG emissions in the U.S., where our people aren't starving to death at the rate they are in other countries, and where most people don't live on ten bucks a week. The world's total is something like 13%, driven up by countries like China which emits a TON of GHGs. So there's no way the 51% statistic is accurate. It's nothing more than a scare tactic to get you to go vegan. I'd also like to add that the paper by Goodland and Anhang starts shilling for the vegans in the end, aiming at telling you to buy alternatives to animal products rather than stopping poverty and hunger, which would actually make a difference, as I've discussed, as would adopting American and European systems of livestock production, such as feedlots, which actually produce significantly less GHGs than finishing cattle on grass (see here to learn why), and shifting production away from ruminant animals.

Water Concerns

A pound of beef does NOT cost 1800 gallons of water to produce. Vegan Street is WRONG. I looked at their source, and it didn't even mention water usage of beef. On the contrary, the sources I did find that weren't from biased sources like Free from Harm or Veg World tell a different story. According to this fact sheet I found, which is funded by the beef checkoff, but actually lists credible sources to back itself up, it only takes 441 to make a pound of boneless beef. This includes the water the animal drinks, the water used to grow its food, the water used to irrigate its pasture, and the water used to process the beef into retail cuts. In contrast, 36 millions of water leak out of the New York City water supply EVERY DAY. I have no idea where Vegan Street got that number, but I have someone just pulled it out of the air to use as a scare tactic. Are we noticing a trend here?

Cancer Concerns

I read the entire WHO study, and it's a doozy. The first thing you should know is that red meat hasn't been proven to cause cancer. There was a correlation in three out of ten studies, so the WHO listed it as possible cause of cancer, but nothing more, and said that overcooking it was problematic. And since there are tribes of people who survive on diets rich in animal products, such as the Masai and Inuit, that have extremely low levels of colorectal cancer, I'd say you don't have anything to worry about, especially if you like your beef medium rare. On the other hand, it's true that processed meat is a carcinogen, but that's not because of its meatiniess. It's because of the preservatives and chemicals in it. The WHO acknowledges this in their paper. And while it's listed in the same category as cigarettes, this does not mean in any way that it's anywhere near that bad. The WHO system adds carcinogens to only one category, and does not rank them by severity. When severity is taken into account, the occasional hot dog won't kill you. In addition, most of these studies were rat studies, specifically designed to promote cancer. Problem 1: Rats eat mainly plant matter in the wild and 2: human lifestyle isn't taken into account. This is one reason why the correlation between red meat and possible cancer doesn't mean much, and why the WHO said it MIGHT cause cancer. And there are non-red meats like chicken and fish that aren't grey areas at all. Fish actually helps prevent cancer. You do need to eat lots of plant material to be healthy, but meat isn't poisonous, as vegans like to claim. That's a scare tactic. Notice a trend?

The Bottom Line

Vegans are fond of scare tactics, and if a statistic sounds weird to you, it probably is. Read the source behind it and pick it apart to see if it holds up. You don't have to sacrifice the food you love to be healthy and environment-friendly.





I'm a full-time college student at Texas A&M University, where I'm in the process of getting my Animal Science degree, with eventual aspirations to go to law school and work as a consulting lawyer for agriculture corporations. I grew up around animals, and currently manage an operation that breeds show-quality boer goats for 4H and FFA exhibitors. My family also raises commercial cattle in south Texas.