Vegetarianism and Health

•Vegetarians have blood cholesterol levels that are typically 14% less than non-vegetarians, while vegans are 35% lower (2,3).

•A vegetarian’s risk of dying from heart disease is less than half that of a non-vegetarian (4).

•The annual medical costs in the United States directly attributable to meat consumption total a whopping $60-120 billion (5).

•Meat eaters have triple the rate of high blood pressure as compared to vegetarians (6).

•The obesity rate for the general population is 18%, while that of vegans is 2% (7).

•Men who consume large amounts of dairy products have a 70% increased risk for prostate cancer (8).

•The Union of Concerned Scientists notes the overuse of antibiotics in intensive animal agriculture is a main contributor to the development of a myriad of new treatment-resistant pathogens afflicting both animals and humans (9).

Vegetarianism and
the Environment

•Each of us who chooses a plant-based diet personally saves an acre of trees each year (12).

•Every McDonald's Quarter-Pounder produced equates to the loss of 55-square-feet of forestland (14).

•Livestock grazing is the leading cause of rainforest loss and species endangerment (15).

•The production of animal products accounts for half the fresh water used in the U.S (10).

•In California, you save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you would by not showering for an entire year! (13)

•The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identifies agricultural runoff as the primary source of pollution for over 60% of the rivers and streams deemed "impaired (11)".

•For every pound of meat produced, grain-fed animals utilize over 2,464 gallons of water (16).

•The amount of waste produced by the 1,600 dairies in California’s Central Valley is more than that produced by the entire human population of Texas (17).

•Animals and their waste combined contribute 27% of global methane production. Animal products' heavy fossil fuel toll makes it a major source of CO2, the leading greenhouse gas (18).

Vegetarianism and
World Hunger

•Over 1,400,000,000 human beings could be fed by the grain and soybeans consumed by the livestock just in the United States (19).

•It would take 12 million tons of grain to adequately feed every person wo dies of hunger and hunger-related diseases each year. Americans would have to reduce their beef consumption by just 10% to save that 12 million tons of grain (20).

The Animals

•27 million animals are slaughtered each day in the United States to supply consumer demand for meat – that’s 19,000 per minute, and a staggering 10 billion animals annually (1).

•Farmed animals are exempt from most federal and state anti-cruelty laws.

•Physical mutilations, such as de-beaking, chopping off toes, tails, etc. are routine husbandry practices in modern factory farms.

•Painful surgical procedures such as castration and de-horning are routinely performed without the benefit of anesthesia or a local analgesic on billions of farmed animals each year.

•Farmed animals raised in intensive operations cannot perform even the most basic of behaviors, such as turning around, walking, flapping their wings, etc – due to the small size of their cages and severe overcrowding to maximize profit.

For a more in depth look at factory farming and animals, request our fact sheets.

1. Dena Jones, "Crimes Unseen", Orion Magazine: July/August 2004. Oriononline.org

2. Resnicow, K., Barone, J., Engle, A., et all, "Diet and Serum Lipids in Vegan Vegetarians: A model for Risk Reduction," Journal of the American Dietetic Association 91 (1991): 447-453. See also Sacks, F.M., Ornish, D., et al., "Plasma Lipoprotein Levels in Vegetarians: "The Effect of Ingestion of Fats from Dairy Products," Journal of the American Medical Association 254 (1985): 1227-41

3.Resnicow, et al., "Diet and Serum Lipids in Vegan Vegetarians." See also Messina and Messina, The Dietitian’s Guide to Vegetarian Diets

4. Phillips, R., et al., "Coronary Heart Disease Mortality among Seventh-Day Adventists with Differing Dietary Habits," American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition 31 (1978):S191-8; Burr, M., et al., "Vegetarianism, Dietary Fiber, and Mortality," American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition 36 (1982):873-7

5. Halweil, Brian, "United States Leads World Meat Stampede," Worldwatch Issues Paper, July 2, 1998

6. Ophir o., et al., "Low Blood Pressure in Vegetarians...," American Journal of Clinical Nutriton 37 (1983):755-62; see also Melby, C.L., et al., "Blood Pressure in Vegetarians and Non-Vegetarians: A Cross-Sectional Analysis," Nutrition Research 5 (1985):1077-82

7. Mokdad, A., et al., "the Spread of the Obesity Epidemic in the United States," Journal of the American Medical Association 282 (1999): 1519-22

8.Health Professionals Follow-up Study, reported in "Dairy Products Linked to Prostate Cancer," Associated Press, April 5, 2000.

9. Washington Post: Gains From Antibiotic Ban Noted; Benefits to Danish Farm Animals Come at 'Marginal' Cost, March 27, 2002, David Brown

10. Frances Moore Lappe, Diet for a Small Planet, 20th Anniversary Edition, Ballantine Books, New York, 1991, pg. 76

11. Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging National Problem, Environmental Risks of Livestock & Poultry Production,
December 1997, Report of the Minority staff of the US Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, for Senator Tom
Harkin.

12. World Resources Institute, www.wri.org

13. John Robbins, The Food Revolution. 2001. p.237

14. Rainforest Action Network, www.ran.org/info_center/factsheet/s10.html

15. John Robbins, The Food Revolution. 2001. p. 270

16. "Water Inputs in California Food Production," Water Education Foundation, Sacramento, CA.

17. Elliot Diringer, "In Central Valley, Defiant Dairies Foul the Water," San Francisco Chronicle, July 7, 1997.

18.David Pimental, "Waste in Agriculture and Food Sectors: Environmental and Social Costs," paper for Gross National Waste
Product, Arlington, Virginia, 1989, p.9-10. (Cited by Rifkin)

19. Durning and Brough, "Taking Stock,:p.14 and Ayres, Ed, "Will We Still Eat Meat? Maybe Not, IF We Wake Up to What the Mass Production of Animal Flesh Is Doing to Our Health and the Planet’s," Time, November 8, 1999.

20.John Robbins, The Food Revolution. 2001. p. 294.