Gentle Video with a vegan message

Hi Friends,

This is a gentle video with a very important message: http://www.nonviolenceunited.org/veganvideo.html

It is true that the vegan/vegetarian diet helps the planet immensely.

Consider the following:

On Food:
The world has 6.6 billion people
55 billion animals are slaughtered every year for food.
Thus, the world not only has to produce food for 6.6 billion people, it has to produce food to feed 55 billion animals as well.

Currently, 74% of all soya beans, 50% of all corns and 36% of all rices produced in this world is feed to the animals every year.

So much resources are fed to the animals and yet 900 million people are starving every day.

Is it not logical to feed all the people first and then feed the surplus to the animals?
Yet the world does not function in this way.

As the developing world becomes more wealthy, their demand for meat grows. With
better buying power, the wealthy nations are buying more food to feed the animals.
This is in direct competition with the poor and pushes up the price of food.

The result is that more people in the poor nations cannot afford the corn, grain and soy.
[That is being diverted to feed the animals] The people in starvation has rose from 800 million in 2007 to 900 million in 2008.
.......

On Water:
70% of all water is being used in the agriculture sector
20% of all water is used in industries
10% of all water is used by household.
Of the the 70% water used in agriculture, it's distribution is as follows:

To produce
1kg of maize -- 900 litres of water
rice -- 3000 litres
chicken -- 3900
pork -- 4900 l
beef -- 50,500 l
So meat production consumes far more water that crop production.
........

On Green house gases:

Producing 1kg of beef produces 36.4 kg of CO2 emissions while producing
1kg of potatoes only produce 0.6 kg of CO2.

The livestock industry produce 18% of all green house gas.
It also produce 37% of Methane [30 times more potent than CO2]
and 65% of N2O [300 times more potent thant CO2]

..........

On environmental destruction:

Livestock industry accounts for 1/3 of all pollutants [nitrates and phosphrous in animal manure] that flows into rivers and seas.

It also drives 1/3 of the world's deforestation.

..........

Thus, to preserve food,water, rainforest and to reduce green house gas emissions, we have to consider switching to a more environmental, low-carbon vegetarian diet.

Dr Rajandra Pachuri of the IPCC panel [Intergovernmental panel for climate change]
recently urge the world population to adopt a one-vegetarian-day-a-week policy to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It's time to heed his advise. : ) : )

Pls forward to friends who are concern about the environment. : ) : )


Cheers and have a nice week end,
Low ck