The Animal-People Livestock Industry: A Hazard to Our Planet and Our Health, Part 1 of 2

On today’s show, we’ll take a look at our food choices and learn about how the dishes we prepare impact our health and Earth’s environment.

In one such study, scientists from Oxford University examined the environmental impact of 40 major food products. Their findings, published in a 2018 issue of the journal Science, showed that “cutting meat and dairy products from your diet could reduce an individual's carbon footprint from food by two-thirds.” The study’s lead researcher Dr. Joseph Poore says, “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use, and water use. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.”

A more recent study reports that global food production results in at least “17 billion metric tons of GHG (greenhouse gases) per year.” Out of this massive carbon footprint, “animal-based foods account for 57% of emissions, and plant-based foods make up 29%.” A report on this work was published in the scientific journal Nature Food in 2021.

A first-of-its-kind 2021 study performed by scientists from the University of Minnesota sheds light on how meat production from animal-people livestock is the leading source of deadly air pollution. Their report states, “Air pollution from animal-based food production is linked to 12,700 deaths each year.”

In an interview conducted by the newspaper El Quintanarroense, Supreme Master Ching Hai reveals how the animal-people livestock industry is polluting our planet. “The livestock industry emits 64% of all ammonia, which causes acid rain and hydrogen sulphide – it is a very fatal gas. One animal-people factory farm produces more waste and pollution than the whole city of Houston, Texas, in the USA, not to talk about all the chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics that run into our water that we drink. Yes, even if we filter it, how much can we always avoid because chemicals are not like dirt that you can filter it. Not like sand that you can take the sand out. Chemicals, fertilizers, these substances they’re just diluted in water. I don’t think we can filter them all.”

Our Most Beloved Supreme Master Ching Hai has worked tirelessly to remind us that the only solution to climate change: is the global adoption of the vegan lifestyle. “If we don’t change our disaster-breeding, provoking way, then disasters will never end. I am in tears whenever there is a natural disaster anywhere in the world. My heart aches for the suffering of the people. I feel what they feel, and I am very, very much saddened. But we can only stop the disaster once and for all by tackling the root problem; that is, by stopping the mass murdering of innocent animal-people. Only when we walk in peace and love on this Earth will the Earth and nature respond peacefully to us. If we protect others, we will be protected.”