"100 billion animals are killed by humans every year."
Source: http://countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-vegetarian-save/
"[N]on-human animals also feel pain, possess consciousness, experience emotions, have intelligence, and form social bonds..."
Sources: 1) http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201208/scientists-finally-conclude-nonhuman-animals-are-conscious-beings 2) http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf
"No industry in the world is responsible for more environmental devastation than the global animal by-product industry."
Sources: 1) http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm 2) http://www.foodispower.org/pollution-water-air-chemicals/ 3) http://www.foe.co.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/livestock_impacts.pdf
"According to scientists at the World Bank, animal agriculture is the leading cause of man-made climate-change and produces more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined and tripled."
Sources: 1) http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6297 2) http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/global.html
"[Animal agriculture] is also the world's leading cause of deforestation.."
Sources: 1) http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm 2) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120925091608.htm
"[Animal agriculture] is also the world's leading cause of...water pollution and uses one third of all the world's fossil fuels seventy percent of all fresh water on the planet, and seventy percent of all agricultural land."
Source: 1) http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/vegetarianism-save-planet-environment 2) http://www.foodispower.org/water-usage-privatization/
"America's billions of factory farmed animals produce a staggering quantity of excrement: about 89,000 pounds per second."
Source: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/health-risks-meat-industry/
"And unlike municipal sewage, the animal waste from factory farms is not treated, so all the potentially lethal pathogens such as E. coli, Cryptospordium, and Salmonella remain intact."
"In the United States, untreated animal waste in the forms of feces, urine, vomit, and other effluvia, have polluted the ground-water in seventeen states."
Source: http://prairierivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/factory-farms.pdf
"Thirty-five thousand miles of America's rivers in twenty-two states have been contaminated by the excrement from factory farms."
Source: http://prairierivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/factory-farms.pdf
"A single spill from an eight-acre pig-manure lagoon in Onslow County, North Carolina in 1995 dumped twenty-five million gallons of untreated swine excrement into the New River, killing an estimated ten-million fish and flooding local roads and pastures."
Sources: 1) http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-recent/6271 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_River_%28North_Carolina%29
"Untreated chicken and hog waste from factory farms in Maryland and North Carolina is believed to have contributed to outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, which killed millions of fish and caused skin irritation, short-term memory loss, and other cognitive problems in local residents."
"And in 2011, a hog farm in Illinois spilled 200,000 gallons of untreated pig waste into a creek, killing over 110,000 fish."
"Animal agriculture not only pollutes water on an enormous scale, but also uses tremendous quantities of this incredibly precious natural resource, accounting for one half of all the fresh water used on the planet."
Sources: 1) http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/vegetarianism-save-planet-environment 2) http://www.foodispower.org/water-usage-privatization/ 3) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-planet-thirsty.html
"It takes one-thousand gallons of water to produce just one gallon of milk."
Source: http://water.epa.gov/learn/kids/drinkingwater/water_trivia_facts.cfm
"It takes eight-hundred and fifteen gallons of water to produce just one pound of chicken. Sixteen-hundred gallons of water are required to produce one pound of pork and the production of one pound of beef --just four quarter-pounders-- requires twenty-five hundred gallons of water."
Sources: 1) http://www.vl-irrigation.org/cms/fileadmin/content/irrig/general/kreith_1991_water_inputs_in_ca_food_production-excerpt.pdf 2) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212371713000024 3) http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts.pdf
"Twenty-five hundred gallons is more water than the average person drinks in over twenty-eight years."
Source: http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12355000/pdf/DBrief/7_water_intakes_0508.pdf
"A vegan could leave her shower running six hours a day, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year and still not waste as much water as someone who eats meat, eggs, and dairy."
Sources: 1) http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.faces 2) http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts.pdf
"On a planet where one out of every nine citizens, or about 780 million people worldwide, don't have access to clean water..."
"Animal agriculture is the world's leading cause of deforestation..."
Sources: 1) http://www.foe.co.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/livestock_impacts.pdf 2) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120925091608.htm 3) http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/DriversofDeforestation_Factsheet_Summary.pdf 4) http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Deforestation/deforestation_update3.php 5) http://philip.inpa.gov.br/publ_livres/Preprints/2005/Cons%20Biol-Amazon%20deforestation%20-%20FINAL.htm
"In the United States alone, over 260 million acres of forest, an area larger than Texas and Colorado combined, have been clear-cut and converted into cropland for cattle."
Sources: 1) http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/meat-wastes-natural-resources/ 2) http://www.theus50.com/area.php
"In the Amazon, rainforests are being clear-cut at a rate of over forty-seven acres a minute to create pastures for cattle."
Source: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/how_we_work/conservation/forests/zeronetdeforestation/
"According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, cattle pastures make up 70 percent of the world's agricultural land, but yield only 6 to 11 percent of our food."
Source: http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/DriversofDeforestation_Factsheet_Summary.pdf
"For every person who goes vegan, one acre of trees is spared every year."
Source: http://friendsofanimals.org/programs/veganism/veganism-vegetarianism
"One acre is equal to three-quarters of a football field, or about seven-hundred trees."
Additional sources will be published very soon!
