Animal Agriculture and Veganism Humans kill over 56 billion animals for food each year, not including fish and other sea creatures (Animal Equality). Meat consumption alone is estimated to double soon due to the increase of production in developing countries (Clarke 106). The world’s current and growing demand for animal products is not possible or sustainable. Our current consumption of meat and other animal products poses problems that are detrimental to both animals and the environment. Although humans have used animals as a source of food for thousands of years, we have outgrown this archaic practice. Instead we should gravitate towards a completely plant-based, or vegan, diet for the benefit of the environment, animals, and our health.…show more content… Although unlike other farm animals, cows are allowed to spend some time outdoors, their lives are still filled with pain and cruelty. They are often branded, dehorned, and castrated without any pain-relieving medication (ASPCA). Even the cows that get to begin their lives outside on a pasture get sent to feedlots in their first year of life to be fattened up (ASPCA). Here, they are kept in crowded conditions with thousands of other cattle where they are fed an unhealthy, high grain diet meat to make them gain weight quickly (Davis and Melina 12). Just a few months after arriving to these feedlots, the cows are sent to the slaughterhouse (Davis and Melina…show more content… The practice of animal agriculture is one of the biggest contributors to air, water, and soil pollution (Davis and Melina 19). It is also the greatest contributor to deforestation, desertification, and species extinction (Davis and Melina 19). Animal agriculture is not a sustainable practice and won’t be viable for much longer. In 2010, the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management of the United Nations Environmental Program did a study that found animal agriculture, specifically the raising of livestock, to be one of the two factors having the most ecological impact to the earth (Davis and Melina
