Obviously the planet is choking! Unfortunately human behavior demonstrates that altruism and fairness are not always baked in. Too often we see the Tragedy of the Commons. Pollution is a great 21st century example: certain stock holders get rich while passing the cost on to the rest of us.
CAFO’s (Concentrated animal feeding operations) as the name implies, are industrial livestock factories which cram as many animals together as economically possible. The animals are fed vitamins, antibiotics, various other supplements to make them grow and live long enough to be sent to market.
Cruelty: The animals are subjected to constant pain and discomfort in order for their eggs and meat to arrive at the supermarket in cheap abundance and for the large industrial “farmers” to get rich. CAFO food production has risen steadily in the last thirty years while, the number of workers employed by these operations has declined.
Disease: Microbiologists and Food Science specialists think CAFOs create an environment that will eventually trigger a pandemic influenza virus such as H5N1 (in the case of poultry CAFOs) because feed supplemented with antibiotics will lead to an increase in antibiotic resistance.
Pollution: The waste that even small CAFO’s produce is significantly high. The average operation will create the same amount of waste that 16,000 humans create each day. Most of the waste doesn’t receive treatment to reduce disease carrying pathogens. Efforts to remove heavy metals, chemicals, or pharmaceuticals are often lax.
Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time. The production and incineration of plastics is a major contributor to climate change. Plastic waste is also choking our waterways, polluting our oceans, killing wildlife and infiltrating our food supply. If current trends continue, roughly 12 billion metric tons of plastic waste will be in our landfills or polluting the environment by 2050—the equivalent of almost 80 million blue whales.
8 million | 530 | 300 million | 50% |
|---|---|---|---|
tons of plastic end up in our oceans each year. | marine animals have been impacted by plastics in our oceans. | tons of plastic are produced every year. | of plastic produced is discarded after a single use. |
Here are two suggestions:
- Give up eating beef (pork and chicken to follow).
- Stop buying anything that comes packaged in throw away plastic.