Below we answer various questions and concerns you may have regarding veganism and the environment and ecology.
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Last updated: September 8th, 2024
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If you have other questions about veganism, please also see the following pages:
Veganism & Health
Veganism & Ethics
Veganism – Way of Life
Responses to Anti-Vegan Criticisms
Replies to Anti-Vegan Memes
If we all go vegan, then animals will overpopulate the earth.
Animals have already overpopulated the earth due to the demand for animal products.
In the European Union in December 2019, 143 million pigs, 77 million cattle, 62 million sheep and 12 million goats were counted.
Reference in English: Livestock population
The animal products industry cannot wait for all these animals to reproduce naturally, as this would result in less production and cause damage, because then they would not be able to meet the demand. For this, they use techniques such as artificial insemination and forced fattening to produce larger amounts of animal derivatives.
The more people go vegan, the less animals will be forcibly bred and thus the population will decrease.
Nature can control itself, but we humans are the ones who cross the line and destroy everything.
The only animal that has overpopulated the earth is man.
165 million years that dinosaurs ruled the earth, they did not destroy it.
65 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs the earth was not destroyed.
But only 300 years have passed since the industrial revolution and we are already talking about irreparable ecological damage.
If we all go vegan then more plants will be wasted and we will run out of food.
More plants are already being wasted than are needed to feed farm animals.
See article in English – Amazon deforestation sets new record as Amazon lands are destroyed to grow crops for farm animals (while the world is starving).
UN Climate Report Urges Shift Away From Meat And Dairy
Less than 400 liters of water are needed for 1 kg of vegetables
For 1 kg of fruit about 1,000
For 1 kilo of cereal over 1,600
But
For 1 kilo of chicken over 4,000
For 1 kg of beef over 15,000 liters
Soy farming causes damage to the environment.
This is true because soybeans are grown in huge quantities as they are also used as feed for farm animals. So even though you may not be eating soy directly, if you eat animal products, you have been eating it indirectly. Namely, almost 80% of the world’s soy is fed to animals we raise for food, like meat, eggs and dairy products. In the US it’s even higher, more than 90%.
And we know that around 99% of all soy is genetically modified, which also means that it’s heavily sprayed with notorious herbicide glyphosate.
In order to produce such large quantities of soy, land around the world is being converted from ancient forests, savannahs and grasslands to toxic GMO soy crops. Millions of hectares of Amazon forest, Cerrado in Brazil, the Atlantic Forest, the Gran Chaco – South America’s second-largest forest, and Chiquitano in South America, or the Northern Great Plains of the U.S. are being destroyed to make room for more soy production.
The easiest way to stop deforestation and eco systems depletion is to move away from animal products and eating plants directly.
https://wwf.panda.org/discover/our_focus/food_practice/sustainable_production/soy/
https://soygrowers.com/key-issues-initiatives/key-issues/other/animal-ag/
But, if you still feel bad about soy, then you don’t have to eat it to live as a vegan.
Living an ecological lifestyle is enough, even if I'm not vegan.
Living an ecological lifestyle, such as recycling, minimizing the use of plastic products, not smoking, etc. is indeed a very good direction, but it is not enough.
Driving an eco car or using public transport and emitting less CO2 into the atmosphere is not enough when you support livestock farming which emits more CO2.
Using less plastic or even helping to clean up beaches is not enough when you support livestock farming that pollutes the water.
It’s like helping to build something good with one hand, but the other hand causing double damage. Of course no one is perfect and no matter what we do we will produce some garbage, but going vegan is the least good thing each of us can do to save our planet.
Whales eat a lot of fish, so if the Japanese don't kill them, then the fish population will decrease. But now that they eat both whales and fish, they have more food.
Whales do not threaten fish populations as people once thought and there is not as much demand for whale meat as it is toxic.
Now it is more important to save the remaining whales (as they are an endangered species). Whale tourism generates more profits and can support the local tourism industry, but also provide environmental education and research.
Whales preserve the ocean against climate change. They help transport nutrients to the ocean. When they feed, they go down to the depths, but when they need to excrete, they come to the surface.
In this way, they bring the nutrients from the ocean depths, where there is no sunlight for photosynthesis, to the surface waters where there is phytoplankton, which needs these nutrients. By excreting, the whales fertilize the phytoplankton, making it a rich food source for krill and fish.
In the villages there are wild animals that eat the crops of the villagers and if the villagers do not kill these animals, then they will not have food.
Why is killing always the first solution people think of?
You may see immigrants from other countries arriving in Greece to escape war and famine, and seeing people trying to expel them and think that this is unfair, because it is not their fault for the situation they found themselves in.
It’s the same with animals. We are the ones to blame for the state the planet is in. We go where other animals live and cut down the trees to build cities and villages and leave the animals to their doom.
If the residents don’t want to help the animals, at least instead of killing them they could just keep them away with fences and repellants.
I've found research online that debunks everything vegans say.
You don’t need surveys to show you that we are destroying the planet.
You can go outside a slaughterhouse and see what waste they produce.