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Some quotes from
Divine Nature
A Spiritual perspective on the Environmental Crisis
by Michael A. Cremo & Mukunda Goswami
Killing animals for food, fur, leather, and cosmetics is one of
the most environmentally destructive practice taking place on the earth
today. Neal D. Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine (USA) says, “If you are a meat
eater, you are contributing to the destruction of the environment, whether
you know it or not.” Jereme Rifkin warns in his widely read
book Beyond Beef: “Today, millions of
Americans, Europeans and Japanese are consuming countless burgers, steaks,
and roasts, oblivious to the impact their dietary habits are having on
the biosphere and the very survivability of life on earth. Every
pound of grain-fed flesh is secured at the expense of a burned forest,
an eroded rangeland, a barren field, a dried-up river or stream, and the
release of millions of tons of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane
into the skies.”
About half the world’s grain is consumed by animals that are later
slaughtered for meat. This is a very inefficient process. It
takes 16 pounds of grins and soybeans to produce 1 pound of feed lot beef.
If people were to subsist on grains and other vegetarian foods alone, this
would put far less strain on the earth’s agricultural lands. About
20 vegetarians can be fed on the land that it takes to feed 1 meat eater.
80 % of the corn raised in US is fed to livestock, as well as
95% of the oats. Altogether, 56 % of all agricultural land in the
US is used for beef production. If all the soybeans and grain fed
yearly to US livestock were set aside for human consumption, it would feed
1.3 billion people.
[Our Vedic scriptures tell us that Bhoomi (earth) is one of
our ten mothers. Therefore, I request, let us please the mother by
becoming a vegetarian and promoting vegetarianism. -SV]
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