Polluting the Planet

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, the amount of manure produced on American factory farms is three times greater than the amount of waste produced by Americans. And to make matters worse, unlike human waste that goes through a sewage treatment plant, farmed animal waste is virtually always untreated. It’s often just stored in massive hazardous manure “lagoons” or dispersed on surrounding fields, as shown in the pictures to the left, which can often cause water, land, and air pollution.

These are just some of the reasons the United Nations, implores us that one of the “key actions” to produce more food with less pollution involves “lowering personal consumption of animal protein,” as well as “a shift from animal based protein to plant based protein.”