06/05/02 World Environment Day
An open letter of Animal Friends to the Croatian Government and the public on the occasion of World Environment Day
THE ENVIRONMENT IS NOT FOR SALE
On the occasion of World Environment Day, Animal Friends is sending a word to the Croatian Government to introduce new measures of environment protection and prevent new pollutions and devastations of our nature.
By bigger and bigger investments into the livestock raising, the Croatian Government encourages bigger and bigger pollutions of the environment. Croatia should be a paradise for the production of the healthy organic vegetarian food, and not another country destroying the environment and people's health because of the meat and meat products manufacturing.
According to the data taken from numerous researches of various world organisations, it is evident that the massive livestock raising for food destroys the nature and that encouraging it is hazardous for human health and environment protection.
Since it is World Environment Day, we would like to make a strong plea to the Croatian Government to increase the investments into the organic agriculture and production of the vegetarian food, which would make Croatia a real paradise of the healthy food and healthy people.
Hereby we would also like to make a plea to the Croatian public to think about their diet and its influence to the world around us. By eating meat, we directly support the devastation of the environment, torture of animals, but also the deterioration of our own health. On the day on which the whole world celebrates the Environment Day, let us think about this and do something more for our environment and our part of the Earth.
We would also like to point out several important facts that must not be disregarded:
The effect of methane to the greenhouse effect is 24 times greater than the effect of CO2, and each head of cattle produces approximately 45 kg of the methane each year.
The livestock raising is responsible for 61% of the methane emission in the Republic of Croatia.
Millions of hectares of tropical forests are destroyed each year because of the grazing land. This kills and endangers many animal species, as well as the people who live there. Regarding the huge needs of the meat industry, there will be no tropical forests left in 40 years.
1/3 of the Earth surface is already used as the grazing land!
The gas ammonia coming from stables, in which the cattle is kept, causes more damage than all the automobiles and factories in the world together.
The water quantity necessary for the production of 10 kg of steaks is equal to the water quantity consumed by an average family in the whole year.
50% of the total world water consumption is used for the massive livestock raising!
The fuel spent each year for a 4-member family consuming the meat is sufficient for a person to drive the automobile for 6 months.
On the same piece of land necessary for the production of 1 kg of meat one can, for example, produce 200 kg of potato or 160 kg of tomatoes, and in the same period of time too. The same piece of land that can feed 1 meat-eater can be used to feed 20 vegetarians!
The impact of the massive livestock raising on the global warming is totally equal to the impact of the road traffic, and if we, in addition to that, consider the felling of trees for grazing land and animal feed, as well as transformation of savannas into deserts, erosion of mountain regions, an extremely great consumption of water and energy, we will see that with every kilogram of the meat we exhaust, destroy and pollute our environment from every aspect.
