billions of lives

We're now almost 7 billion people. In less than 30 years from now we'll be 9 billions... Time to think about this and make what's necessary.

I became vegetarian in year 2000, and vegan in the year 2008. I heard from Peta that a vegetarian saves about 100 animals per year. I saved over 800 lives so far. But I wanted to know how many of each animals are eaten for each person. I asked a non-vegan how many animals she thinks she ate/killed this year. She said :"4, maybe 5 or 6". Right.
There's a few answers on this Yahoo discussion board.

"over 10 billion animals are killed for human consumption in the U.S. every year." [1]

"Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually all of it from plant sources." [2]

More than just lives, veganism also saves energy and reduces pollution. One serving of veggies requires less than a gallon of gasoline while 1 serving of meat needs 16 times more gasoline. [2] In addition to this, cattles produce methane and nitrous oxide. Methane is a much more powerful polluant than Co2. All billions of cattle around the globe are more harmful to the ozone layer than all transport industry put together (cars, airplanes, boats, etc).

In the USA alone, over 8 billions of animals are killed each year for food, it's 16 000 every minute. On the planet, it's more than 50 billions per year.


[1] http://www.compassionatecooks.com/
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html