Info from: http://www.peta.org/issues/Animals-Used-For-Food/Other-Health-Risks-of-the-Meat-Industry.aspx 

Other reasons to go vegan

Animals on factory farms generate many times the amount of excrement produced by the entire U.S. population, and this waste pollutes the air we breathe and the water we drink. Every second, our nation's factory farms create roughly 89,000 pounds of waste, which contains highly concentrated chemical and bacterial toxins—all without the benefit of waste-treatment systems. According to a contamination study conducted by Minnesota agricultural extension engineer John Chastain, "The data indicates that the pollution strength of raw manure is 160 times greater than raw municipal sewage."
This waste is usually dumped into sprawling brown lagoons to rot, or else it is sprayed over fields, allowing harmful chemicals and bacteria from the sewage to poison our air and water every day. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "[C]hemical and infectious compounds from swine and poultry waste are able to migrate into soil and water." This untreated waste often sickens the people who work on or live near factory farms.

Dirty Air

Toxic gases and bacteria from animal excrement enter the air and are distributed over a very wide area by the wind. When the cesspools that hold tons of animal urine and feces are full, factory farms frequently circumvent pollution limits by spraying liquid manure into the air, creating mists that are spread by the wind. People for miles around are forced to inhale the toxins and pathogens from the sprayed manure and, as a result, can suffer health problems ranging from asthma and brain damage to birth defects and premature death.

Dirty Water

People who live near factory farms face the constant threat that run-off from the farms will poison their waterways, bringing serious illness and even death to their communities. "The water in those areas is not in good shape, and the primary cause of the [pollution] is not septic tanks, treatment plants, or fertilizer—it's manure, mainly from large farms," said Robert Miltner, an aquatic biologist for the Environmental Protection Agency in Ohio.
A study found that a major river in Colorado has high levels of three antibiotics that are used exclusively in farmed animals. Outbreaks of E. coli closed half of Iowa's beaches during the summer of 2001, and the water in Des Moines' Raccoon River has nitrate levels that are almost double the limit allowed for drinking water. Large farms are implicated in both of these problems. In 2000, an E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ontario, left seven people dead—experts cite cow manure that seeped into the town's water supply as a likely cause of the tragedy.

Scientists believe that 3.2 billion pounds of raw sewage from chicken farms on the Delmarva Peninsula caused an outbreak of pfiesteria in the Chesapeake Bay in 1997. The contamination killed 30,000 fish and caused memory loss, skin lesions, and respiratory problems in people who were exposed to the water.

How Factory Farms Affect Human Health

Factory farms and the contamination that they produce cause illnesses in humans that range from brain damage and depression to miscarriage and birth defects. They are also responsible for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections and severe respiratory problems. Politicians and government agencies continue to ignore the growing threat that these farms pose to our health and to the environment because of the combination of powerful meat industry lobbyists in Washington, large campaign contributions from the meat and dairy industries to key legislators, and executive agencies (e.g., the U.S. Department of Agriculture) that hire meat and dairy industry representatives to fill crucial posts.

Brain Damage and Depression

Scientists have shown that there is a link between exposure to the toxic chemicals found in animal waste and the development of neurological problems, including brain damage and depression. According to University of Southern California toxicology professor Dr. Kaye H. Kilburn, the "coincidence of people showing a pattern of impairment and being exposed to hydrogen sulfide arising from lagoons where hog manure is stored and then sprayed on fields or sprayed into the air" has a "practically undeniable" connection to neurological disorders in communities around the farms.
In an investigative report published in The New York Times, Ohio resident Robert Thornell discussed the permanent brain damage that he suffered when a factory farm was built near his home. "It's like I have a 2.1 gigahertz body with a 75 megahertz mind," he said. "I feel like collateral damage." When Thornell's wife was also diagnosed with brain damage, the couple was forced to move away from their home in order to prevent further deterioration of their health.
Fumes from manure pits have also been linked to severe depression. In a speech at the American Veterinary Medical Association, Dr. Kelley Donham, director of the University of Iowa's Center for Agricultural Safety and Health, cited numerous studies that found unusually high rates of depression and anxiety among people who live near factory farms. A North Carolina study also found high rates of depression and fatigue in the neighbors of a pig farm.

Miscarriage and Birth Defects

Living near a factory farm can be catastrophic for pregnant women. For example, the CDC believes that manure from a factory farm seeped into the groundwater of a small Indiana town and caused at least seven miscarriages.
A joint report by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture states that ingesting water with nitrate levels above 10 milligrams per liter can cause "blue baby" syndrome (methemoglobinemia), which is a condition that prevents blood from carrying oxygen and which can lead to "increased rates of stomach cancer, birth defects, miscarriage, leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, reduced body growth and slower reflexes, and increased thyroid size." According to the report, nitrate levels in a "manure lagoon" on a typical pig factory farm measure an incredible 300 milligrams per liter, which is a level that creates a substantial threat to families who drink from nearby water sources.

Respiratory Problems

Animal waste emits ammonia, hydrogen sulfite, methane, volatile organic compounds, and particulate matter from fecal dust. These irritants enter the lungs of anyone who is nearby and can cause serious respiratory illnesses.
A February 2002 study conducted by Iowa State University and the University of Iowa Study Group found that as many as 70 percent of U.S. factory farm workers suffer from acute bronchitis, and 25 percent battle chronic bronchitis. Even more disturbing, a recent University of Iowa study found that an astonishing 46 percent of children who live on pig factory farms with more than 500 pigs suffer from asthma. On factory farms where antibiotics are used as a growth stimulant, the asthma rate in children climbs to more than 55 percent.

Bacterial Infections

Factory farm employees and people in the surrounding communities are frequently exposed to animal excrement and the dangerous bacteria it can carry—bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter.
On the Delmarva Peninsula in Maryland, Dr. Ellen Silbergeld found that more than 40 percent of "chicken catchers" and more than 50 percent of processing plant workers were infected with campylobacter, a type of bacteria that causes diarrhea and abdominal pain and that can sometimes prove fatal. When a group of community members was tested for the bacterium, every person who was tested had a "positive" result.
Residents of a region known as "Feedlot Alley" in Alberta, Canada, have the highest rates of E. coli infections in the province, and E. coli killed almost a dozen children there in one three-year period. Dangerous germs from the excrement of farmed animals have sickened entire communities. A 1993 outbreak of cryptosporidium in Milwaukee sickened 403,000 people and killed 104 others. Scientists blamed the tragedy on animal excrement from nearby factory farms.

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Factory farms are also breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which are known as "supergerms." On farms across America, the antibiotics that we depend on to treat human illnesses are now used to promote growth in animals and to keep them alive in horrific living conditions that would otherwise kill them. Countless new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria have developed as a result of this abusive practice.
Roughly 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the United States each year are given to animals who are used for food. What does this mean for you? It means that when you get sick, the antibiotics your doctor prescribes may no longer work.
Vancomycin, a drug that is known as a "last defense" in fighting the deadly blood infections and pneumonia caused by staphylococcus bacteria, is becoming obsolete because resistant strains have developed in farmed animals who are given the medicine as a growth stimulant. Similarly, the antibiotic used to treat campylobacter infections in humans is becoming worthless—even as these infection rates rise.

Swine Flu

U.S. health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday, April 26, 2009, in response to the swine-flu outbreak. Cases have been confirmed in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, and countries from Spain to New Zealand are investigating cases of the flu strain. There is speculation that the swine influenza originated on pig factory farms.

This is a fantastic article on the growing population of vegans as well as telling who alot of the famous vegans are!
http://www.cleveland.com/taste/index.ssf/2011/11/veganism_has_some_stylish_new.html

Words of wisdom

Even Eleanor Roosevelt knew this was wrong:

It seems to me of great importance to teach children respect for life. Towards this end, experiments on living animals in classrooms should be stopped. To encourage cruelty in the name of science can only destroy the finer emotions of affection and sympathy, and breed an unfeeling callousness in the young towards suffering in all living creatures.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Click on any of the links in this article to read more

Information from: http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/meat-wastes-natural-resources.aspx


Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water and contributes to animal suffering.

Land

According to the United Nations, raising animals for food (including land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops) now uses a staggering 30 percent of the Earth's land mass. More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals, and according to scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, the equivalent of seven football fields of land is bulldozed worldwide every minute to create more room for farmed animals.
Livestock grazing is the number one reason that plant species in the United States become threatened and go extinct, and it also leads to soil erosion and eventual desertification that renders once-fertile land barren.
While factory farms are ruining our land, commercial fishing methods such as bottom trawling and long-lining have virtually emptied millions of square miles of ocean and pushed many marine species to the brink of extinction. Commercial fishing boats indiscriminately pull as many fish as they can out of the sea, leaving ecological devastation and the bodies of nontarget animals in their wake.

Food

Raising animals for food is grossly inefficient, because while animals eat large quantities of grain, soybeans, oats, and corn, they only produce comparatively small amounts of meat, dairy products, or eggs in return. This is why more than 70 percent of the grain and cereals that we grow in this country are fed to farmed animals.
It takes up to 16 pounds of grain to produce just 1 pound of meat, and even fish on fish farms must be fed up to 5 pounds of wild-caught fish to produce 1 pound of farmed fish flesh.

Energy

It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein. Raising animals for food gobbles up precious energy. Simply add up the energy-intensive stages of raising animals for food: (1) grow massive amounts of corn, grain, and soybeans (with all the required tilling, irrigation, crop-dusters, etc.); (2) transport the grain and soybeans to feed manufacturers on gas-guzzling 18-wheelers; (3) operate the feed mills (requiring massive energy expenditures); (4) transport the feed to the factory farms (again, in gas-guzzling vehicles); (5) operate the factory farms; (6) truck the animals many miles to slaughter; (7) operate the slaughterhouse; (8) transport the meat to processing plants; (9) operate the meat-processing plants; (10) transport the meat to grocery stores; (11) keep the meat refrigerated or frozen in the stores until it's sold.

Water

Between watering the crops that farmed animals eat, providing drinking water for billions of animals each year, and cleaning away the filth in factory farms, transport trucks, and slaughterhouses, the farmed animal industry places a serious strain on our water supply. Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food. In 2008, John Anthony Allan, a professor at King's College London and the winner of the prestigious Stockholm Water Prize, urged people worldwide to go vegetarian because of the tremendous waste of water involved with eating animals.

It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. You save more water by not eating a pound of meat than you do by not showering for six months! A totally vegan diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a typical meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day.

Rain Forest

According to Greenpeace, all the wild animals and trees in more than 2.9 million acres of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil were destroyed in the 2004-2005 crop season in order to grow crops that are used to feed chickens and other animals in factory farms.
One of the main crops grown in the rain forest is soy—in fact, much of the enormous amount of soy that is needed to feed the world's farmed animals now comes from the rain forest. (The soy that is used in veggie burgers, tofu, and soy milk in the United States is almost exclusively grown domestically, not in the Amazon.)
If we simply ate soy and other plant foods ourselves instead of feeding them to farmed animals, we would not need to raise nearly as many crops, and we could eliminate the need to decimate the rain forest.

Pollution

What do we get back from all the grain, fossil fuels, and water that go into making animal products? Tons and tons of feces. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the runoff from factory farms pollutes our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined.

Fecal Contamination

Animals raised for food in the U.S. produce far more excrement than the entire U.S. human population, roughly 89,000 pounds per second, all without the benefit of waste-treatment systems. According to Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke, factory farming constitutes "a frontal assault on the environment, with massive groundwater and air pollution problems."
There are no meaningful federal guidelines that regulate how factory farms treat, store, and dispose of the trillions of pounds of concentrated, untreated animal excrement that they produce each year. This waste may be left to rot in huge lagoons or sprayed over crop fields; both of these disposal methods result in runoff that contaminates the soil and water and kills fish and other wildlife. The concentration of parasites, bacteria, and chemical contaminants in animal excrement can wreak havoc on the ecosystems affected by farm runoff and can sicken people who live near these farms.

The Water We Drink

Many of the millions of pounds of excrement and other bodily waste produced by farmed animals every day in the U.S. are stored in sprawling, brown lagoons. These lagoons often seep or spill into surrounding waterways and kill massive numbers of fish and other animals.
The EPA reports that chicken, hog, and cattle excrement has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states. When 25 million gallons of putrid hog urine and feces spilled into a North Carolina river in 1995, between 10 million and 14 million fish died as an immediate result.
In West Virginia and Maryland, scientists have discovered that male fish are growing ovaries, and they suspect that this deformity is the result of factory farm runoff from drug-laden chicken feces.
The massive amounts of feces, fish carcasses, and antibiotic-laced fish food that settle below fish farm cages also contribute to water pollution and have actually caused the ocean floor to rot in some areas.

The Air We Breathe

A Consumers Union study in Texas found that animal feedlots in the state produce more than 14 million pounds of particulate dust every year and that the dust "contains biologically active organisms such as bacteria, mold, and fungi from the feces and the feed." The massive amounts of excrement produced by these farms emit toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia into the air.
When the cesspools holding tons of urine and feces get full, factory farms frequently dodge water pollution limits by spraying liquid manure into the air, creating mists that are carried away by the wind. People who live nearby are forced to inhale the toxins and pathogens from the sprayed manure. In addition, according to a report by the California State Senate, "Studies have shown that [animal waste] lagoons emit toxic airborne chemicals that can cause inflammatory, immune, irritation and neurochemical problems in humans."
The good news is that it's easier than ever to switch to an Earth-friendly vegan diet. Take PETA's Pledge to Be Vegan for 30 Days. After a month, you will likely see an improvement in your health and your conscience will be lighter, knowing you are doing your part to help the environment and the animals used for food.

Words Of Wisdom:

"Vegetarian diets offer a number of nutritional benefits, including lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein, as well as higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants such as vitamins C and E and phytochemicals. Vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than nonvegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer."
              --American Dietetic Association, June 2003 position paper

Wasting Resources

Feeding large amounts of grain to farmed animals in order to produce a small amount of meat is an inefficient waste of limited resources.



According to Cornell ecologist David Pimentel, animal protein demands tremendous expenditures of fossil-fuel energy—about eight times as much for a comparable amount of plant protein.  
The meat industry is a major cause of fresh water depletion. According to Ed Ayres, of the World Watch Institute, "Around the world, as more water is diverted to raising pigs and chickens instead of producing crops for direct consumption, millions of wells are going dry. India, China, North Africa and the U.S. are all running freshwater deficits, pumping more from their aquifers than rain can replenish." [1]
The great Ogallala aquifer, a resource that took a half million years to accumulate, will be depleted in less than 40 years.[2]
According to Ayres, "Pass up one hamburger, and you'll save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle." [3]  Info From: http://www.chooseveg.com/conservation.asp 

Resources:

1 Ayres, E. (1999, Nov. 8). Will we still eat meat? Time.

2. Reisner, M. (1986). Cadillac desert: the American West and its disappearing water.

3. Ayres, E. (1999, Nov. 8). Will we still eat meat? Time.