Vegan Billboards from around the world.

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

Nice and all, but why do they have to misrepresent things? The water statistic for beef production for instance, linking it to drought is nonsense. Almost all of the water footprint in beef production is green (rain) water that wouldn't be used for anything else. The majority of it going on grass/cereal growth. That's water that no matter that's growing where it lands, it's not being use for anything else, never mind contributing to drought relief.
Classic example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. Out of context the statement "it takes x amount of water to produce y kg of beef" sounds striking, when you investigate it, it really doesn't mean anything because it's green (rain) water and would just end up being used by whatever plant was on the ground, stored as ground water or run off into streams, gullies or rivers anyway.

In Ireland and other countries where industrial feed lots don't really exist, as close to 100% of beef water footprint is green water as makes no difference, and in the US, China and other countries with large feed lots the footprint is still well over 90% green water.

As a general picture we find that animal products have a larger water footprint per ton of product than crop products. As we see from Table 6, the global average water footprint per ton of crop increases from sugar crops(roughly 200 m3/ton) and vegetables (~300 m3/ton) to pulses (~4000 m3/ton) and nuts (~9000 m3/ton). For animal products, the water footprint increases from milk (~1000 m3/ton) and egg (~3300 m3/ton) to beef (~15400m3/ton).

Also when viewed from a caloric standpoint, the water footprint of animal products is larger than for crop products. The average water footprint per calorie for beef is twenty times larger than for cereals and starchy roots. When we look at the water requirements for protein, we find that the water footprint per gram of protein for milk, eggs and chicken meat is about 1.5 times larger than for pulses. For beef, the water footprint per gram of protein is 6 times larger than for pulses. In the case of fat, we find that butter has a relatively small water footprint per gram of fat, even lower than for oil crops. All other animal products, however, have larger water footprints per gram of fat when compared to oil crops. The general conclusion is that from a freshwater resource perspective, it is more efficient to obtain calories, protein and fat through crop products than animal products. A note should be made here, however, that types of proteins and fats differ across the different products.In order to reduce the pressure on the world’s water resource associated with their consumption pattern,individuals have the option of shifting from a meat-rich to a vegetarian diet. The water footprint of an individual consumer depends to a large extent on the type of diet of the individual. Meat-based diets have a larger water footprint compared to a vegetarian diet. The average USA citizen consumes almost four times the amount of protein compared to the global average (FAO, 2009). About 63% of the daily protein intake comes from animal based products. This high level of consumption of animal-based products is directly reflected in the relative large water footprint of the average American citizen (Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2007). Replacing 50% of all animal products by an equivalent amount of high nutritious crop products such as pulses, groundnuts and potatoes will result a 30% reduction of the food-related water footprint. A vegetarian diet compared with the average current per capita food intake in the USA can reduce the water footprint of an individual by as much as 58%.

emaherx wrote: »

That article while shocking cotains some inaccuracies and also has no relevance to the source of the eggs in my particular omelette.