Reasons for going vegan:
1. It’s cruel to support the enslavement, forced impregnation, torture and slaughter of innocent animals. This includes intense suffering for animals used for dairy, eggs, honey, etc. More information on Be Fair Be Vegan; as well as the graphic documentaries Earthlings and Land of Hope and Glory (animals conditions in the United Kingdom).
2. We can easily thrive on a vegan diet, see scientific references I collected here: Scientific references
How can we justify killing animals who want to live for our taste buds in a violent process that reduces them to a product?
3. I only eat organic and locally slaughtered; we are carnivores, etc. There are many arguments, misconceptions or excuses, answered here: Arguments for veganism and counter arguments/excuses
4. The largest study ever conducted on farming and the environment, which was published in the journal Science in 2018, analysed almost 40,000 farms in 119 countries and covered 40 food products that represent 90% of all that is eaten. It assessed the full impact of these foods, from farm to fork, on land use, climate change emissions, freshwater use and water pollution (eutrophication) and air pollution (acidification).
The result?
“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. ”l is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.
More about environmental impact: New estimates of the environmental cost of food
5. Species Extinction: the World Wildlife Fund concluded that meat based diets are responsible for the loss of 60% of global biodiversity. Read Appetite for Destruction
6. Yale University concluded that 80% of Amazon Rainforest destruction is caused by animal agriculture.
http://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ranching
7. The World Bank disagrees. They concluded that animal agriculture is actually responsible for 90% of Amazon Rainforest destruction.
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/15060
8. The animal agriculture industry grows grains, vegetables and soy to fatten up farm animals destined for slaughter. The U.S. alone could feed 800 million people with the food grown to fatten up farm animals.
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat
9. Worldwide, we could feed 11 billion people if we use the food grown to fatten up farm animals instead of farming animals:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/meta
10. According to a 2006 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
11. The World Watch Institute reported that animal agriculture is actually responsible for 51% of greenhouse gases.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294
There are a couple of errors in this report. If you do a correction related to their used methane gas number, it is 42%.
12. Animal agriculture is very water-intensive; it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef.
http://www.earthsave.org/environment/water.htm
13. It takes 896 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of cheese.
https://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/interactive-graphic/water/
14. At the rate for which humans consume fish, we may see fishless oceans by 2048:
https://gelr.org/2015/10/23/a-leading-cause-of-everything-one-industry-that-is-destroying-our-planet-and-our-ability-to-thrive-on-it-georgetown-environmental-law-review/
15. The largest group of nutritional professionals in the world concluded that we can get all our nutrients from a vegan diet and prevent many diseases.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704
16. Harvard also concluded we can prevent many diseases with a vegan diet.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/nuts-seeds-beans-are-good-steps-toward-a-plant-based-diet
Some references and resources
Watch The Game Changers on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81157840
Convert UK farmland to woods:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/31/convert-farmland-to-nature-climate-crisis?fbclid=IwAR1CgRadakrqrLD-nCeiUfQqb9gTARBwFSceqQBqTtJKUR83FMAZmumdwmI
Extinction
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/05/red-list-thousands-of-species-at-risk-of-extinction-due-to-human-activity
The human race has destroyed over 80 percent of wild mammals :
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-race-just-001-of-all-life-but-has-destroyed-over-80-of-wild-mammals-study
More resources:
Watch Cowspiracy on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80033772
Essential ethics about veganism: www.befairbevegan.com
It is due to our lack of respect for animals that we kill them for tusks, meat, dairy and eggs, etc. The solution is to stop exploiting animals for all purposes and be vegan.