Activist Mohan Gurunathan (vegan): Veganism Is a Win-Win-Win for the World, Part 2 of 2

Mr. Gurunathan now serves on the advisory council for Vegan Outreach and is a speaker on food system sustainability. “Currently, we use about 27% of all the land on Earth for growing food to feed farmed animals. Now, we’re losing about a hundred species every day to extinction. And the primary cause is habitat loss due to animal agriculture.” “Animal waste is 20 times as much as human waste. It gets stored in tanks or in lagoons they call them, which are basically giant open-air cesspools. And eventually, much of it washes into the ocean where it creates giant zones called dead zones, where marine life can no longer live because these areas are so polluted.” This tremendous effluent problem doesn’t only threaten marine life, it also has negative impacts on our health and well-being. “And oftentimes when you hear about food poisoning outbreaks, it is because people are eating meat that is full of pathogens or they’re eating vegetables that were treated with animal waste.”

“The worldwide meat and dairy industry uses about one-third of all fresh water consumed around the globe. In the United States, it’s even more. They use about 55%. The main place to combat drought is in what you choose to eat or what you choose to drink. A single hamburger is worth the same amount of water as 30 showers. So, taking shorter showers is not going to make a difference. But what you eat and what you drink can make a real difference.” “And if our dietary recommendations became fully science-based, I think you would see meat and dairy almost fully removed from our dietary guidelines because the evidence is overwhelming that they’re driving the most serious lifestyle diseases that we face as humans.”