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gassorebeca · 5 years ago

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Why I'm a vegan

Hello, my name is Rebeca and I'm a twenty-two years software developer. I became a vegetarian when I was 12 years old and today I'm here to talk a little about why I am a vegetarian and also the negative effects that the meet industry has to our environment

I'm not here to try to turn you into a vegetarian, in fact I gave up on turning my family and friends into vegetarians a few years ago. I just want to show you some data, my point of view and share with you how my vegetarian diet didn't make me weak.

I'm from the south of Brazil, the south of Brazil is historically known for loving barbecue and people here also love hunting, fishing and camping. And it is no different with my family. Most of them have to eat meat every day and on Sundays it is barbecue day with the whole family, before the coronavirus, of course

When I was a kid I used to fish and camp a lot. I lived with my grandparents in a countryside town that only had rice fields, my grandparents used to raise some chickens and also like to go to rodeios and my cousins and I used to compete to see who found more green snakes.

I'm telling you all these useless facts of my life, because the way I was raised was what helped me to find the first reason for me to be a vegetarian. I saw animals being killed and even helped in the process and it affected the way I saw food and I started to feel bad about eating animals

My first reason for being vegetarian is totally sentimental. I think we all know about the living and suffering conditions that animals go through so I added this to the fact that i really love animals.

When I became a vegetarian I didn't use to care about protein, even though I was always very healthy, my blood tests were always at normal levels, even protein levels. I never broke any bones, I never had chicken pox, I don't even remember the last time I got sick. It's like I was born to be a vegetarian.

I always liked all kinds of fruits and vegetables, which helped me a lot. Even though I did not intentionally replace animal protein, I always ate without realising foods that had protein, such as beans, lentils, broccoli, peppers and tomatoes.

This year I completed 10 years being a vegetarian and using an app I found out that I helped to save four thousand six hundred animals.

During these years I have had more access to information and from now on I will share with you a little about my second reason to be vegetarian.

Animal agriculture represents one of the most impactful human activities for the environment, consuming large amounts of water, grains, fossil fuels, pesticides and drugs. 90% of deforestation in Rainforests is due to animal agriculture activities

Fire is used in agricultural activities to clear the land; in the case of livestock, to make room for cattle. According to research, for every 10 hectares of the Amazon, six become pasture, three are abandoned and one becomes agriculture.

This gif shows us the evolution of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest over the years, in yellow is land for cattle and pink is land for agriculture.

The water footprint is an indicator that accounts for both domestic water use and water required to produce industrial and agricultural products and the carbon footprint is defined as the total greenhouse gas emissions caused by an individual, event, organisation, or product

According to the Water FootPrint org the water footprint related to animal feed takes the largest share with 99 percent of the total, while drinking and service water contribute just 1 percent to the total water footprint.

Animal agriculture is also the 2 leader responsible for climate changes and carbon footprint. Because of the way agriculture animals are treated they are so sick that the only thing keeping them alive are megadoses of antibiotics, and because of that 75% of antibiotics resistance growth is result of animal agriculture.

A recent UN biodiversity report states that overfishing is a major threat to the world's oceans. More than plastic or acidification. Overfishing is not only killing fish, it is also killing sharks, turtles, albatrosses, dolphins and much of the rest of the marine life.

Pollution and overfishing are currently the two main causes of marine life destruction. In 2006, a marine researcher Boris Worm, published a report that says If humans keep fishing at the current pace, there will be no more fish left in the oceans by 2048. The ocean is the main source of income and food for thousands of people, that would be directly affected and everyone would be indirectly affected.

In short my second reason is about the impact of the meet production to our environment I do not think it is wrong to eat meat, unfortunately it is a natural thing but the meat industry and the excessive consumption takes the naturalness out of the process.

This text was written in Pecha Kucha format.

#vegan #vegancommunity #enviormentalism #enviornment

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