On the eve of upcoming elections for the World Health
Organization’s new director general, over 200 scientists, policy experts, and
others have signed an open
letter urging candidates to acknowledge factory farming as a public health crisis.
A recent New York Times op-ed authored by three of the signatories discusses the letter.
The op-ed recalls an address by the organization’s departing
director general, Margaret Chan, at last year’s World Health Assembly
in which she called chronic diseases, antibiotic-resistant superbugs, and climate
change “three slow-motion disasters. Factory farming is inextricably connected
to all three of them.
Over half
a million deaths worldwide in 2015 were linked to diets high in processed
and red meat, which the World
Health Organization places in the same category of cancer risk as tobacco
and asbestos. Furthermore, factory farmers’ practice of cramming animals together
while pumping them full of antibiotics creates a breeding ground for dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Animal agriculture is one of the leading causes of climate
change. It uses a whopping 56 percent of water in the
United States and produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all cars, planes,
and other forms of transportation combined. Going vegan immediately cuts your
CO2 emissions in half.
Factory farming is not only dangerous to our health and
planet but also unspeakably cruel. Animals
suffer hellish lives of mutilation, extreme confinement, and constant abuse.
They endure all this only to be killed in a slaughterhouse.
The op-ed concludes, “Eating animals may have been crucial
to our survival in the past. But now, it’s killing us. We couldn’t agree more.
Let’s stop supporting this terrible industry. By ditching
animal products you can help protect your health, the planet, and animals.
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