VRG’s new brochure, Save Our Water: The Vegetarian Way, is now online!

The beginning portion is excerpted below:

We all need clean water. No doubt about it. HOW to get it and keep it running clean and plentiful is becoming a problem almost everywhere. In fact, the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) predicts in a report titled Livestock’s Long Shadow, that by 2050, two-thirds of people worldwide will lack clean water to meet even their basic needs.

The good news is that one part of the solution is easy and close at hand! It all starts with your fork.

“Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

H. Steinfeld, senior author, Livestock’s Long Shadow, A report from the United Nations

Saving Earth’s Water By Eating A Vegetarian Diet

Did you know that the largest user of fresh water is the livestock industry? Water is directly needed for drinking and cleaning of animals. And that’s a lot of water when we’re talking about over 10 billion animals raised for food in the United States alone every year.

But the biggest way animal agriculture consumes water is indirectly. A large amount of fresh water is used to grow the feed that livestock animals eat.

Click here to read the rest of this brochure.

Click here to view the entire version of VRG’s new lesson plan for kids about water usage.

Lesson Plan: Clean Water for Everyone Today and Tomorrow with Good Food Choices

by Jeanne Yacoubou, MS © The Vegetarian Resource Group.

Purpose: To visualize for young children how much water is used to do everyday tasks and how much water is needed to grow common food items. To graphically illustrate for children how some human activities and how food production causes water pollution. To instill in children that water is a precious resource and should not be wasted.

An integrated worksheet asks children to answer questions based on these adapted charts (numbers rounded for children):

Table 1. Water Consumed during Daily Activities (data taken from http://www.epa.gov/reg5rcra/wptdiv/p2pages/water.pdf)

 
Table 2. Water Used to Produce some Common Items (Data taken from Chapagain A, Hoekstra A (2004) Water Footprints of Nations Volume One: Main Report. Value of Water Research Report Series No.16. Delft (The Netherlands): UNESCO – IHE Institute for Water Education. http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/Publications; numbers are rounded off on table children use for activity.)

Click here for the entire lesson plan.

The beginning of a new article by VRG Research Director Jeanne Yacoubou, MS, entitled “Factors Involved in Calculating Grain:Meat Conversion Ratios” is excerpted below, and can be read in full here.

Factors Involved in Calculating Grain:Meat Conversion Ratios

Jeanne Yacoubou, MS
VRG Research Director

“An environmental argument for vegetarianism often involves a discussion of the relative efficiency by which livestock convert grains and legumes that they consume into meat eaten by some people. The process of converting grain, legumes, and their byproducts into human-edible meat is commonly expressed as a grain:meat conversion ratio.

While researching the quantities and types of feedstuffs needed by livestock to produce meat, the writer noticed wide discrepancies in grain:meat ratios calculated by various scientists, government agencies, nonprofits, and agribusiness. Some ratios ran as high as 16 pounds of grain per pound of meat to a low of 0.3 pounds of grain per pound of meat. Thus began an investigation into some of the many factors involved in calculating grain:meat conversion ratios. The investigation revealed the importance of considering the assumptions implicit in all of the determinations. Without a working knowledge of authors’ assumptions, the ratios lack meaning. When two competing values based on different assumptions are viewed together, they cannot be accurately compared.”

Click here to read the rest of the article.