Letters to the Editor
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Animal agriculture is the problem, not the solution.
The grain and legumes and water which are used to raise livestock can feed and hydrate far more people if given directly to them, and not instead concentrated into animal flesh that will feed far fewer people at far greater cost. And that's not even taking into account the fuel necessary to raise the animals from birth to death, transport them, and "process" them into plastic wrap covered chunks. Lastly, there is the issue of raising and killing animals under terrible conditions in factory farms -- pigs -- that are more intelligent than dogs and who suffer terrible physical and mental pain in the process.
According to Time Magazine, "Vegetarianism is much more environment-friendly than diets revolving around meat. [According to Cornel ecologist David Pimentel], 'In terms of caloric content, the grain consumed by American livestock could feed 800 million people—and, if exported, would boost the U.S. trade balance by $80 billion a year.' Grain-fed livestock consume 100,000 liters of water for every kilogram of food they produce, compared with 2,000 liters for soybeans. Animal protein also demands tremendous expenditures of fossil-fuel energy—eight times as much as for a comparable amount of plant protein. Put another way, says Pimentel, the average omnivore diet burns the equivalent of a gallon of gas per day—twice what it takes to produce a vegan diet."
So what to use instead of pig manure? If we must use manure, I can think of six billion bipeds that produce lots of the stuff every day.