Answer
Vegetarians do not eat animal proteins. Therefore, if more people were vegetarians, the need for animal protein would be reduced, and fewer animals --cows, sheep, hogs, chicken -- would have to be penned and slaughtered for their flesh or secretions. There are many health benefits of vegetarianism , but there also environmental ones; some of these include the following:
1. Decrease in rate of global warming
2. Decrease in water pollution
3 Conservation of the planet's water resources
4. Reduction in environmental pollution
6. Decrease in rates of destruction of top soils and of rain forest habitat( and other wildlife habitats).
7. Reduction in the amount antibiotics, growth hormone, and harmful chemicals in animal products.
Work Step by Step
The rearing of large number of animals, especially cattle, results in the spewing of large amounts of greenhouse gases --methane and CO2 into the atmosphere. This has the effect of increasing the rate of global warming The reduction in meat eating would reduce this effect.
The metabolic wastes and nutrients from animal rearing operation are usually washed into holding ponds. But these ponds break-- too frequently-- and their contents are spilled into surface water bodies-- lakes and rivers-- and seep into ground water. This has two main effects: it poisons the living and breeding habitats of aquatic animals, and contaminates human drinking water supply.
There are dead zones at mouth of rivers from Norway to the Gulf of Mexico, in the Chesapeake Bay, and in The Great Lakes. The killing of of aquatic species and the widespread growth of algal blooms in these waters are adverse environmental effects.
Animal farming degrades soil and increases soil erosion.
Residues of antibiotics and growth hormone used to increase the amount and rate of muscle production
in farm animals, have some adverse effects on human immune functioning and on general health.
If vegetarianism became more widespread, the demand for meat production would decline, animal farming and animal feed growing would come to occupy less land, and most of the environmental hazards mentioned above would decrease.
