By the time you finish reading this sentence, more than 43,000 square feet of rainforest will be cut down for cattle farming.
Think about it. That’s an entire acre of land.
Think about it again: Only 14 states are LARGER than 50 million acres.
Why should you care?
Nearly 80 percent of the world’s documented species live in rain forests. With every acre of land lost to cattle farming, these vital species are losing their homes, leaving them vulnerable to poachers, hunters, and, finally, extinction.
Here are just a few of the species on the brink of extinction because of this deforestation:
Leopards
Asian Elephants
Chimpanzees
Orangutans
Tigers
Giant Pandas
According to Greenpeace, all the wild animals and trees in more than 2.9 million acres of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil were destroyed in the 2004-2005 crop season in order to grow crops that are used to feed chickens and other animals on factory farms.
Every time you eat meat, you’re telling the factory farming industry that it’s OK not only to kill cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals raised for food but also to destroy the habitats of countless other animals, too, including those most vulnerable to extinction.