There are many reasons to keep a vegetarian or vegan diet. One major reason is that eating meat, fish and egg creates suffering amongst our fellow sentient beings, the animals. Another reason of great importance is that the future of our planet is involved regarding land degradation, climate change, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution and loss of biodiversity. This fact we can learn from the United Nation's report Livestock's Long Shadow, Environmental Issues and Options.

The UN report aims to assess the full impact of the livestock sector on environmental problems, along with potential technical and policy approaches to mitigation. The assessment is based on the most recent and complete data available, taking into account direct impacts, along with the impact of feed crop agriculture required for livestock production.

The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggests that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
Livestock’s contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale and its potential contribution to their solution is equally large. According to the report the impact is so significant that it needs to be addressed with urgency.

It is without doubt that by keeping a vegetarian or vegan diet we contribute to solving the great problems addressed in Livestock's Long Shadow. For more details, please download the full report in PDF.

Source:
Livestock's Long Shadow [download PDF - 4 MB]

See also:
- Video: Reasons to Become Vegetarian and other video's.