Killing animals hurts people

'YOU CARE more about animals than you do about people."

Advocates for animals hear this often, especially around the time of Saturday's Great American Meatout. In reality, eating animals causes a great deal more human suffering than going without. The amount of harm done to humans by the animal industry is enormous, and no other industry could get away with it. It persists only because people care more for their habits than for their neighbors.

On the broadest scale, livestock production helps fuel global climate change, accounting for anywhere from 18 percent (U.N. estimate) to 51 percent (Worldwatch Institute) of all greenhouse gases. The entire human population is also threatened by animal-derived viruses (e.g. bird flu, swine flu, SARS, tuberculosis) of which factory farms are prime incubators, says the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production. Among other "public health threats" the commission names is the overuse of antibiotics on healthy animals, which weakens the drugs' effectiveness for sick people. Add to this the outsize consumption of an ever-more-precious resource - fresh water - and already the livestock industry is bad for people as a whole.

Locally, the impact is more direct, the problems more acute. Air and water around factory farms are said to cause breathing problems among their neighbors. The Pew Commission stresses that the gases generated by factory farms are associated with respiratory problems like asthma for "communities proximate to those facilities, as well as populations far away from these operations."

The commission also cites "depression and other symptoms" attributed to animal-farm emissions. Manure contamination of sources of drinking water is also a danger, given the toxicity of E. coli and the potential effects of hormones in contaminated water.

But it's not all bad, the thinking goes: What about jobs?

Even that is a mixed bag. Certainly, a few get very rich off of livestock, but in general, workers are exploited right along with the animals. Dairies and slaughterhouses are often stocked with immigrants (illegal or no) who have little choice, and less voice, in their dangerous daily tasks. Injuries from corralling and dismembering large animals get downplayed, as the workers know they're dispensable - and invisible.