Drawing a crowd of passers-by, a nearly naked animal activist took a bubble bath in public yesterday in Taipei’s Ximending (西門町) area to highlight the meat industry’s drain on water resources to mark World Water Day on Tuesday next week.
Ashley Fruno, the bathing activist and a member of animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), said that taking a bath in public was a fun and provocative way to raise awareness, adding that it takes the equivalent of 50 bathtubs of water to produce just one steak.
“It takes about 15,500 liters of water to produce 1 kilogram of beef, compared with just 1,000 liters to produce 1 kilogram of wheat,” Fruno said, calling on the public to go vegan to conserve water.
Photo: : Wally Santana, AP
“Not only is the meat industry cruel, it also wastes huge amounts of water and damages the planet. You can’t eat meat and be an environmentalist,” she said.
Fruno said a UN report described the livestock industry as a “key player in increasing water use” and “probably the largest sectoral source of water pollution,” she said.
“It takes 11 times more water to produce 1 calorie of animal protein than 1 calorie of plant protein, as a large amount of water is used to grow grain for animal feed, to raise livestock, in cleaning animal waste and in slaughtering,” PETA member Chi Su-ching (戚思晴) said.
The world’s animal husbandry industry consumes 2.5 billion liters of water every day, which is enough for every person in the world to take eight baths, Chi said.
It takes six times more land to feed a carnivore than to feed a vegetarian, while half of the world’s grains are used as animal feed, she said, adding that the animal husbandry industry is responsible for desertification and deforestation of tropical rainforests.
Meanwhile, vegetarians are significantly thinner than omnivores and are less likely to suffer from heart disease, cancer, strokes and diabetes, the organization said, adding that billions of animals raised for food each year endure routine abuse on crowded and dirty factory farms, where they are slaughtered.
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS