According to John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America,
the number of animals killed per hour for meat in the U.S. alone is 660,000.
This means that 5,280,000 individual animals were killed during the eight hours that you were at work today because we think they taste good. That's 211,200,000 lives taken during a single forty hour work week. The end result is 9 billion animals killed annually in the U.S. alone to satisfy our preferences (some estimate that the number is closer to 10 billion).
It's difficult for me to even comprehend these numbers. And some would have us believe that the plight of nonhumans ought to be beyond our ethical concern.
Thanks go out to Ethical Eating.org
Great statistics! I'm just reading that book now, and its jarring. That and The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer should be read by everyone. That is the sort of material that should be taught in elementary schools.
I agree.
It's like a 'double-edged sword," however. The numbers express the extent of the crisis, while at the same time they may suggest the futility of our efforts.
But as you say on your excellent blog, a person who goes vegan quite literally reduces suffering - vegans do make a difference in the lives of all those animals that aren't murdered because we enjoy how they taste.