Meat and dairy production requires large volumes of energy to transport animals to slaughterhouses, to slaughter animals, to process and package, to refrigerate, and to transport to stores. Fuel is also required to produce fertilizers and pesticides for animal feed, to grow, harvest, and ship animal feed, and to operate farming machinery. More than a third of all fossil fuels produced in the United States go towards animal agriculture.

According to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, it requires 10 times more fossil fuel to produce one calorie of animal protein than it does to produce a calorie of plant protein. (1)

A 2001 article in Time magazine stated:

Animal protein also demands tremendous expenditures of fossil-fuel energy—eight times as much as for a comparable amount of plant protein. Put another way, . . . the average omnivore diet burns the equivalent of a gallon of gas per day—twice what it takes to produce a vegan diet. And the U.S. livestock population—cattle, chickens, turkeys, lambs, pigs and the rest—consumes five times as much grain as the U.S. human population. But then there are 7 billion of them; they outnumber us 25 to 1. (2)

 

1. Pimente, Davidl and Pimentel Marcia. Sustainability of Meat-Based and Plant-Based Diets and the Environment, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 78.3 (2003)

2. Corliss, Richard. Should We All Be Vegetarians? Time Magazine. July 7, 2002