Any Vegetarians/Vegans here?

[James2014]

The average cow in the USA over its life produces:

48,936 litres of milk
294 kg of mince
Plus of course leather

We know already from my previous calculations that the 48,936 litres of milk is enough for 125 people for a year - 1.07 litres per person per day (that sounds about right).

Thus, if you're a vegetarian and you eat dairy then you play a 1 in 170 part. So if you managed to live for 170 years your vegetarian diet would have eventually cost the life of one single dairy cow.

Great job on your post, though. Graphs and numbers = win.

Thanks!

If a cow lives for 5 years, then surely it would produce one fifth of 48,936L of milk per year? That would mean one cow could produce enough milk for 25 people right?

I think these discussions really highlight how difficult it is to separate the meat and dairy industries. One could exclude the deaths of calves which are a part of the dairy industry on the basis of those animal deaths being attributable to meat eaters, but on the other hand paying for dairy subsidises those meat eaters and therefore increases supply. To be able to tease apart which deaths are attributed to each industry is therefore almost impossible. However rather than trying to hypothetically deduce the number of animal deaths based on some contrived set of assumptions, one can actually look at the number of animal deaths that occur in the meat /dairy industry at present.

As I said before the average American diet is responsible, per person, for the deaths of 207 animals a year including:

1/8 of a cow
3/8 of a pig
5/6 of a turkey
and 26.5 chickens