Enough cereals, beans, nuts and vegetable to feed Britain's population could be grown on approx. This would still mean less energy usage and less water pollution as well as release land for nature conservation and other purposes. A good deal of it is soya, an excellent human foodstuff. In 1983, at the height of famine in Ethiopia, Britain imported from there 1.5m worth of linseed, cottonseed and rape-seed to feed British farm animals. Farm animals also compete for water supplies.
Slaughterhouses consume vast quantities to wash away the debris of dead animals.
It takes 2,500-6,000 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat, but only 25 gallons for a pound of wheat. Factory farmed animals in the UK produce 200 million tonnes of excreta annually , creating serious water pollution problems from overflowing slurry lagoons. Slaughterhouses produce 1.7m tonnes of wastes pa in the UK, including 100,000t of blood. The problem can be seen at its worst in southern Holland where effluents from dairy herds and from intensive chicken and pig houses have saturated local water supplies so that, in future, imports of drinking water will be necessary. The slurry also contains nitrates, zinc and phosphorus.