Bad News for the Planet

Is it necessary for people to eat as much meat as we do? Until relatively recently, meat was generally only eaten on special occasions and, even then, largely by the rich. For millennia we have raised animals on non-arable land and fed them indigestible waste from our food production, either harvesting their milk or their meat in return. Eating meat was occasional.

Climate change, with all the challenges that that brings, will be accelerated if we continue to factory farm at the rate we presently do. Intensive farming process is doing little to help the environment. The increase in the production of meat can only serve to further damage our already exhausted planet. Emissions have increased by 144% in Asia alone in the last 50 years, a huge increase particularly when noting this does not include the figures from the UK, Europe and America. The fertilisers used on the food for the animals to eat produces the harmful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Additionally animals, for example cows, sheep and goats, secrete high concentrations of toxic methane (23% of the overall global gas emissions) into the atmosphere, a gas they produce naturally. It is clear that, from the beginning of the meat production chain, the planet is being harmed. The outlook worsens when this is coupled with the rest of the food production chain: transporting animals from factory to abattoir and back to factory, to be cleaned then packaged, and distributing the finished product. The majority of studies indicate 10-25% off all emissions that currently hit the Earth’s atmosphere stem from the meat production process. Studies from 2007 suggest rearing animals for food constitutes around 80% of agricultural emissions. This is likely to have increased further when considering in 2004 the Environmental Protection Agency stated agriculture contributed to 14% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. If in 2007 it was projected as being between 10-25%, in 2015 it is likely to have reached the latter end of the percentage, or even bypassed it.

30% of land is currently used for rearing animals for meat production. There are suggestions that this is as high as 38% — in the 2011 article “Five Scenarios for 2050: Conditions for Agriculture and Land Use” the authors claim 38% of global land resources are used for agricultural ends. The largest amount of this percentage is used for grazing animals. 11% of land is arable, meaning sustainable for plant and crop growth, with 33% of the arable land used for animal feed production; 33% of all arable land is being used to feed animals that will ultimately feed us. So around a third of all Earth’s land is used to bring animals into existence and then slaughter them. Mass production of meat drains around 10 times the amount of water than plant-based products do. Some reports consider this is a generous forecast and suggest it is likely to be much higher than that.

We can get more from less with wheat, corn and soya bean growth and consumption than with meat. Would it be so difficult to eat less meat?

http://www.mintpressnews.com/MyMPN/dinner-vs-planet-high-cost-meat/2215/

something to chew upon

he amount of meat humans eat is immense. In 1965, 10 billion livestock animals were slaughtered each year. Today, that number is 55 billion. More chickens are killed in the US every year than there are people in the world, and there are one billion cattle alive, weighing twice as much as the human population.

All that livestock needs land, which places pressure on wildlife habitat and forest. Livestock is the world’s largest land user. Grazing occupies 26 per cent of the earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface, and feed crop production uses about one third of all arable land.

And what about all that manure? In traditional, sustainable systems of agriculture, manure is part of a holistic cycle: it’s fertiliser. But in modern agriculture, this waste is not cycled through the farm because there’s just too much of it. Instead, waste is stored in manure “lagoons,” which emit methane and, even worse, nitrous oxide.
Meat production requires staggering amounts of land, water, and energy, as compared to plant foods. A 2010 UN report explained that western-type dietary preferences for meat would be unsustainable in future, given that the world population is forecast to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050. Demand for meat is expected to double by this date, and meat consumption is already steadily rising in countries such as China, which once followed more sustainable, vegetable-based diets.

A person existing mainly on animal protein requires ten times more land to provide adequate food than someone living on vegetable sources of protein. Far more energy is put into animals per unit of food than for any plant crop because cattle consume 16 times as much grain as they produce as meat. It takes 16 pounds of grain to make one pound of beef.

Animal farms use nearly 40 per cent of the world’s total grain production. In the US, nearly 70 per cent of grain production is fed to livestock. If humans continue to eat more and more meat, it means we’re not just going to use far more land and water, but we’re also going to manufacture much more chemical fertilisers and pesticides. We will thus be creating far more pollution and greenhouse gases.

Modern farming (both meat and non-meat production) is heavily dependent on chemicals, which leads to the emission of the major greenhouses gases: carbon dioxide from the use of fossil fuels for machinery and to produce the chemicals needed, nitrogen oxide (300 times more potent than carbon dioxide) from the use of chemical fertilisers and methane (animal flatulence) from factory farming.

It has been estimated that livestock contribute to about 9 per cent of total human related carbon dioxide emissions, 37 per cent of methane emissions and 65 per cent of nitrous oxide emissions. This includes carbon dioxide emission from deforestation in Central and South America, attributed to livestock production.

Factor in that a gallon of gasoline is used to produce a mere pound of grain-fed beef, and you begin to appreciate that meat production is a very fossil fuel, resource-intensive industry.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, “Ranching-induced deforestation is one of the main causes of loss of some unique plant and animal species in the tropical rainforests of Central and South America as well as carbon release in the atmosphere.”

A 2010 report from the United Nations Environment Programme’s International Panel of Sustainable Resource Management declared: “Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth and increasing consumption of animal products… A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products.”
Environmental vegetarians are calling for a reduction of the consumption of meat in the ‘developed’ world. According to the United Nations Population Fund, “Each US citizen consumes an average of 260 pounds of meat per year, the world’s highest rate. That is about 1.5 times the industrial world average, three times the East Asian average, and 40 times the average in Bangladesh.”

Scientists at Cornell University have advised that the US could feed 800 million people with the grain that livestock eat.




Meat production also places a great strain on fresh water, which is likely to become an increasingly scarce resource in the coming years. John Anthony Allan, professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, argues that the average meat-eating US citizen consumes five cubic meters of water compared to half of that which vegetarians consume. But not all meat is equally water-intensive.

He says that beef requires 15,500 litres of water per kilogram compared to chicken, which needs 3,900 litres per kilogram. So, at the very least, consumers could think about reducing their beef consumption since it requires the most unsustainable water footprint.

In her book, Stolen Harvests, environmentalist Vandana Shiva says that for every pound of red meat, poultry, eggs and milk produced, farm fields lose about five pounds of irreplaceable top soil. She also states that the water necessary for meat breeding comes to about 190 gallons per animal per day, or ten times what a normal Indian family is supposed to use in one day, if it gets water at all.

The great Ogallala aquifer in the US is the largest body of fresh water on earth. The water in it is left from the melted glaciers of the last Ice Age. It is not replenished from rainfall. Author John Robbins notes that more than 13 trillion gallons of water are taken from the aquifer every year. More water is withdrawn from the Ogallala aquifer every year for beef production than is used to grow all the fruits and vegetables in the entire US. Robbins states that it’s only a matter of time before most of the wells in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico go dry, and portions of these states become scarcely habitable for human beings.
This is a salutary reminder of what other countries may face in future if their meat consumption increases dramatically.





Of course, other arguments against eating meat or using animal products have been around for a long time, well before global warming and climate change appeared on the scene. Various religious and philosophical traditions believe that humans should not kill, maim, torture or exploit fellow beings for food or other purposes.

But kill, maim, torture and exploit we do. Take chickens as just one example from the many that we could take. For the past half century, there have actually been two kinds of chickens — broilers and layers. They have different bodies, engineered for different ‘functions.’ Layers make eggs and broilers make flesh. Over the past 50 years, they have been engineered to grow more than twice as large in less than half the time. Chickens once had a life expectancy of 15 to 20 years, but the modern broiler is typically killed at around six weeks. Their daily growth rate has increased roughly by 400 per cent.

All male layers in the US, comprising more than 250 million chicks a year, are destroyed. Most are destroyed by being sucked through a series of pipes onto an electrified plate. Some are tossed into large plastic containers. The weak are trampled to the bottom, where they suffocate slowly. The strong suffocate slowly at the top. Others are also sent fully conscious through macerators.

So, if global warming isn’t enough to make people think twice about going vegetarian or reducing their meat consumption, the cruelty we inflict on other species may well do.

In many respects, thanks to its various traditions, India has a definite head start when it comes to not eating meat. This is just as well considering 17 per cent of the global population live here on a mere two to three per cent of the planet’s land, and the country is already facing water shortage issues and dwindling wildlife habitat.

According to a 2006 State of the Nation Survey, 31 per cent of Indians are vegetarians, while another nine per cent consumes eggs. India also has a system of marking edible products made from only vegetarian (non-animal) ingredients, with a green dot in a green square.


Consider the fact that the next time you eat a meal of rice and vegetables, you could be taking in more than 40 times the amount of pesticides that an average North American person would consume for a similar meal. India is one of the world’s largest users of pesticides. Lady’s finger, cabbage, tomato and cauliflower in particular may contain dangerously high levels and fruits and vegetables are sprayed and tampered with to ripen and make them more colourful. Research by the School of Natural Sciences and Engineering at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore reported in 2008 that many crops for export had been rejected internationally due to high pesticide residues.

Shiva argues that this type of intensive chemical-industrial agriculture, with its reliance on vast amounts of fresh water, fertilisers, pesticides and the like, is destroying biodiversity and contributing towards climate change, not just in India but worldwide. It might have increased food production in the relative short term, but it has been at a terrible cost to the environment and is ultimately unsustainable.
Modern industrial farms rely on fossil fuels, from powering machinery to petroleum-based chemicals used to create artificial soil fertility, protect against pests and stave off weeds. It is this use of fossil fuels on farms and the manufacture of fertilisers and other agricultural chemicals that negatively impact the environment. For Shiva, the answer is to return to basics by encouraging biodiverse, organic, local food systems.

She argues that small, biodiverse, organic farms, especially in less developed countries, are totally fossil fuel-free. Energy for farming operations comes from animal energy and not machinery or the fertilisers manufactured down at the local polluting chemical factory, and soil fertility is built by feeding soil organisms via recycling organic matter.

Making the required shift away from modern farming practices could be a lot easier said than done, however. Huge, politically connected and often extremely unscrupulous agribusiness concerns involved in fertiliser, pesticide and seed manufacturing (and let’s not forget the genetically modified sector) have a lot invested in maintaining the current, highly profitable system.

In finishing, let us end where we began — with meat. Author James E McWilliams raises the all-important ethical issue by saying that it’s not how we produce animal products that ultimately matters, it’s whether we produce them at all.

The dilemma he raises leads to some deep seated questions about how we as individuals personally regard our mass slaughter and wholesale exploitation of the living creatures we share this planet with. Even if our consciences can continue to live with this, the evidence is that, in the long run, the planet certainly can’t.

Taken from http://www.deccanherald.com/content/250707/age-novelty.html