Meat reducing
In September 2008 Dr Pachauri chair of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (took a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007) suggested trying one meat free day a week as a personal and effective sacrifice to help tackle climate change. He felt from this beginning that we could then go on to reduce our meat consumption further. The reason for advocating diet change is due to greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental problems associated with rearing cattle and other animals. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimate that meat production accounts for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. They also estimate that meat consumption is likely to double by the middle of the century. Compassion in World Farming calculates that if the average UK household halved meat consumption this would lower emissions more than if car use was halved. They support aiming to reduce meat consumption by 60% by 2020. Eating animal flesh is causing environmental damage including deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, destabilisation of communities and the spread of disease according to World Watch Institute. World Health Organisation guidelines recommends 25-50% less protein from meat than the average person in the UK consumes daily. The average person in the UK eats 8 beef cattle 36 sheep, 36 pigs and 550 poultry birds over a lifetime,. Our meat consumption is 50% higher than 40 years ago. The Food Climate Research Network at Surrey University suggests that vegetarian diets that include milk, butter and cheese do not reduce emissions significantly due to the methane gas produced by flatulent cows. (100kg of methane is emitted by the average cow annually). Methane has a 23 times greater effect as a green house gas than carbon dioxide. 990 litres of water are needed to produce one litre of milk. 7 lb of grain are needed to produce one pound of beef. It takes 2.2 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of plant protein. It takes 4 calories of plant protein to make one of chicken protein Pork 17:1, Lamb 50:1, Beef 54:1 1 fast food burger is responsible for 1 kg of carbon dioxide. 36.4 kg of carbon dioxide is emitted in production of 1kg beef. 32 million acres of rainforest is destroyed or degraded annually- for pasture for cows, or to grow soya to feed cows. In addition to the increase in methane and carbon dioxide production this causes it also affects wildlife and plant survival. Global meat production forecast for 2050 is almost double that of 2001. Please eat less meat! Eat more plants! For more information on this subject see the links to ‘plant based diet’ under News on the Home page; you’ll find a link to Mark Bittman’s video. He’s a New York Times food writer and he expresses a powerful and humourous plea for individual dietary change. Likewise a link to an article written by the journalist and author Raj Patel, where he looks at these issues in some depth.
% 
Comments
Add your comment
Audit
Story posted by on 2008-10-28 16:24:44.