Global IssuesCLIMATE CHANGE: Meat-Eating Gets Grilled
Climate change has given vegetarians a big, new stick to bash meat-eating with, albeit one they would have gladly done without.
While some have long claimed that 'meat is murder' of animals, they can now argue it is killing the planet too, given the huge contribution livestock makes to greenhouse gas emissions.
The livestock sector generates around 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), more than we burn by zooming up and down motorways in our cars and hopping continents in aeroplanes.
'Vegetarianism (even better, veganism) is the single, best, most effective thing anyone can do for the environment,' was a Berlin reader's comment on a recent online conversation on The New York Times' website about what individuals can do to combat global warming.
There are various ways in which emissions are unleashed by humankind's soaring demand for meat - world production has increased almost fourfold since 1961 to around 282 million tonnes in 2009, and is expected to double again by 2050, according to the FAO.
It is a major driver of deforestation, as woodlands are cleared to create new pastures and arable land for feed, which causes the carbon dioxide stored in the trees that are cut down or burned to be released. The process has a massive impact on biodiversity too.
Livestock accounts for 37 percent of human-induced methane, a gas with a global warming potential (GWP) 23 times that of CO2, largely through cattle flatulence and belching. It also generates 65 percent of humankind's nitrous oxide, which has a GWP 296 times that of CO2, mostly from manure, the FAO said in its 2006 report Livestock's Long Shadow.
Then the eco-footprint of producing all the animals' feed must be factored in, as well as the carbon burned to power factory farms, slaughter houses and processing plants and refrigerate the meat.
If all that were not enough, livestock is also a cause of widespread soil and water degradation, with major polluting agents including animal waste, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, and the fertilisers and pesticides used on feed crops.
These are the factors that led Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to say once that 'the best solution would be for us all to become vegetarians.'
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and London School of Economics Professor Lord Stern are among the eminent names to express similar sentiments.
Nevertheless, many see this view as overly simplistic, not least the meat industry itself.
'I think that the statement 'eat less meat' might be agreed with, but the message that sometimes comes across is 'stop eating meat' and that is a misleading, alarmist message,' Giuseppe Luca Capodieci of the European Livestock and Meat Trading Union told IPS. Indeed, it is a complicated matter.
For a start, the ecological footprint of a pound of meat varies in its type, with beef having the biggest and poultry the smallest. How it is produced matters - tucking into a slice of free-range chicken meat is much less problematic than chomping on a steak of factory-farmed beef.
And it should not be forgotten that grain, rice and vegetables can have big eco-footprints too if they are grown using herbicides and pesticides made from oil, in soil soaked with nitrogen fertilisers.
Furthermore, the livestock sector can actually help mitigate emissions, as well-managed grazing land and rotational pasture systems in natural environments can act as carbon sinks, sequestering carbon in soils rather than releasing it into the atmosphere.
The sector's social importance should not be ignored either. It employs 1.3 billion people and provides livelihoods for one billion of the world's poor, especially in Africa and Asia, according to Livestock's Long Shadow.
As livestock rearing does not require formal education or large amounts of capital, and often no land ownership, it is frequently the only accessible economic activity for poor people in developing countries. Livestock reserves can also be a buffer source of food and income for smallholder farmers to survive when drought or other extreme weather cause crops to fail.
Then there is the nutritional question and the debate about whether omnivorous humans can ever have a truly balanced diet without meat.
And, while it seems clear that too much meat-eating in the industrialised world is contributing to heart disease and rising obesity levels, more meat, milk and eggs would be a welcome addition to many poor people's diets in developing countries to reduce protein and vitamin deficiencies. So the inequality of consumption, rather than the meat-eating per se, may be the biggest problem - per capita meat production was 81.9 kilos in 2008 in industrialised countries, compared to 31.1 in developing ones, according to FAO figures.
Even pushing these considerations aside, some environmentalists believe it would still be a mistake to extol vegetarianism as the answer to the planet's woes.
'It's unfortunate that some environmentalists have latched on to the idea of vegetarianism because, at least in Western culture where so much importance is attached to individual freedom, a total ban won't work as well as simply redirecting dietary norms to curb the proportion,' Erik Assadourian, a senior researcher at the Washington based Worldwatch Institute told IPS.
Assadourian argues that reducing meat consumption in the developed world, without necessarily eliminating it, would make it possible to produce the meat we do eat in a climate-friendly way, with animals grazing on grass rather than being fed grain in industrial plants, for example.
Many experts agree, although how much to cut back remains a moot point.
A report in the Lancet medical journal released in November suggested slashing consumption by a third. Assadourian thinks we should go further and adopt a low-meat diet some call 'flexitarianism'.
'Last night at dinner they gave us pasta flavoured with a little bacon followed by a big slab of pork in the next course,' he said. 'The sparing use of meat in the first dish is what I see as a good model - still incorporating some meat but as just a flavouring. The second might best be reserved for special occasions such as Christmas and Thanksgiving.'
This debate may never be completely resolved. But some argue the main thing is that the issue gets airplay, with the help of initiatives like Pachauri's and former Beatle Paul McCartney's recent Less Meat = Less Heat campaign, so people are more aware of the impact of their choices.
Informed consumers are also more likely to apply pressure on the livestock sector to clean up its act by voting with their feet and opting for greener products.
'We should be talking about the fact that people can reduce their carbon footprint by cutting meat consumption,' Su Taylor of the Vegetarian Society in the UK told IPS.
'Having a meat-free day every week is a way to make a difference in the same way that changing your light bulb or taking fewer flights can be.
'We would like everyone to be vegetarian, but we are realistic and we know that it is not going to happen overnight. The important thing is that we are talking about the link between meat and climate change. A year ago people weren't.'
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service