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The production of meat, milk, and eggs derived from animals,
in other words, livestock farming, places an enormous strain on
the environment. Excrement produced by farm animals pollutes our
water and of course, in turn the sea as well. In addition, livestock
farming is responsible for generating one of the largest sources
of carbon dioxide, and the single largest source of both methane
and nitrous oxide emissions. These are all major players in global
warming.
Due to the fact that most feed given to livestock is used up by
the animal’s metabolic processes as well as for bone growth
and so on, we can see that only a small proportion of the feed
is transformed into muscle tissue i.e. meat. Therefore, a large
area of land is needed to grow enough feed for only a small piece
of meat. This leads to, amongst other things, higher consumption
of fossil fuels through the use of farm machinery on the fields
which in turn leads to increased levels of the greenhouse gas
carbon dioxide that is released through the burning of the fossil
fuel. Much of the land used for cattle grazing and to grow monoculture
crops is land that was once rainforest, destroyed by slashing
and burning. This method of slashing and burning is responsible
for most of the global loss of rainforest and in addition, the
burning releases carbon dioxide and destroys forest that would
be able to absorb that carbon dioxide. Slashing and burning can
therefore be seen as causing double the amount of damage to the
climate.
An astonishing Dutch study from 2008 shows: If we skip livestock globally, we could reduce climate stabilisation costs by 80% until 2050, a saving of 32000 billion US$! Climate stabilisation almost for free! The published version with a low meat diet still reduces costs by 20000 billion US$!
The elimination of livestock emissions and new forests on abandoned farmland that could bind immense amounts of CO2, lead to this fascinating result.
Crop monocultures and over grazing are the chief causes of soil
erosion and loss of fertile land. A further problem caused by
the production of meat is the enormous amount of water needed,
not only to water the crops, but also as drinking water for the
animals themselves: On average 25000 litres of water are needed
to produce 1 kg of beef. For 1 kg tomatoes 290 litres are needed
and for 1kg soya beans 4800 litres. It is worth noting that soya
beans contain more protein than beef.
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