Oxford Vegetarians Web
site is hosted by the International
Vegetarian Union. (This article is based on a talk of the same name first delivered at Mansfield College, Oxford, on 29 November 2007.)
Despite an increased awareness about global warming and related environmental issues the overwhelming effect of dietary choices is usually overlooked. There are numerous reasons for this. The fact that governments totally ignore the impact of food is predictable, partly because of powerful vested interests within farming and the food industry. Also, there is little public interest in a subject which many regard as further interference by “the nanny state”. Top ten tips to reduce your carbon footprint rarely include any advice about changing diets to save the planet. The 2006 eco-documentary An Inconvenient Truth was an unexpected hit, but failed to make any connections between diet and climate change. Also, the meat heavy diet of the film’s narrator (Al Gore) typifies a fundamental problem. Even the most dedicated eco-warrior can be very selective if a particular course of action doesn’t appeal to them. Many people will either reduce their air miles or refuse to fly at all, some drastically reduce how much they use their cars. But we all have to eat, for some there is a staggering range of choice and for others the choice is virtually non-existent. But we all have to eat and those choices are crucial for the future of the planet.
Food miles (the distance food travels to reach the consumer) are usually highlighted as the major environmental food problem, but this is just one of many factors. A third of all the food bought in Britain today ends up being thrown away. This extraordinary waste is appalling, especially as most of it is perfectly good – it has simply exceeded a “best by” date. A far cry from the situation in the UK during World War II when wasting food was actually illegal, punishable by imprisonment. Since the end of rationing in 1954 food in Britain has gradually lost its value, both financially and symbolically. Thirty-five years ago over 30% of income was spent on food, today it is only about 10%. Supermarkets offer a ridiculous choice of over 26,000 food items, but many of these are endless variations of the same basic product: for example, Asda currently stock 88 types of potato crisps.
In 2007 the global cattle population exceeded 1.6 billion, taking up a staggering 25% of the Earth’s landmass. Their combined weight exceeds that of the global human population of 6.5 billion. Cattle consume vast amounts of grain in a ratio of 10:1 or higher, that is, ten pounds of grain are required to produce just one pound of meat. This is the most expensive, inefficient, wasteful and totally unsustainable method of food production ever devised. Crucially, the environmental damage that goes with it is devastating: 40% of the world’s total grain harvest is fed to cattle and other livestock. Also, 90% of the total soya harvest and 75% of all EU agricultural land is used for animal feed. While up to a billion humans suffers from chronic hunger and malnutrition, millions in the West are dying from the “diseases of affluence”. Rates of heart disease, cancer and obesity are rocketing in the USA and across Europe as consumption of saturated animal fats hits record levels.
Millions of acres of ancient rain forest in Central and South America are being felled and cleared for grazing cattle. It’s a tragic irony that this land is poorly suited for the purpose. Within 3 to 5 years the soil is depleted and the cattle ranchers greedily gobble up more virgin forest. Only 2,000 years ago the tropical rain forest belt covered 5 billion acres of the Earth – 12% of the total landmass. Since then humans have destroyed over half of this. “The aesthetic, environmental and commercial impact of razing and burning millions of acres of ancient rain forests to make room for cattle ranching is beyond human calculation” (Jeremy Rifkind: Beyond Beef).
Livestock are responsible for most of the spreading desertification in sub-Saharan Africa and the western rangelands of the US and Australia. There are four main causes of desertification: 1 Overgrazing bylivestock (35%), 2 Deforestation (30%), 3 Overcultivation of the land (27%), 4 Improper irrigation techniques and other factors (8%) {1}. Meat and dairy production is a primary factor in all of these. The global cattle population are overgrazing and trampling native and artificial grasses. Without plants to anchor the soil, absorb water and recycle nutrients the land becomes highly vulnerable to wind and water erosion. The loss of topsoil has diminished the productivity of the world’s croplands by 29% in the final decade of the 20th Century. Eighty-five per cent of topsoil loss is directly attributable to cattle and feed crop production. These factors are never included in the equation for calculating the real cost of meat. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that each pound of US feedlot (intensively reared) steak costs 35 lbs of eroded topsoil. The replacement of this priceless material is an incredibly slow process – each inch of topsoil takes between 200 and 1,000 years to form under natural conditions. The World Resources Institute (WRI) states that almost 40% of the world’s agricultural land is seriously degraded and continuing to intensify production on these areas is unsustainable. Unfortunately, increasing food productivity (at any cost) has been the major goal of the global food industry.
Almost half of the water consumption of the US goes to grow feed for cattle and other livestock. To produce just one pound of grain-fed steak requires hundreds of gallons to irrigate the feed crops (estimates vary, but it takes over 5 times the amount of water to feed a meat eater, compared with that used to feed a vegan {2}). Cattle excrete almost 1 billion tons of organic waste globally each year. Much of this runs off and pollutes essential water supplies. The manure generated by a 10,000 head US feedlot (a massive highly automated system of factory farming) is equal to the human waste generated in a city of 110,000 people. This is another staggering problem for which the meat industry accepts, as with all the environmental damage it creates, no responsibility whatsoever. Cattle excrement from feedlots is highly toxic owing to the appalling cocktail of hormones, antibiotics and mineral supplements in the animal feed.
“Every pound of grain-fed flesh is secured at the expense of a burned forest, an eroded rangeland, a barren field, a dried up river or stream and the release of millions of tons of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane”, writes Jeremy Rifkind in Beyond Beef. Cow farts are now responsible for a massive amount of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas many times more damaging than carbon dioxide. The planet’s livestock contribute more greenhouse gases (18% of the total) than all of the world’s transport systems including cars, trains, aeroplanes and ships (13.5%) according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation's report Livestock’s Long Shadow. The burning of millions of acres of rain forest spews countless tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. With 70% of all US grain production devoted to livestock feed, the energy burned simply to produce the feed represents another hefty addition to global warming. Furthermore, the use of petro-chemical fertilisers has increased dramatically and this emits nitrous oxide, which now accounts for 6% of greenhouse gases.
During the course of the 20th century a shift of monumental proportions – from food grains to feed grains – occurred in world agriculture (as stated above, 40% of the world’s grain production is used for animal feed). This is a totally new agricultural phenomenon and it has had a more significant effect on the politics of land use and food distribution than any other single factor in modern times. Two-thirds of all grain exported from the US goes to feed livestock not people. The overwhelming problem of “food vs. feed” will create greater divisions in the politics of the relationship between the northern and southern hemispheres. Two-thirds of humanity (mainly in the south) consume a primarily vegetarian diet. As the human population continues to increase and with so much grain and soya wasted as animal feed, a global food crisis is looming. Crucially, this will also start to affect the rich nations that arrogantly assume that they are immune to any sort of food shortage. Meanwhile, global meat and dairy production and consumption is increasing. The huge populations of China and India are developing a widespread taste for westernised meat and dairy produce. The traditional Chinese diet has excluded dairy foods, but the increasing consumption of milk, butter and cheese in China will only produce more environmental damage, and the negative health effects of the western diet are already being felt in the big cities of China.
The use of resources to feed the average meat eater is staggering. A middle class American is responsible for the consumption of over a ton (2000 lbs) of grain each year – 80% of this as animal feed. In contrast, the average Asian adult consumes between 300 and 400 lbs of grain per year and has a daily protein intake of 56 grams of which only 8 grams is animal protein. This contrasts with the American who consumes 96 grams of protein of which 66 is of animal origin. Anyone who follows a vegetarian diet (no meat or fish) will require only 50% of the resources needed to feed the average meat eater. But the vegan diet (which excludes all animal produce) means that there is only 25% to 30% usage of resources. A varied vegan diet uses just one fifth of the land needed for a typical European omnivorous diet {3}.
The establishment of a food chain with animal protein at the top has dire consequences for the whole of human and animal kind. The global meat industry continues to expand and devour essential resources with absolutely no regard for the consequences. This is the biggest overall threat to the survivability of the planet owing to the whole range of damage to water supplies, topsoil loss and desertification, rainforest destruction and emission of greenhouse gases. The apparently insatiable consumption of animal produce is disastrous for the planet. Professor of Food Policy Tim Lang has stated (when he was recently interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme) that if the demand for animal protein continues at the current rate, we will need six planets to feed an estimated human population of 9 billion in 2050.
Industrial fishing has devastated the world’s oceans, numerous species have been depleted to the point of total collapse. Vast nets drag along the seabed and cause incalculable damage. Most of the fish caught are unwanted, either because quotas have been exceeded or people won’t eat strange fish with unpalatable names. The excess (all dead) are dumped back into the sea. A catch to use ratio of 15:1 is considered perfectly acceptable, with only one pound of fish in every 15 pounds caught actually used. To counteract this extraordinary destruction fish farms have been developed. In these systems fish such as salmon are kept in tanks and fed a diet of food pellets and chemicals. Scottish fish farms produce 150,000 tons of farmed salmon per year, but this requires 600,000 tons of wild fish to be converted into feed pellets. Having devastated the world’s fish stocks, the fishing industry has now established another totally unsustainable method of producing fish which requires even further destruction of wild stocks {4}. Also, the environmental damage caused by fish farming is nothing less than disastrous.
In conclusion, the future of food is very bleak. We cannot continue with such staggeringly wasteful systems of food production. Fundamental attitudes, from individuals through all social classes to entire nations, must change. Also, governments must take tough and unpopular decisions before it’s too late. Realistically, this is highly unlikely. The environmental conference held in Bali in December 2007 was typical of all the recent ‘eco-junkets’ where delegates stuffed themselves with everything from fillet steak to wild salmon, either ignorant or oblivious to the fact that every greedy mouthful was simply pushing the planet closer to catastrophe.
Paul Freestone, March 2008
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Oxford Vegetarians Web
site is hosted by the International
Vegetarian Union.
This page created 23 March 2008 by Paul Appleby.