Meat of the matter
To fight global warming, don't just drive a Prius, ditch those burgers
By Jim Motavalli
Environmental
7/30/2008
Ask most Americans about what causes global warming, and
they'll point to a coal plant smokestack or a car's tailpipe. They're right, of
course, but perhaps two other images should be granted similarly iconic status:
the front and rear ends of a cow. According to a little-known 2006 United
Nations report entitled "Livestock's Long Shadow," livestock is a
major player in climate change, accounting for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas
emissions (measured in carbon dioxide equivalents). That's more than the entire
global transportation system! Unfortunately, this important revelation has
received only limited attention in the media.
How could methane from cows, goats, sheep and other
livestock have such a huge impact? As Chris Goodall
points out in his book How to Live a Low-Carbon Life (Earthscan
Publications), "Ruminant animals [chewing a cud], such as cows and sheep,
produce methane as a result of the digestive process. ... Dairy cows are
particularly important sources of methane because of the volume of food, both
grass and processed material, that they eat."
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the
American meat industry produces more than 60 million tons of waste annually —
five tons for every
That's just one side effect of raising animals for food. It
turns out that nearly every aspect of the huge international meat trade has an
environmental or health consequence, with global warming at the top of the
list. If you never thought that eating meat was an environmental (and by
extension, political) issue, now is the time to rethink that position.
A really big enterprise
To understand livestock's impact on the planet, you have to
consider the size of the industry. It is the single largest human-related use
of land. Grazing occupies an incredible 26 percent of the ice- and water-free
surface of the planet Earth. The area devoted to growing crops to feed those animals amounts to 33 percent of arable land. Meat
production is a major factor in deforestation as well, and grazing now occupies
70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon region. In
And food grown for animals could be feeding people. Raising
livestock consumes 90 percent of the soy, 80 percent of the corn and 70 percent
of the grain grown in the
Grazing is itself environmentally destructive. The UN
reports that 20 percent of the world's pastures and rangelands have been at
least somewhat degraded through overgrazing, soil compaction and erosion.
Methane (a global warming gas 23 times more potent than CO2)
comes from many human sources, but livestock accounts for an incredible 37
percent of that total. Nitrous oxide is also a very powerful global warming gas
(296 times more potent than CO2) and by far the biggest source, 64 percent,
originates (as does animal-based methane) from manure "off-gassing."
This process of nitrous oxide creation is aggravated by intensive factory
farming methods, because manure is a more dangerous emitter when it is
concentrated and stored in compacted form. Nitrogen-based fertilizers also emit
nitrous oxide. Another byproduct of raising livestock is copious amounts of
ammonia, which contribute to acid rain and the acidification of ecosystems.
Unacceptable risks
The environmental consequences of meat-based diets extend
far beyond their impact on climate change. According to the UN report,
producing the worldwide meat supply also consumes a large share of natural
resources and contributes to a variety of pressing problems. Livestock
production consumes 8 percent of the world's water (mainly to irrigate animal
feed), causes 55 percent of land erosion and sediment, uses 37 percent of all
pesticides, directly or indirectly results in 50 percent of all antibiotic use,
and dumps a third of all nitrogen and phosphorous into our fresh water
supplies.
A study by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal
Production (IFAP), released last April, called the human health and
environmental risks associated with the meat industry "unacceptable."
One of the commission's major recommendations was to "implement a new system
to deal with farm waste to replace the inflexible and broken system that exists
today, to protect Americans from the adverse environmental and human health
hazards of improperly handled IFAP waste."
And livestock forces other animals out. With species loss
accelerating in a virtual "sixth extinction," livestock currently
accounts for 20 percent of all the animal biomass on the planet. As they occupy
30 percent of the planet, they also displace that much wildlife habitat. The
grazing of livestock is considered a serious threat to 306 of the 825
"eco-regions" identified by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and to 23
of Conservation International's 35 global hotspots for biodiversity.
Upping the volume
Meat production has become a major problem because of its
very success as a human food. In 1950, world meat production was 44 million
pounds annually; today, it has risen fivefold to 253 million tons per year.
Pork production, for instance, was less than five million tons annually in
1950, but it's more than 90 million tons today. The average person on the
planet ate 90.3 pounds of meat in 2003, double the figure of 50 years ago.
These sharp increases are partly the result of dramatically
higher meat consumption in the
This process releases carbon into the atmosphere from the
heavy fires, and also destroys the rainforests' ability to act as a carbon sink
and capture CO2. These fires are
Selective solutions
The few commentators who have taken on the connection
between meat consumption and global warming ignore the most obvious solution:
not eating meat.
The UN report offers a lengthy section entitled
"mitigation options" with a range of other choices. To avoid cutting
down rainforests that sequester carbon, the report suggests
"intensification of agricultural production on some of the better lands,
for example by increased fertilizer benefits." The logical conclusion to
this suggestion is the total confinement factory farming methods used in the
United States — which, by twisted logic, could be said to have environmental
benefits because they are not land intensive (and don't cut down trees). But the
environmental problems associated with factory farming are legion, and include
polluted air and waterways.
Other UN suggestions include conservation tillage (leaving
agricultural residue on the soil surface to enrich its health) and organic
farming for better soil health, improved grassland management, better nutrition
for livestock to reduce methane gas production, and capturing methane in
anaerobic digesters to produce "biogas."
The latter method has been adopted by several
A Canadian study by Karin Wittinberg
and Dinah Boadi of the
It takes seven pounds of corn to add a pound of weight to a
cow, and that's why 200 million acres of land in the
Another way of looking at this, supplied by M.E. Ensminger, the former chair of the Animal Sciences
Department at Washington State University, is that "2,000 pounds of grain
must be supplied to livestock in order to produce enough meat and other
livestock products to support a person for a year, whereas 400 pounds of grain
eaten directly will support a person for a year."
Because vegetarians enjoy lower levels of blood cholesterol
and suffer less frequently from obesity and hypertension, their life expectancies
are several years greater. But the benefits of the vegetarian option are rarely
on the agenda, even when the environmental effects of the meat industry are
under discussion.
A very big change
In the
Jim Mason, co-author of The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our
Food Choices Matter (Rodale Books), offers another
possible reason we've kept vegetarianism off the mainstream agenda.
"People who eat meat and animal products are in denial about anything and
everything having to do with animal farming," he says. "They know
that it must be bad, but they don't want to look at any part of it. So all of
it stays hidden and abuses flourish — whether of animals, workers or the
environment."
Even such an enlightened source as the 2005 Worldwatch report "Happier Meals: Rethinking the
Global Meat Industry" is careful not to advocate for a vegetarian diet,
including it in a range of options that also includes eating less meat,
switching to pasture-raised "humane" meat, and opting for a few
nonmeat entrées per week. Vegetarianism is the "elephant in the
room," but even in a very food-conscious age it is not easily made the
centerpiece of an activist agenda.
Danielle Nierenberg, author of the Worldwatch
study, works for both that organization and for the Humane Society of the
United States (HSUS). She's a vegan, and very aware of the climate impacts of
meat-based diets. But, she says, "Food choices are a very personal
decision for most people, and we are only now convincing them that this is a
tool at their disposal if they care about the environment."
Nierenberg says that some of the Worldwatch
report was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, and there was
concern that it wouldn't see print if it overemphasized vegetarian diets.
"People have a very visceral reaction when told they shouldn't be eating
the core meats they grew up with," she says. "They get upset."
David Pimentel agrees that Americans are acculturated to
eating meat. "The nutritionists say we're eating way too much meat for our
health," he says. "The public knows this but it doesn't change their
dietary habits. What will alter their behavior is
higher prices for meat and milk, which are inevitable because of higher fuel
prices and [with the diversion of corn crops to making ethanol] the rising cost
of corn."
Although he admits it's an unpopular position, Pimentel says
he'd like to see gas reach $10 a gallon, because it will encourage energy
conservation and increase prices for environmentally destructive meat, milk and
eggs. "Right now, we have some of the lowest food prices in the
world," he says. "In the
Jacobson agrees. "People are pretty wedded to what they
eat," he says. "The government should be sponsoring major mass media
campaigns to convince people to eat more fruit, vegetables and whole
grains."
He argues that cutting meat consumption should be a public
health priority. "From an environmental point of view, the less beef
people eat the better," he says, citing not only the release of methane
from livestock but also increased risk of colon cancer and heart disease.
Jacobson adds that grass-fed, free-range beef (which has less overall fat) is a
healthier alternative, but grazing takes longer to bring the animals to market
weight "and they're emitting methane all that time."
He posits that the Centers for Disease Control or the
Environmental Protection Agency should be convincing Americans to eat lower on
the food chain. "There are the environmental and animal welfare problems
caused by 'modern' agriculture," he says. "The animals' retribution
is that we die of heart disease and cancer." Is there an environmental
argument to be made for livestock? Gidon Eshel, co-author of the report "Diet, Energy and
Global Warming" and a professor at
Eshel calls for enforcement of the
frequently ignored federal Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, which contain
provisions to protect against harmful discharges of both animal wastes and the
fertilizers used to grow animal feed.
Eating more meat
A record 284 million tons of meat were produced worldwide in
2007. In most developing countries, meat consumption per capita is expected to
double from the 1980s to 2020. Meat is an economically important product in
most parts of the world in 2008, and it has powerful lobbies and enormous
vested interests. There's just one problem: It's hurting the planet, and
wasting huge resources that could easily feed a hungry world.
Offer these facts to many meat-eaters, and they'll respond
that they can't be healthy without meat. "Where would I get my
protein?" is a common concern. But the latest medical research shows that
the human body does not need meat to be healthy. Indeed, meat is high in
cholesterol and saturated fat, and a balanced vegetarian diet provides all the
protein needed for glowing health. Were humans "meant" to eat meat,
just because our ancestors did? Nonsense, says Dr. Milton Mills, a leading
vegetarian voice: "The human gastrointestinal tract features the
anatomical modifications consistent with an herbivorous diet."
With the recognition of meat's impact on the planet (and the
realization that we don't need it to stay healthy), is it possible that the
human diet will undergo a fundamental change? The fact that the cornerstone of
the American diet aids and abets climate change is an "inconvenient
truth" that many of us don't want to face, says Joseph Connelly, publisher
the San Francisco-based VegNews Magazine. He takes a
dig at Al Gore for not mentioning meat-based diets in his film and only dealing
with them glancingly in his book, An Inconvenient
Truth (Rodale Books).
A 2003 Harris Poll said that between 4 and 10 percent of the
American people identify themselves as vegetarians. So far, Connelly says that
number seems to be holding steady. "From a sustainability point of view,
what's really needed is for people to understand the connections between
factory farming, meat-eating and environmental impacts," he says.
"That's the first step."
Lisa Mickleborough, an editor at VegNews, is probably right when she says that animal concerns
are a powerful force for turning meat-eating into a moral issue. To be an
animal rights leader is almost by definition to be a vegan. But few
environmental leaders have gone that far. "As an environmental issue, it's
pretty compelling," she says. "The figures on methane production
speak for themselves. But when it comes to doing what's right for the
environment, most people don't take big steps — they just do the best they
can."
Jim Motavalli is the editorial
director of New Mass Media
metrotimes.com