Meatless Mondays - what a great idea!

Meat Eating is 'Huge Contributor' to Climate Change

"Last week, the Washington Post summarized a number of recent reports indicating that one of the best things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint or greenhouse gas pollution is to reduce your meat consumption. Here are some quick highlights:

-A Carnegie Melon study found that the average American would benefit the planet more by being vegetarian one day per week than by switching to a totally local diet (heck, why not do both?).

-A University of Chicago study found that switching to a vegan diet would have a bigger impact than trading your gas guzzler for a Prius.

-The head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, recommended that people give up meat one day a week to take pressure off the atmosphere.

-According to a 2006 United Nations report, livestock accounts for 18 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

Although we've reported similar studies in Organic Bytes over the years, it's refreshing to see a mainstream media outlet finally bring attention to the topic. Americans seem okay being told they should recycle, drive less, and weatherize their homes, but something short-circuits when you ask them to reduce their meat consumption."

Read more about this at Organic Consumers Association.

A Living Nightmare

Imagine London before Dickens, before King Henry the VIII, in the 14th century. Teeming with the great unwashed, rivers of sewage in the streets. Now imagine London with even more people, unable to leave their homes. Now the rivers of sewage are underfoot at the kitchen table, in the bedroom, the peoples bodies are slimed from working, relaxing, and sleeping in sewage. Disease is rife, there is no quality of life.

That gives you a picture of the a modern 21st century feedlot in Kansas. The only difference is cows, not people. Diseases caused by the filth and the unnatural diet of corn and soy, cows are designed to eat fresh clean grass, are rampant and are controlled by huge quantities of antibiotics. Additionally, large quantities of the waste run off into our water courses contributing to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Even if you can accept the ethical implications of this mistreatment of animals are you prepared to eat the antibiotic soaked flesh of these pitiful creatures? Where does most of this flesh end up? Look in your local supermarket, at your local fast food outlet. The only way to avoid it is to abstain completely or to source organic or at least grass fed beef from sustainable farms.

Cows belong on farms where they can graze on grass, where their waste is recycled naturally into the earth in small enough doses to be healthy. Where their welfare can be looked after and they can lead a natural life. Where they contribute to local economy by supporting family rather than corporate farming.

Thanks to Michael Pollan for the analogy - Omnivore's Dilemma pg 73

Livestock Stats

Used to feed livestock:
73% of grain grown in Canada
40% of wheat grown in the UK
80% of the world's commercial soybean harvest
400,000 hectares of land in the US (an area the size of Germany)

85% of topsoil loss in the US attributable to ranching
15,000 litres of water to make 1 kg of beef
10kg of feed produces 1 kg of beef
66% of deforestation in Central and South America is to create livestock pasture
livestock are administered 8 times the amount of antibiotics as given to humans in the US.
1.3 million tonnes of Manure produced by livestock production in the US much of it treated as waste or becomes pollution.

Still want that burger?

source: The Atlas of Food by Millstone and Lang

Is being green so hard?-By Robb

Over on celsias.com there a thread starting up about the difficulties of "Being Green"
It includes some good points and worth a read. I don't mean to deny that change isn't difficult but I think it needs to be put in context. The degree of change we, in the developed world, need to make are actually pretty minor compared to the level of change demanded of those on the front lines of climate change. I wonder, what do the citizens of Tuvalu think? Here is my post on the topic.

What's so hard about living an intentional life? For me it's simple, "being green" is about using less of anything produced with fossil fuels, being more self sufficient in as many ways possible, and helping others to do the same. It's the difference between being a citizen and being a consumer.

There is a well known mantra I try to live by at all times and I don't find it a hardship, REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE, with heavy emphasis on REDUCE.

"Being green" appears much less difficult than being an environmental refugee, starving to death, or drowning, all increasingly likely outcomes for billions of people, even those of us in the developed world, if we continue to consume fossil fuels.

Any action that reduces use of fossil fuel matters, the more the reduction, the more it matters.

For the citizens on the move in India due to the recent unprecedented flooding, those that didn't drown, a massive and immediate lifestyle change is required now. Right Now! No choice in the matter, no pondering how difficult it is, to survive it must be done.

We here in the developed world have the luxury of a continuum of change. It generally isn't forced upon us by calamity, though the citizens of the ninth ward in New Orleans might disagree. For instance, I personally have reduced my flying by over 60% per year in the last two years as I have come to understand it's impacts. Next winter's visit home I hope to be the last time I ever step foot on an airplane. After that I will travel by sea. It took effort, a bit of soul searching, some compromise with my family, and perhaps has been the most "difficult" aspect of my personal continuum of change. I know many people that have already sworn off flying for good, one man I know has not flown in 18 years. Not driving more than once every 2 weeks, not eating fast food more than once a month, not leaving devices on standby, drastically cutting meat eating while drastically increasing my consumption of organic food, changing all my lightbulbs to CFL's, buying only used clothing, growing as much of my own food as possible, staying out of debt to maintain flexibility, the list of actions grows and all are on some sort of continuum.

This is the luxury I have, this is to some extent the luxury I have created. Guilt comes from not doing these things, frustration is eased by understanding that the continuum is a necessary part of transition, and enthusiasm is not "dead of a thousand cuts" rather it flourishes on the life giving blood of a thousand efforts.

We have less than 10 years to get our emissions under control, do we have the luxury of the easy?

Quote from George Monbiot

"Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production; by developing plants which either won’t breed true or which don’t reproduce at all, it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate." -George Monbiot

Thanks to the Greenhorn website, the irresistible fleet of bicycles, where I found it. Increase your personal sustainability, find a way to purchase your food from small local non corporate non GM family farmers. Here's another tip, the animal agriculture industry does more harm to the atmosphere than all the worlds transport combined. Eat less meat! Particularly red meat and dairy. Pledge to have a meat and dairy free day once a week. Here's a link to a more detailed report on the topic from EarthSave

Food part 2 - Meat - by Robb

I was vegetarian for over 20 years. Getting enough protein in your diet without meat is possible if careful attention is paid to proper food combining. I personally found that I was not focused and disciplined enough and began to suffer from problems related to deficits of protein in my diet. I could probably do better now but have grown used to eating meat again. We are very careful in our household to purchase free range chickens, from a farm just a pleasant 2 mile walk away, and sausage, from the local butchers shop. We would prefer organic chickens but have chosen local free range instead because of the food miles and packaging involved. We have meat as an entree 2 or 3 times a week. I cook two chickens together on the weekend and we eat from it till it’s gone and make soup and stock from the bones. On weeks we don’t have chickens we have sausages. We could increase our sustainability by making reductions.

My plan is to reduce our chicken consumption down to one per week for the 3 of us thus halving the impact from our chicken consumption, aside from the energy to cook it as it will take nearly as much time to cook one as two. We also eat 1 or 2 dozen eggs/week, free range, as well as organic cheese and milk for myself and my mother in law. My wife eats very few diary products. Dairy products have less of an impact than livestock raised for meat. Free range animals live a healthier and more natural life whereas organically raised livestock are also fed a much healthier diet with no chemicals involved.

Livestock husbandry requires tremendous input of energy, water, feed, and land. Livestock contributes to soil erosion, water pollution, and are themselves emitters of greenhouse gases. Zero Carbon Britain calls for a 66% reduction in British meat consumption as part of a sweeping plan to bring Britain to a zero carbon future. ZCB recommends that meat become a special occasion food as it once was as well as a flavoring agent for other meals rather than as a main course. Those who support a vegan diet claim that seriously addressing climate change is impossible without a large scale shift to veganism.

‘A report commissioned by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank concluded that factory farming, "acts directly on land, water, air and biodiversity through the emission of animal waste, use of fossil fuels and substitution of animal genetic resources. In addition, it affects the global land base indirectly through its effect on the arable land needed to satisfy its feed concentrate requirements. Ammonia emissions from manure storage and application lead to localized acid rain and ailing forests.’” (Vegan Society)

While 25,000 people die every die from hunger related conditions the US feeds it’s livestock 60% of the grain harvest. A recent study in Canada suggests that beef raised on feedlots convert 2.5% of the gross feed energy, human edible grains, into usable food for human consumption while in the most efficient operations dairy cattle convert between 55 and 67% of their gross feed energy to human food. Meat heavy diets are especially damaging as they often rely on developing nations to devote land directly to livestock production or feed for export rather to feeding their own populations. With more and more arable land being lost to soil erosion how we use the remaining bit becomes increasingly important.

Land use per kg of food:
beef requires 20.9 m2/kg
pork requires 8.9 m2/kg
eggs require 3.5 m2/kg
milk requires 1.2 m2/kg
fruit requires 0.5 m2/kg
vegetables require 0.3 m2/kg
potatoes require 0.2 m2/kg

Additionally, growth hormones used in the meat industry are having dire consequences on the ecosystem as well as the health of consumers. Non organic livestock are typically fed with GM feed stock, with all the implications that brings, not the least of which is corporate control of food and loss of diversity in seed stock.

So can a sustainable lifestyle include consumption of meat? Surely if you produce your own meat or eggs, or even source them locally, provided they are organic and do not involve the importation of foreign grain for feed stocks then I’d say yes. But even then one has to consider the resources devoted to that production and do ones best to minimize consumption and impacts. I still have a ways to go on this one.

Thanks to the Vegan Society website http://www.vegansociety.com/html/environment/ for content.