Reducing meat consumption by 30% could save 18,000 lives from premature heart disease each year according to the UK Government’s chief medical officer. Sir Liam Donaldson is also quoted in the Daily Mail as saying, “Our diet is warming the planet. It is also damaging our health. Changing our diet is difficult, but doing so would both help slow climate change and bring significant health benefits.”
Clearly, the debate around sustainable diets is heating up. As we’ve discussed before, farm animal welfare has an increasingly central part to play in future food policy, especially when it comes to the careful use of limited resources. The global impact of factory farming is huge. An area of land equivalent to the size of the European Union is used to grow feed for farm animals. Yet these crops could provide valuable food directly for the 1 billion people who go to bed hungry each night. On average, to produce 1kg of animal protein requires nearly 6kg of protein in the form of feed grains.
Globally, livestock production is escalating and is predicted to double to 120 billion farm animals a year by mid-Century. Large numbers of animals in small spaces on factory farms can lead to environmental degradation and threats to our health as well as unimaginable animal suffering.
This latest newspaper article adds further fuel to calls for a change in our food system; one that aims to feed people with decent, quality food, sustainably produced.
One of the saddest results of many traditional African societies adopting a more "Westernised" lifestyle is that traditional farming methods, where animals are valued and only slaughtered on special occasions, are giving way to an increased emphasis on factory farming.
In a continent where the health of humans is in crisis due to HIV/AIDS and malaria, we need to encourage people to return to more traditional animal husbandry and the consumption of a healthier, more environmentally friendly diet.
Philip, I surport ciwf but eating less meat is not the answer.
I recommend reading the well reference book by Lierre Kieth The Vegeterian Mythe. Most land used by animals is not suitable for growing edable crops for humans. Also for centuries grazing animals have had (& i hope will be able to continue to have) a synergistic relaitionship with nature which is critical to the balance of all who live on this planet.
Consistant studies show that the main reason people who are 'going hungry'is due to poverty not lack of food resource. This is perpetuated by companies like Monsanto etc growing GM crops & selling farmers GM seads from which they are unable to re-use.
The best & quickest way to determine market sales is 'voting with your money'. Buying locally produced organic/biodynamic foods from real farmers who care about the soil, plant, animal, man relaitionship.
Simply eating less meat is like not voting & then complaining about goverment policy, you have no voice. When dealing with people who's primary concern is money, money/sales/market values/shares are the quickest way to make change happen.
All of nature eats it's selve. This is the Love principle – the micro organism give their life & service to the grass, the grass gives it's life & service to the herbivores, the herbivores give their life & service to the carnivores/omnivores & they in turn die & are returned back in to the soil & so creates the closed organic chain of life/love. – As chief Seattle said "We are all connected, what ever man does to the web, he does to himselve".