Environmental impact of the meat industry
Did anyone else watch last night's BBC documentary? I thought it was very well done. It scrupulously avoided emotional arguments, and showed us the many ways industrial-scale meat production is damaging the planet. Loss of wilderness, especially rainforest; pollution of earth, inland waterways and seas by livestock faeces and urine; increased greenhouse effect from methane emitted by livestock; loss of insect diversity due to monocultures; loss of marine life by overfishing to provide protein concentrates for cattle feed, and world hunger due to feeding crops to livestock instead of growing crops we can eat ourselves.
It was a bit thin on solutions, but that would have made a longer programme. Pity they didn't make a second programme to look into that.
What did the rest of you think of it? Or about the issues generally, if you didn't see the programme?
It was a bit thin on solutions, but that would have made a longer programme. Pity they didn't make a second programme to look into that.
What did the rest of you think of it? Or about the issues generally, if you didn't see the programme?
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A lot of the land where sheep, deer and reindeer roam in the UK and upland Europe is not arable so lose the animals and lose the habitat. Studies show that free range pigs emit half as much carbon as intensively reared pigs and I expect the same is true of poultry.
I don't want to see a world with all the livestock, rare breed or common, either gone or restricted to a tiny genetic pool in zoo farms. Nor do I want to see all land turned over to monocropping. I enjoy eating meat and poultry and eggs and cheese along with plenty of fruit and veg and occasional cereals.
As with any other aspect of life, reason rather than excess should be the rule and we should be prepared to pay a reasonable price for farm produce and foods and also use it better with less waste. It's the constant drive to lower prices which does a great deal of harm.
It is also a well documented fact that there is more global food supply wasted in bad harvesting, bad storage, bad transport and bad distribution caused by poverty, bad management, bad governance and war and that fixing those would fix a lot of the world food shortage problem faster than waiting for solutions to global warming and would reduce pressure on rainforests.
In my understanding, lots of these problems have solutions...… its just implementing them that's the problem. People don't like to change their ways.
Puts tin hat on and ducks ……..
If land is only able to be used to grow grass, then rearing animals is fine, if land is suitable for arable, then more arable needs to be grown.
I don't think it is acceptable any more, to say I like beef and I will eat it every day.
The small changes I have made personally: 1 vege meal a week, 2 fish meals a week and only 1 red meat meal a week, are I am sure not enough, but they are a start.
Chill will wake you, high and dry
You'll wonder why.
As countries such as India, China, etc. have become richer, the meat consumption has risen there so it really is a global issue.
Sorry to pinch your thread Josusa but I was listening to a radio program re Palm Oil. It has been featured before with regard to rain forest destruction but it would seem in some cases that it can, and is in places, environmentally sustainable.
One thing that did jump out at me was that the UK invested 5 billion £'s in the Dem. Rep. of Congo in a Palm Oil company. It now seems that the company have been polluting local water sources and not paying attention to the health and safety of their workers. They proudly announced that they have spent something in the region of 3 hundred thousand dollars( per year or over the last few years - not sure ) to improve things for their workers and the environment. I am necessarily paraphrasing but the difference in money invested and money spent doesn't seem to add up.
Perhaps more education and take up of contraception would do the job better and faster.