Saving the planet, your purse - and the animals
New research shows that if we all reduced our meat and dairy consumption we could save millions on the costs of fighting climate change!
Yes, changing our diets could be the most effective way to reduce global warming. Not that we shouldn’t cut our car use, turn off our domestic appliances and insulate our homes – these are all good things to do – it’s just that cutting the amount of meat and dairy we eat may achieve much more dramatic results.
Elke Stehfest and her colleagues at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency have published their research in the journal “Climatic Change” and it takes your breath away.
The scientists compared four different diets: eating no meat, avoiding meat from ruminants like cows and sheep, eating no animal products at all and eating a low-meat diet, called the Healthy Diet.
The diets were compared in terms of their potential impact on climate stabilisation targets i.e. stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations at 450 parts per million CO2-equivalent by 2050, the level which scientists say is needed to prevent the disastrous effects of rising sea levels and widespread drought.
The costs of mitigating the effects of climate change could be reduced by 54% by implementing a low meat healthy diet, as recommended by Harvard Medical School. Cutting out meat altogether or avoiding ruminant meat would cut the costs by 70%, whilst going vegan (no animal products) would cut the costs by a dramatic 80%.
How can a different diet have such an impact?
The scientists reckon that eating less meat will free up a lot of agricultural land which can revert to growing trees and other vegetation, which in turn will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Other freed up land could be used for growing crops for biofuels, thus helping to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
Intensive farming of cattle
With more land to feed everyone on a low or no meat diet, the current competition for cereals would presumably end. Right now over a third of all cereal crops and well over 90% of soya goes into animal feed, not food for humanity. Cutting out that amount will release more food for direct human consumption and hopefully reduce the shameful number of our fellow-humans who go to bed hungry each night.
With far fewer animals being farmed, their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, currently estimated at 18%, would be greatly reduced.
The Implications for Animal Welfare
We already slaughter 60 billion animals a year for our food. That figure is predicted to double by 2050. There simply is not enough land for all those animals to be reared in organic or free range systems with the potential for high welfare. Already industrial factory farms are growing at an unprecedented rate, especially in fast-developing countries like Brazil and China.
Free range cattle
By drastically cutting the number of animals being farmed we would be able to keep the remaining numbers in higher welfare conditions such as good free-range and organic systems, using slower growing and hardy animals that require lower inputs of concentrate feed and energy.
Space allowances, for example, could be improved and the pressure to push animals to fast growth rates and high yields - which is responsible for serious health and welfare problems in dairy cattle, meat chickens, pigs and turkeys - could be eased.
Currently many wild animals have their habitat threatened as forests are cut down for cattle ranches and soya-for-feed farms. Wilderness areas are brought under cultivation or used for grazing, which usually destroys these fragile lands within a few years.
By drastically cutting down on farm animal numbers, these lands would no longer be threatened and many damaged areas could be restored, benefiting both wildlife and plant biodiversity.
NB. Should this scenario be adopted as global policy (and we are a long way from that as yet), there would be no mass slaughter of animals to reduce their number. Most farm animals are slaughtered within weeks or months of birth. We would simply breed fewer of them in the future.
A chorus of support
Compassion in World Farming was the first charity to recommend a reduction in meat consumption in 2004. Now it seems that a raft of leading scientists and climate change experts like Dr Rajendra Pachauri are supporting our call. Dr Pachauri, Chair of the prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) spoke at Compassion’s lecture in 2008 calling for a reduction in meat consumption. The IPCC’s own 2001 report says, “A shift from meat towards plant production for human food purposes, where feasible, could increase energy efficiency and decrease GHG emissions”.
Respected charity Oxfam has (March 2009) issued a policy paper “Changing food consumption in the UK to benefit people and planet” which also calls for a reduction in meat and dairy consumption.
More and more health experts are saying that a plant-based diet is better for your health too. In 2007 the World Cancer Research Fund called for a diet low in red meat, avoidance of processed meats and eating a mainly plant-based diet.
The evidence is mounting. Compassion in World Farming believes that cutting your meat and dairy consumption – and of course buying only high welfare products - is definitely the way forward for caring consumers. It also happens to be the best option for animals, people and our planet.
Shop with Compassion
Buying free range or organic will encourage higher welfare farming which poses fewer risks to animals, people and the planet. Eating less meat and dairy reduces the environmental impact of animal farming and can improve human health.
Find out more about compassionate shopping >>
