Posted by nzvs
03-07-2008
Yes says Raj Patel: growing food for animals is a waste of resources
in an overcrowded world.
Sunday June 22, 2008
Observer Food Monthly
America is the most overweight country on earth. Only three out of 10 Americans
have a normal body weight. I should have guessed that one of the side effects of
moving to the US would be bloating.
Since leaving London for America a decade ago, I've put on a couple of stone. It's
easy enough to blame the food environment here. This is, after all, the land where
Reagan pronounced tomato ketchup a fruit and, more recently, where French fries
and chocolate-covered cherries were legally dubbed 'fresh produce' under a US
Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulation known as the batter-coating rule.
Read the full article here
Read more...
Posted in Environmental Concerns, Animals
Posted by nzvs
03-03-2008
Full story: AFP
Don't eat meat, ride a bike, and be a frugal shopper - that's how you can help brake global warming, the head of the United Nation's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change said [January 15]. The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued last year, highlights "the importance of lifestyle changes," said Rajendra Pachauri at a press conference in Paris. "This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it." A vegetarian, the Indian economist made a plea for people around the world to tame their carnivorous impulses. "Please eat less meat - meat is a very carbon intensive commodity," he said, adding that consuming large quantities was also bad for one's health. |
Posted in Environmental Concerns
Posted by nzvs
30-07-2007
Which is more responsible for more global warming: your BMW or your Big Mac? Believe it or not, it's the burger. The international meat industry generates roughly 18% of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions - even more than transportation - according to a report last year from the U.N.'s Food and Agricultural Organization.
Much of that comes from the nitrous oxide in manure and the methane that is, as the New York Times delicately puts it, "the natural result of bovine digestion".
Methane has a warming effect that is 23 times as great as that of carbon, while nitrous oxide is 296 times as great.
There are 1.5 billion cattle and buffalo on the planet, along with 1.7 billion sheep and goats. Their populations are rising fast, especially in the developing world. Global meat production is expected to double between 2001 and 2050. Given the amount of energy consumed raising, shipping and selling livestock, a thick T-bone is like a Hummer on a plate.
If you switch to vegetarianism, you can shrink your carbon footprint by up to almost 1.4 tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to research by the University of Chicago. Trading a standard car for a hybrid cuts only about one ton - and isn't as tasty.
B.W.
Posted in Environmental Concerns
Posted by nzvs
10-06-2007
World Environment Day - 5 June 2007
Press Release - European Vegetarian Union
The Meat Eating Environmentalist - a Contradiction in Terms?
It takes no more than a moment's thought to realise that in terms of land, water and energy it is far more efficient to live on plant foods than on the dead bodies of animals who themselves had to eat huge quantities of plants to fuel their own growth and activity.
Studies of the health of vegans (no animal products), other vegetarians (milk and eggs only) and meat eaters have also shown beyond doubt that human beings, including children, can be perfectly healthy without animal products.
What is new is the growing recognition that we are pressing the environmental limits of our planet, and the widespread acceptance by authoritative international bodies that a key reason for this is our continuing - on a world scale, still growing - reliance on animals for food.
Global warming is increasingly accepted as the critical challenge for the 21st century and the recent report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), "Livestock's Long Shadow", removes any doubt as to the importance of our food choices to addressing this issue:
"The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems at every scale from local to global."
"The livestock sector ... is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport."
Demand for meat and for livestock feed is driving the destruction of forests with accompanying massive release of carbon dioxide. The methane from ruminant animals is the other major livestock impact on greenhouse gases.
Despite the dramatic evidence of the need for change, most organisations remain convinced that livestock will always be with us. While recognising the damaging impact of livestock on the environment, the FAO
expects world consumption of milk and meat to double by 2050.
They have seen the problem, and the solution is staring them in the face, yet it seems that the world's leaders just cannot imagine a future without continued dependence on animal products.
However, if we can't both imagine such a future AND take urgent steps to make it a reality we shan't have a future at all. If we make the leap quickly enough we may yet have the luxury of looking back on the
blindness of past generations from the standpoint of the only viable future - where a meat-eating environmentalist will seem as absurd a concept as an egalitarian slave owner.
Renato Pichler
President
European Vegetarian Union
www.euroveg.eu
president@euroveg.eu
Posted in Environmental Concerns
Posted by nzvs
13-05-2007
Statement by the European Vegetarian Union
Following a debate about the problem of global hunger, it is declared that vegetarianism offers the possibility of considerably alleviating the growing threat.
Feeding large percentages of available human food crops to farm animals is unethical and represents a blatant lack of solidarity with the hungry.
The existing water shortage is aggravated by ever-larger quantities of water being used for animal husbandry, leaving less for crops.
The present high production of meat is uneconomical and can only be maintained with huge financial subsidies, leading to harsh social injustice.
The FAO report "Livestock's long shadow" states that livestock farming already generates almost a fifth of greenhouse gases, which are expected to raise the average temperature. Global warming leads to droughts, failing harvests and even more hardship for the poor.
The artificial extension of the food chain due to the transformation of grain into meat causes a huge waste if resources.
The European Vegetarian Union demands that:
--national and international decision makers stop subsidizing the production of meat and invest instead in sustainable aid programmes;
--meat packages carry warnings informing about the hazard which animal husbandry represents to the environment and food security;
--international organizations and agencies incorporate the benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle into future strategies for the fight against global hunger.
A healthy life without meat is possible, beneficial for the environment and allows a fairer distribution of natural riches.
Any policy pretending that the consumption of meat has to be the social norm is rejected.
Vienna, 1 May 2007
Renato Pichler
President
European Vegetarian Union (EVU)
Posted in Environmental Concerns
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