Rajendra Shelke, Ph.D.
Sipna's College of Engineering & Technology, Amravati, MS-444607, India
Email: rajendrashelke@rediffmail.com
Dr. Henning Steinfeld, senior official of United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), has stirred up a hornets' nest when he declared that the meat industry is “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems" and that "urgent action is required to remedy the situation”. He was simply reiterating the findings of FAO’s four-hundred-page report “Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options”, which scientifically evaluates total impact of the livestock sector on environmental problems and possible technical and policy approaches to mitigation.
Those FAO’s findings are based on the “Greenhouse effect” that regulates the temperature of atmosphere and keeps our globe warm. The process is simple! The Sun gives energy to the earth in the form of light & heat and the earth returns this energy back to space via light reflection and heat emission. Some atmospheric gases usually referred to as Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) absorb a part of this heat flow and trap it in the atmosphere, maintaining the earth’s average temperature at present-day’s 150C. Had GHGs not been there, the earth’s temperature would have been – 60C, instead of 150C.
The principal GHGs that can trap heat in the atmosphere most effectively are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons. Methane and nitrous oxide are most powerful global warming gases. Methane is 21 times more dangerous in trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2, whereas nitrous oxide has 296 times the global warming potential of CO2. Concern to environmentalists is that methane and nitrous oxide have long lifetimes. Once emitted, methane and nitrous oxide can remain in the atmosphere for 9-15 years and 114 years respectively. The scientific studies show that human activities have given rise to unprecedented concentrations of CO2 and methane, leading to excessive heat trapping in the atmosphere resulting in present day global warming.
The FAO’s report focuses on the anthropogenic processes of climate change and the role of livestock in those processes. It is now well-established that livestock activities release considerable amounts of GHGs in the atmosphere. Besides breathing out CO2 in respiration, ruminants burp significant amount of methane as a part of their normal digestive process, which involves microbial fermentation. In rumen, enteric fermentation converts a fibrous feed into digestible products, with methane as a bye-product. Animals exhale this methane gas in the air. In addition, animal manure also releases GHGs such as methane, nitrous oxides, ammonia and CO2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated that slightly more than half of the current methane flux is anthropogenic.
Approximately 56 billion land animals are raised and slaughtered throughout the world in a year for producing meat for human consumption. Surprisingly, some two-third of them are grown and killed on industrial factory farms. These factory farms are places of cruelty and mass confinement of cattle in an unnatural environment and are the sources of waste and GHGs. The meat is grown here quickly by feeding livestock unnatural diets of high protein feeds including corn and soy grains, not the grass for which their stomachs are made. These assembly-line meat factories consume huge amounts of energy, pollute water sources, generate fairly large GHGs, need large amounts of corn, soy and other grains, and destroy vast areas of the world’s tropical rain forests to grow these grains. The tragedy is that the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens, when some 800 million people on our planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition. A best example of unsustainable development approach!
As per the FAO report, livestock sector is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, leading to increased GHG emissions, land degradation, water pollution, and health problems. It is the single largest contributor to GHGs. Quantitatively, the overall livestock activities contribute as much as one fifth of the world’s anthropogenic GHGs—that’s a bigger share than the entire transport sector. Besides enteric fermentation and manure, other livestock activities like production and transport of cattle feed & chemical fertilizer, land use and land use change including deforestation for pasture & feed crop land, and processing and transportation of animal products are responsible for such a high amount of anthropogenic GHG emissions. The FAO report estimates that livestock contributes to about 9% of global anthropogenic CO2, 37% of methane, 65% of nitrous oxide and 64 % ammonia gas emissions. This is a shocking finding! We never thought that cows and pigs burp such a high amount of methane – a most dangerous global warming gas.
Another concern is that global demand for meat has multiplied many-fold in recent years. The meat consumption quadrupled, and poultry consumption increased 10-fold over last 45 years. In the next 50 years, world meat consumption is estimated to double and persistent growth in livestock production to meet this demand would generate GHGs at alarming rate. In US alone, nearly 10 billion animals would be grown and killed in a year. This would cause tremendous increase in demand for animal feed, especially corn and soy. It could have tragic consequences for the world’s poor population, besides profound environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed.
“The Synthesis Report which is part of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) clearly stated, “There is also high agreement and medium evidence that changes in lifestyle and behavior patterns can contribute to climate change mitigation across all sectors. Management practices can also have a positive role." In my view, an important component of lifestyle changes relates to changes in diet which, in actual fact, may bring about an improvement in human health. In the case of meat consumption, there are benefits not only to the individual who reduces consumption of meat, but clear advantages in terms of reducing GHG emissions.”
Thank you Dr Pachauri for showing us the way to save the planet! Certainly, individuals can make a difference in reducing the emissions of GHGs by simply consuming less meat, say by giving up meat at least one day a week and make the planet healthier. Our campaigns for going for recycling, switching off lights and driving a bicycle would not yield significant reduction in GHGs, unless we reduce the amount of meat we eat. The need of the hour is to run a global campaign encouraging people to have at least one meat-free day per week. It is good for them, planet and animals.
One can expect a positive response to a “Meat-Free-Day” campaign, because many people realize that something really serious needs to be done in this regard. Here, I remember the discussion that I had with a European scientist whom I met in a seminar held in Bangalore. Looking at my plate during a dinner party, he asked me:
"Don't you eat meat?"“No, never. I am 100% vegetarian", I answered.
"Then, where do you get proteins from?"
“I have to ask the lamb. O Lamb! Where did you get proteins from?", I said jokingly.
Both of us burst into laughter. He continued his queries . . .
"Is it religious? . . . that you don't eat meat"
"Yeah,. . . . Moreover, it is a principled stand I took."
"Principled stand!!", he exclaimed.
Perhaps he was finding it difficult to understand how eating habits can have a principle as a basis. I answered gently:
"Yeah. . . I strongly believe that I have no right to take away somebody else's right to live for my sake of living".
He stopped chewing a bite of chicken piece. There was a long silence. . . .Finally, he swallowed whatever he had in mouth and asked quietly:“What is the religious reason?”
“As a religious man, I must be faithful at least to my own beliefs ….my feelings of love and compassion to all. “
I paused for a few moments and then continued…“How can I appreciate creator’s creation, if I become the cause of its destruction?”
The scientist got up and went away. To my surprise when he came back his plate was full of Indian veggie's cuisines. I looked at him…. straight in his eyes. He smiled mischievously. I understood the meaning. I could not stop my self to give him a smile in return.
Acknowledgments: This article is drawn on the FAO’s report as well as a flurry of other recently published studies and references therein, demonstrating the effect of intensive livestock production on global warming and on people’s health. I am grateful to Ms Nicola Hague (UK), The International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy for her comments.
References
1. Livestock's Long Shadow - Environmental Issues and Options: Food and Agriculture Organization, 2006, http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
2. RK Pachauri’s blog on Lifestyle changes for a healthy planet. http://blog.rkpachauri.org/blog/4/Lifestyle-Changes-for-A-Healthy-Planet.htm
3. Mark Bittman, Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler, The New York Times, January 27, 2008 Issue http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2
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