Climate Change and Meat Consumption — Eat Vegan
The UN's top climate scientist, chairperson of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, is suggesting that people should consider eating less meat as a way of combating global warming. The IPCC collates and evaluates climate data for the world's governments.
UN figures suggest that meat production puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than transport.
"The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that direct emissions from meat production account for about 18% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions," he told BBC News.
"So I want to highlight the fact that among options for mitigating climate change, changing diets is something one should consider."
Source: BBC News
According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, total global meat production contributes 18% of greenhouse gasses, while total global transportation contributes only 13% of greenhouse gasses. The largest source globally of carbon dioxide from meat production is land clearance, particularly of tropical forest.
According to Dr. Pachuri, people should have one meat-free day a week if they want to make a personal and effective sacrifice that would help tackle climate change, and should then go on to reduce their meat consumption even further. -- Source The Guardian
Meat eating is expected to double by mid-century. This is such an easy and important step for us all to take. It's something Jane and I strongly believe in and have blogged about a number of times (see More Reasons Not to Eat Meat and Vegan Eating Trumps Eating Locally). I'm assuming most of the people who are reading this blog are vegans or are interested in veganism. But this is a message we can bring to our omivorous friends and family. Imagine the impact to the enviroment and the animals if everyone ate vegan just one day a week.
Eat Green, Eat Vegan!
I keep complaining that the news media isn't promoting vegetarianism as a viable "green" behavior. It's really frustrating to me when I read an article or watch a program which talks about the things we can do to save the environment and no one mentions eating vegan! And I'm not the only one, Alex comments:
This omission (“Go Vegan”) is fairly consistent throughout the environmentalist movement. A compilation of the most common policy proposals and suggested lifestyle alterations shows that this prescription is absent, and it’s revealing.
Today, New Scientist comes right out and says it...
In 2004, Pimentel (David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell) estimated 6 kilograms of plant protein are needed to produce 1 kg of high quality animal protein. He calculates that if Americans maintained their 3747 kcals per day, but switched to a vegetarian diet, the fossil fuel energy required to generate that diet would be cut by one third.
We're eating 3,747 calories/day on average when the recommended average is somewhere around 2,000?!?!?!!!! Wow! But I digress... Maintaining the ridiculous amount of calories consumed and switching to a vegetarian diet cuts fossil fuel used to create those calories 33%. So, for the time being, you can still have your vegan cake and eat it too, and save the environment!
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And on a completely unrelated note, thank you to all our readers who've asked us how we fared during today's earthquake. Aside from being shaken up and around, and having two sculptures fall to the floor, we survived unscathed. Don't believe everything you see on TV; it wasn't that big a deal. But we'd still prefer not to feel the ground moving under us!
Reducing Your Carbon Footprint
Jane and I are sitting here watching television. We're both actually glued to the television, and I find myself writing this post during commercial breaks. What has us so captivated? We're watching National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World
There is a segment early on, which discusses the carbon impact of the little things we do in our daily lives. The segment is authored by Jamais Cascio, and his in depth analysis on eating cheeseburgers can be found here. But the bottom line:
The greenhouse gas emissions arising every year from the production and consumption of cheeseburgers is roughly the amount emitted by 6.5 million to 19.6 million SUVs. There are now approximately 16 million SUVs currently on the road in the US. (note: The 6.5 million SUVs are the equivalent of consuming one cheeseburger per person, per week, 19.6 million SUVs corresponds to three cheeseburgers per person, per week. This relates to US consumption.)
Unfortunately, the National Geographic program doesn't drive home the point that eating lower on the food chain is a more carbon-friendly thing to do. They also don't discuss eating locally as another option to help reduce the carbon output. For more on this, see our posts "More Reasons Not To Eat Meat" and "Vegan Eating Trumps Eating Locally."
The basic premise of Six Degrees, is that things will become untenable if we remain on our current course. We have a limited opportunity of time to make effective changes. Though the program doesn't mention it, eating vegan is very easy change to make which can have a dramatic input on your carbon output.
Food Shortages and Vegan Eating
There have been a number of things written recently about the impending global food shortage. According to Time Magazine:
The world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hunger crisis in poor countries and a looming energy crisis worldwide, world leaders failed to think ahead. The result is a global food crisis. Wheat, corn and rice prices have more than doubled in the past two years, and oil prices have more than tripled since the start of 2004. These food-price increases combined with soaring energy costs will slow if not stop economic growth in many parts of the world and will even undermine political stability, as evidenced by the protest riots that have erupted in places like Haiti, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso.
NaturalNews.com reports that the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Jacques Diouf, has warned that the world's supply of food is shrinking, creating "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food."
Demand is driven not only by an increasing population, but by an increasing shift by more people to a meat-heavy diet. It takes substantially more land to produce each calorie of meat than a corresponding calorie of vegetable food, because large quantities of vegetable foods, including grains, must go to feed animals instead of feeding humans directly.
As developing nations are becoming more affluent, the rise in demand for meat is increasing.
Often hungry during a poor childhood, he can now afford meat every day. It is a trend repeated across the most populous nation (China) that is affecting global prices of grain and dairy products, and raising the risk of hunger among the world's poor as grain is diverted to fatten up animals.
On average Americans eat 129% more meat than the Chinese; Europeans consume 83% more. But in China's case the fear is not of individual consumption, but of the multiples of scale and speed of 1.3 billion people growing richer at a rate of more than 10% a year.
Source: The Guardian
One of the easiest things we can do to help end hunger is to eat vegan, at least some of the time. Yes, there are other issues that are impacting the food availability to the rest of the globe, including inflation, distribution, pollution, and water shortages... I'm not naive enough to believe that my household dietary changes can actually help anyone as a standalone action. But rising food and fuel prices are making things a little less comfortable here. Perhaps this combination will help to convince others to consider eating vegan at least a few times a week, since vegan options are often cheaper than meat based options. And as less meat is consumed, more land can be made available for farming and more grain available for human consumption.
Vegan Coffee?
Neither Jane nor I drink coffee, so we never considered this issue. But are you a vegan if you drink coffee? Technically, the answer is yes, there are no animal products involved in the growth or production of coffee, it comes from a bean... However, as we learned at the Healthy Living Blog, if you're not drinking shade-grown coffee, you may be contributing to a reduction of migratory bird populations. While drinking coffee without the "bird-friendly seal" certainly doesn't mean you're an omnivore, it does stand to reason that we, as vegans, would look for this seal of approval.
(Modern) coffee production to more closely parallel the big business agriculture model that has become so common worldwide. This resulted in a turn away from traditional coffee growing methods. Much of the coffee in Latin America started to be produced on farms where the coffee was either grown under an unnatural canopy of only a few species of mature trees or pretty much right out in the open.
This new approach to coffee growing allowed more sun to reach the coffee plant, but turned out to adversely affect the migratory bird population that winters in Latin America. These migratory birds depend on the varied natural forest ecosystem and it's insect population to survive. Growing coffee this way also introduced the use of chemical fertilizes, pesticides, and disease controlling agents. In addition, the increased sun and fertilizer created a nice environment for weed growth, so the use of herbicides became necessary.
Source : Healthy Living Blog
Simply buying shade grown coffee doesn't guarantee that you're doing the right thing either. Often farms have been repopulated with only one or two varieties of tree, which don't rival the diversity of the natural forests where coffee was originally planted.
The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has "bird friendly" criteria which, if met, result in certain coffees earning a seal of approval. According to their website, they are currently active in the following countries:Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela. Ethiopia is pending. So, make sure to look for the bird friendly logo (above right) when purchasing your coffee. If not truly vegan, it feels like the "vegan" thing to do.
More Reasons Not To Eat Pork
I used to be an avid fan of The Simpsons. I still like the show, and watch the reruns often, but I don't watch it nearly as much as I used to. That doesn't stop me from quoting the show however. One of my favorite quotes is from the Episode "Lisa The Vegetarian."
Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No!
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal!
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.
Most of my friends and family members are omnivorous. Many of them believe they are doing the "right" thing by eating organic foods. I've put right in quotations, because right is a subjective term, and organic is perceived as being a better choice than conventionally produced foods. However, it appears this isn't necessarily the case, for pork at least.
“Animal-friendly, outdoor farms tend to have a higher occurrence of Salmonella, as well as higher rates of parasitic disease,” said lead study author Wondwossen Gebreyes, associate professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State University.
Site: The PigSite.com
Wondwossen Gebreyes and colleagues at Ohio State University in Columbus tested US pigs for antibodies - telltale signs of infection - to pathogens that can also affect humans. They found traces of Salmonella in 39 per cent of pigs raised in standard indoor pens and routinely given antibiotics, but in 54 per cent of organic pigs raised outdoors without the drugs.
This poses a dilemma, says Gebreyes: giving pigs routine antibiotics favours antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but not giving them drugs means more animals carry Salmonella, which causes a million cases of food poisoning a year in the US alone.
Site: New Scientist Magazine
It gets even better... Gebreyes' team found traces of Toxoplasma in 7 percent of free-range animals but only 1 percent of conventional pigs. They also found two organic pigs infected with Trichinella. This is particularly troubling as Trichinella is virtually non-existent in livestock in the the US and Europe, although it is still found in wildlife populations. Finding this parasite in two pigs of the 600 tested is 23 times its average frequency in US pigs.
Any way you slice it, it looks like the "magical animal" isn't so wonderful. If you eat conventionally raised pork, you are contributing the overuse of antibiotics, pollution, and a more inhumane treatment of animals (among other things). If you eat "organic" pork, you are potentially exposing yourself to bacterial infection, contributing to the contamination of groundwater with pathogens such as Salmonella, and contributing to a slightly less inhumane treatment of pigs (among other things). The costs of eating meat are simply too high.
More On Tomatoes and Salmonella
Over the last few weeks we've been hearing about salmonella in our tomatoes. Here's some more news that's disconcerting. Apparently washing produce doesn't necessarily remove salmonella. According to Lauran Neergaard, AP Medical Writer, if a tomato is warm and the water rolling over its surface is cold, then the fruit will absorb that water through any opening in the skin including the stem scar. If there is salmonella present on the tomato skin, it can enter the fleshy part of the tomato and the bacteria multiplies. Ms. Neergaard suggests we should wash our tomatoes, but not in cold water.
To guard against salmonella washed into the water in turn being sucked into the tomatoes, producers often keep wash-water 10 degrees warmer than the incoming crop, says food-safety scientist Keith Schneider of the University of Florida...
In fact, salmonella may be particularly hard to prevent in a variety of crops because birds, reptiles and amphibians carry it - the same reason children should wash their hands after handling a turtle, iguana or frog. The tomato industry's guidelines already advise surrounding fields with bare soil "buffer zones" to discourage reptiles.
This is the 14th salmonella outbreak associated with tomatoes since 1990.
The FDA has launched a Tomato Safety Initiative to learn more about how salmonella gets onto and inside tomatoes. Industry practices in Virginia and Florida (the origin of several previous outbreaks) are being studied and Florida's agriculture department will begin enforcing so-called "tomato best practices" on July 1st. The FDA is also asking for the authority to set preventative controls for growers and suppliers of foods linked to repeated outbreaks of serious illness, such as tomatoes and leafy greens. Congress hasn't yet acted on that request.
Ms. Neergaard doesn't mention groundwater contamination as an issue, as discussed in this New Scientist article:
The bacteria probably come from groundwater contaminated with animal faeces, he says. Once Salmonella gets on and into a tomato, the fruit acts like an incubator. Bacteria divide even in the cool temperatures of packing houses. "If you get a few samples into the internal tissue, then they will grow for sure."
At the moment there don't seem to be any clear cut answers as to how to prevent this from happening. But for now, wash your tomatoes in warm water.
Why We’ve Got Salmonella In Our Tomatoes
After feeling all smug and superior about eating vegan these last few months (meat recall here, meat recall there), wham! tomatoes are infected with Salmonella. I wasn't planning on writing a post on this topic because it's all over the place, but today, instead of more stories about who's not carrying tomatoes, and what variety is infected, I read an explanation as to why this is happening. So here is the executive summary of the article I read in New Scientist Magazine.
Bottom line, it appears our groundwater is contaminated with animal feces. The water is used to propogate the tomatoes which then act as an "incubator" for the Salmonella.
A recent census of produce outbreaks between 1996 and 2007 counted no fewer than 33 epidemics from Salmonella-contaminated fruits and vegetables. In five of them, tomatoes were the culprit. Cantaloupe melons and sprouted seeds, such as clover and alfalfa, were also common victims. Animal pathogens tend to infect only a limited range of plants.
Yikes! And yet another reason not to eat meat! (Less meat consumed = less production = less groundwater pollution.)
Scientists postulate that since fresh vegetables are increasingly packaged and shipped in centralized locations, nationwide epidemics are becoming more prevalent. Interestingly, "cleaner" produce isn't necessarily the solution either. Harmless bacteria coat tomatoes and other produce, and that could be killed off by more thorough washing. These bacteria compete against pathogens like Salmonella. One lab found that tomatoes coated with a harmless form of a bug called Enterobacter were less likely to test positive for Salmonella. Salmonella seems to like it when there's no competitor.
So, our groundwater is contaminated by animal feces, and our crops are being propagated with this polluted water. Well, if we're processing ten billion animals annually for food here in the US, that's a lot of poop to process! It certainly stands to reason that not all of that poop is being processed effectively. According to the UN Report, Livestock's Long Shadow
the most important water-borne bacterial and viral pathogens that are of primary importance to public health and veterinary public health are:
- Campylobacter SPP
- Escherichia Coli 0157:H7 (this is responsible for last year's spinach recall)
- Salmonella SPP*
- Clostridium botulinum
- Giardia lamblia
- Viral diseases (ie - foot and mouth, swine fever)
- Livestock Parasitic Diseases
- Cryptosporidium parvum
- Microsporidia SPP
- Fasciola SPP
* This is the variety of salmonella which is responsible for the current tomato recall. Salmonella spp is present in 41% of turkeys tested in California and 50% of chickens tested in Massachusetts.
The Sierra Club reports that factory farms produce 500 million tons of animal waste per year.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, hog, chicken and cattle waste has polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states.
Clearly, we have a problem. If you'd like more information, Livestock's Long Shadow has in depth details on water pollution -- pages 144-162.
More Reasons Not To Eat Meat
So, tonight on our local news program, they did a short blurb on eating locally to save the environment. In itself, this really shouldn't bother me. However, I find myself wondering, why, if the local news is so interested in saving the planet (yes, I'm making an assumption here)... why then didn't they suggest eating vegan, or at the very least for people to cut down on their meat consumption?
It's been well documented that you can make much more of a positive impact by eating vegan, than by buying local produce. We wrote about it in our post, Eating Vegan Trumps Eating Locally, where we cite the New Scientists article Food Miles Don't Feed Climate Change, Meat Does:
To drive his point home, Weber calculated that a completely local diet would reduce a household's greenhouse emissions by an amount equivalent to driving a car 1600 km fewer per year. He assumed the car travels 10.6 km per litre of petrol (25 mpg). Switching from red meat to veggies just one day per week would spare 1860 km of driving.
The New York Times ran an article by Mark Bittman, author of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
"If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals."
Then there's Livestock’s Long Shadow, the UN report which states:
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. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential of CO2. Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport.
The University of Chicago published a study in 2006, stating that Vegan Diets Healthier For Planet/People Than Meat Diets:
“We say that however close you can be to a vegan diet and further from the mean American diet, the better you are for the planet. It doesn’t have to be all the way to the extreme end of vegan. If you simply cut down from two burgers a week to one, you’ve already made a substantial difference.”
I could go on, there's plenty of material out there. So why isn't the news media screaming for us to cut down on our meat consumption? (Can we say lobbies? or Powerful Corporate advertisers?) Come on people, this is the obvious solution to a very large problem, the facts are staring us all right in the face. Oh, that's right, the earth is flat, and there be dragons here!
How To Find Your Local Farmers Market
We received an email message from one of our readers in Sparks, Nevada last night. She asked us if we could help her find a farmers market in her neighborhood. It occurred to us, that as spoiled Californians we take the farmers market for granted. Of course there's one close by... more likely, there are several, and they're not all on the same day of the week, so we have access to fresh produce any time, even in the dead of winter (when our day time highs may not even break 60°F).
Obviously, that's not going to be the case elsewhere in the country. So, here's a link to the USDA Farmers Market Database where you can search for a nearby market in your state, county, or city. It might be worth a look, even if you think you know all the markets in your area. You might just find a gem!
And, if you don't already shop at your local farmers market, you may want to give it a try. There's nothing like just-picked produce!
– We’ve had some renewed interest in our petition to Oprah, asking her to do a piece on factory farming. We will be sending this information to Oprah on Monday, 5/19. If you haven’t already signed, please consider doing so. We can all work together to make a difference.
