Smashing it Up: Meat is an ecological disaster - the environmentalist case for vegetarianism

People adopt a vegetarian diet for a variety of reasons - concern for the environment, economic and world hunger concerns, compassion for animals, belief in nonviolence, food preferences, health, religious beliefs.  In this piece, I want to review briefly the ecological argument for vegetarianism and veganism.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations.  In 2013, the IPCC delivered its fifth report in which it presented the strongest case ever made for human-made climate change.   The reports authors had dire warnings of the consequences of failing to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions.  What I didn’t realise at the time of publication is that livestock farming is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions from human-related activities, more than the entire transport system.  In 2006 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) had published a report named Livestock’s Long Shadow.

The report collated the available data on the amount of ecological damage livestock farming causes.  The results make for very grim reading:

Livestock production, through grazing and production of animal feed accounts, for 70% of all agricultural land and its expansion is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America. Land use changes – especially deforestation due to expansion of pastures and arable land for feedstuffs – contributes a large share of man-made CO2 emissions.The sector emits 37% of anthropogenic methane and 65% of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, with 23 and 296 times the global warming potential of CO2 respectively. Livestock are also responsible for almost two-thirds of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems.

The reports authors do not hold back:

“The livestock sector may well be the leading player in the reduction of biodiversity, since it is the major driver of deforestation, as well as one of the leading drivers of land degradation, pollution, climate change, overfishing, sedimentation of coastal areas and facilitation of invasions by alien species.”

Water is becoming an increasingly precious resource. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under water stressed conditions. As well consuming a huge share of the rapidly depleting amount of available freshwater, livestock also affect the replenishment of freshwater by compacting soil, reducing infiltration, degrading the banks of watercourses, drying up floodplains and lowering water tables. Livestock’s contribution to deforestation also increases runoff and reduces dry season flows.

In light of this, the fact that it takes 13,000 to 15,000 litres to produce 1 kilogram of grain-fed beef, but only 1,000 to 2,000 litres of water to produce the same quantity of wheat becomes very significant. When we consider the fact that water shortage is exacerbated by climate change, all the signs seem to be pointing the same way.

So, livestock production is not only destroying the atmosphere and degrading the land, but it is also causing huge amounts of water pollution.  I’m sure most readers are, like me, familiar with reports of depleted stocks of fish.  If so, you won’t be surprised to read that the latest World Review of Fisheries and Agriculture report states that the proportion of commercial marine fish stocks monitored by the FAO which are overexploited, depleted or recovering stands at between 25 and 30 percent. A major study in 2006 even predicted that all commercial fisheries could die out by 2050.

 Aquaculture, or fish farms, might seem to offer a sustainable alternative until we consider the fact that many of the fish produced in them, like salmon, are carnivorous.  Where does their feed come from?  You guessed it, wild fish.  It takes 5 tonnes of wild caught fish to feed each tonne of farmed salmon. Add to this the disruption to the local food chain and the pollution caused by fish farms and they are already starting to seem less appealing. Add to this the fact that stress levels amongst the populations of farmed fish are so high that the resulting stock loss is making it a major issue for the aquaculture industry.

But what about world hunger? Don’t we need to keep farming those animals to feed the millions of starving people?  Well, demand for meat certainly is growing in developing countries, but this is exacerbating the problem because meat production doesn’t just lay a great strain on water supplies, but it also consumes vast amounts of food crops.  In the UK each year, livestock consume more than half of the 20 million tonnes of cereal grown, over 50% of wheat and over 60% of barley. Globally, one third of the world’s cereal harvest and 90% of soya is used for animal feed.  The amount of land used for grazing and for raising feed crops is so great that a typical diet requires up to 2.5 times the amount of land compared to a vegetarian diet and 5 times that of a vegan diet.  The implications for efficient land use and provision of food for a booming global population are obvious.

This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  Evidence of environmental destruction cause by livestock farming is to be found on every side, from massive pig manure spills to huge ocean ‘dead zones’ devoid of life caused by the runoff of fertiliser and pesticides.

However, is it necessary to completely end livestock farming and fishing in order to end this suicidal destruction of our planet?   Livestock’s Long Shadow, the FAO report laden with the dire news of the environmental damage caused by livestock production, specifically calls for extensive reforms of the industry rather than its abolition, even suggesting that in developed regions, especially Europe, pastures have become a location of diverse long-established types of ecosystem, many of which are now threatened by pasture abandonment. The report by Friend of the Earth “What’s Feeding our Food” calls for "An urgent overhaul of the current model, and… policy changes in the UK and Europe to help create a sustainable and equitable livestock system for farmers, consumers, and the environment”.  This is consistent with their 2009 report "Healthy Planet Eating" which urged the UK government to promote diets in which meat was only eaten sparingly.

Champions of the organic farming movement have also highlighted the beneficial effects of animal husbandry in replenishing soil, while others have pointed out that the by-products of food crop production are often used as animal feed.  This is because both grasslands and croplands produce plenty of plant biomass that is not digestible by humans and that would be simply wasted and left to decay. In addition, processing of crops to produce milled grains, plant oils and other widely consumed foodstuffs generates a large volume of by-products that make perfect animal feeds.  However, all advocate for a large reduction in the number of animals being farmed because of the destruction of pasture by intensive farming. A study from 2008 found a global food transition to less meat, or even a complete switch to plant-based protein food to have a dramatic effect on land use, resulting in a large carbon uptake from regrowing vegetation. Additionally, methane and nitrous oxide emission would be reduced substantially.

Perhaps, then, it is possible to reform and improve livestock farming, and to regulate fishing in order to reduce the environmental impact of these vast industries. However, continuing to consume meat, fish, eggs and milk at the current rate is unsustainable.  For those who do choose to continue eating meat and fish, choosing locally-sourced produce and fish from Marine Conservation Society approved sustainable fisheries would lessen the environmental impact

Our world is facing extremely serious challenges to biodiversity, water supplies and, food supplies, as well as the growing spectre of climate change.  Considering that a non-vegetarian diet consumes 2.9 times more water, 2.5 times more primary energy, 13 times more fertilizer, and 1.4 times more pesticide than a vegetarian diet, as well as using 2.5 times more land, we can safely conclude that a plant-based diet causes far less damage than one including meat, fish, eggs and milk. Climate change is a problem to which there is no one solution, but adoption of a vegetarian or vegan diet brings benefits on so many fronts that it may be the closest thing to a silver bullet we could ever hope to find.