It's that weird time of year... the
few days between Christmas and the New Year when everything is a bit odd and
nothing seems to operate as per usual. A great time for thinking up some new
year's resolutions!
I'm met with eye-rolls when I mention
'flexitarianism' and I admit I use it with a fair amount of irony (but hey,
it’s had a guardian article written about it, so it must be a thing). But
essentially it’s being semi-vegetarian - I'm trying to be realistic with my
ability to cut out something I'm so used to having in my diet, whilst also
making sure my mum doesn't think I'm going to waste away from lack of meat (I'm
sure the veggies I know have tried in vain to argue that point with concerned
relatives). I tried going full vegetarian in 2016 and I failed not long after
starting - I blame my poor cooking skills for several failures in the cooking
vegetable curry area that have made me dread using sweet potatoes. So my aim
for 2017 is to eat a higher proportion of vegetarian meals, and if possible to
limit myself to 2 portions of meat and 1 portion of fish per week. After being
introduced to the wonders of coconut milk chocolate mousse, I’m also motivated
to try and use non-dairy alternatives where possible. In terms of the meat I am
eating, my intention is to stay far away from water and energy intense beef,
the food with the highest environmental
impact.
My personal opinion is that including
meat in our diets is not an inherently bad thing - my issue with our
carnivorous diet is the excess to which society has taken it. The cruelty in
the meat industry is a response to demands for enormous amounts of cheap meat,
and the environmental costs associated with this are high. As with many things,
I believe that small steps taken by many can make a big impact, and from
developing a greater understanding of the risks posed to global biodiversity by
climate change I am more convinced than ever that society has a responsibility
to act on global environmental change.
The environmental argument for cutting down on the meat in our diets is
present in literature. Globally, annual meat consumption increased by 23 kg per
person from 1950 to 2005 (ref),
rising in accordance with many of the other measures of anthropogenic change,
and an increased consumption of beef has also been linked to regional and
global climate change. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of
the United Nations (FAO), livestock is responsible for a higher proportion of global
greenhouse gas emissions than transport. Yet the majority of environmental activism encourages
us to use the bike
rather than a car but not to cut down on how much beef we eat.
In terms of freshwater use,
meat consumption is known to be a significant contributor to water footprints,
accounting for 41-46% of overall water consumption, compared with the 8%
consumed for domestic use. Rising irrigation has been linked to increasingly
frequent incidences of water scarcity which threatens to leave staggering
numbers at risk in the future. With around 34% of agricultural land used to
produce feed for livestock there is no doubt that meat consumption has played a
large role in this.
Switching to a more plant-based diet would help to reduce these
environmental impacts. Westhoek et
al found that reducing meat, dairy and egg consumption by half in the European
Union would lead to a reduction of 40% in our nitrogen emissions and 25-40% in
our greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, nitrogen use efficiency of our food
production would increase by up to 30%. These are not insignificant figures,
and point to a large positive impact from more vegetarian diets.
But it’s not just emissions that are the issue, land degradation that reduces the available habitat for biota is in
great part caused by the rearing of livestock for meat. 26% of ice-free land is
used for grazing, and FAO outline the increased numbers of livestock as a key
factor in deforestation. Even more shocking, they report that almost a third of
terrestrial ecoregions consider livestock as a threat to biodiversity. If we
want to protect more land for biodiversity and conserve species at risk, then
cutting down on the amount we use for livestock is a sensible, and plausible,
option.
There’s a lot of evidence stacked against meat consumption, and I’m
going to try and keep this in mind every time I do my weekly shop.
Wish me luck!
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