April 22nd, 2008
Food miles don’t feed climate change - meat does
That locally-produced, free-range, organic hamburger might not be as green as you think.
An analysis of the environmental toll of food production concludes that transportation is a mere drop in the carbon bucket. Foods such as beef and dairy make a far deeper impression on a consumer’s carbon footprint.
Visit the NewScientist website for the full article.
Brian says:
I have to say that I found the argument a little hard to follow. Trying to confuse the issue by getting in digs about eating meat don’t really help - the majority (UK at least) still eat meat and probably have little intention of changing that.
Surely the problem lies in the over-bureaucratic control of cattle and the rules governing local slaughter etc. Surely it must be better for all of us to eat local produce whether that is red meat, poultry, dairy or vegetable, the report does mention that but doesn’t take into account the ludicrous transportation of cattle to slaughter when comparing food miles.
Switching to a fully seasonal and local diet would reduce emissions even further, again this isn’t even mentioned…
Cheers
Brian
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Ed Milton says:
Brian’s comments ring some truth but they don’t address the whole issue. It’s true that one of the biggest problems would be to get a population (or large chunk of it) to voluntarily change their diet but this doesn’t change the fact that animals are inefficient protein convertors and that the farming/food industry is the biggest sector regarding carbon emissions.
The worst is beef - it is generally accepted that it takes around 10kg of plant protein to create 1kg of beef protein, and then there’s the amount of water used to grow the crops to feed to the cattle and used in the slaughtering process etc. Other animals fare a little better but it is clear that eating directly off the land (rather than eating an animal) is a more efficient way of using land resources and therefore lowering one’s carbon footprint.
There has been a plethora of scientific papers and reports published over the last year or so, starting with the UNFAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organistion) report ‘Livestocks Long Shadow’ which detailed the massive environmental degradation caused through livestock farming and how the current trend in developing nations to more meat and milk is creating big problems. The UN FAO report stops short of actually saying that people should consider vegetarian diets, but that is clearly the implication.
Eating local meat may seem like a better option, but again, the reality may not be so cut and dried. More than 70% of Europe’s animal feed is imported from outside the EU (think the of food miles, think of forests that have been cut down to grow the food etc) - whilst people may think that most cattle are pasture fed from lush grass, increasingly this is not the case.
There are loads of supporting facts and figures about the environmental impact of global meat production which would horrify many people, but there isn’t room or time here to express them all.
We live in a global society and we have to think globally about food if we are to be able to feed the world. This means people in the west will have to re-address their own impact and diet in order to help people across the world.
The European Commission said: “Europe’s agriculture is capable of feeding Europe’s people but not of feeding Europe’s animals.”
Time to seriously rethink food.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:16 pm