3rd June 2008
Food and Climate Change
In this section of our website we're hoping to provide you with some food for thought, facts and figures and inspiration to become active. There are lots of different ideas about what we need to do to stop catastrophic climate change. Here we present some of them in the hope to stimulate a productive debate about how a sustainable future might look.
Why Vegan? Climate change, animal cruelty and health
Eating a vegan diet is a simple way to have a positive impact on the world we live in, every day. Not only is a plant based diet kinder to the planet, it eliminates suffering, saving the lives of thousands of animals whilst boosting your health. Veganism isn't just about refusing to consume animal products, it's a positive way to discover the abundance of nature.
Veganism is a climate issue, an animal rights issue and a health issue. The food we eat accounts for one third of our emissions. By rearing animals to satisfy our insatiable appetite for meat and dairy products, we are harming animals, the planet and ourselves.
VEGANISM AND THE PLANET
'Those who claim to care about the well-being of human beings and the preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for that reason alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain available to feed people elsewhere, reduce pollution, save water and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests'. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 1990
Veganism is the only viable diet for anyone who claims to care about animals or the planet. Science and economics agree that a vegan diet is more efficient and less damaging to the ecosystems we depend on. Intensive farming is destroying our land and seas, biodiversity and our atmosphere. Producing one calorie of animal protein requires more than 10 times as much fossil fuel input as a calorie of plant protein. We must acknowledge that we have finite resources on this planet and care for it. Every creature has a place, and a right to life.
Waste
Climate change is the most serious challenge facing the human race today, and live stock play a massive role in this. There are now three times as many farmed animals as people on this planet, responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share then transport.
Methane emissions cause nearly half of the planet's human-induced warming. Scientists report that every pound of methane is more than 20 times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere, which means that lower methane emissions quickly translate to the cooling of the earth.
Water
The major sources of pollution are caused by animal wastes, antibiotics, hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers, pesticides used for feedcrops and sediments from eroded pastures. 1.1 billion people have no access to safe water supplies, and 250,000,000 people live in parts of the world affected by desertification, yet agriculture uses up 70% of fresh water resources.
Excessive fishing is also destroying the planet. Virtually 70% of the world's fisheries are characterized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization as being fully-exploited, over-exploited, or depleted. Trawlers are destroying large parts of the ocean floors, and marine mammals, sea birds, sharks and many other creatures that are all part of marine biodiversity that are caught and killed as 'bycatch'.
Land
The countryside has become a machine. Through a return to small scale agriculture we can tread lightly on the earth and reconnect with the land in a sustainable way. A vegan diet requires 1/8 of the land needed to feed a meat eater. We have to make the decision: will we feed the world's people, or the animals we rear for our own consumption? We cannot feed both.
In all, the raising of livestock takes up more than two-thirds of agricultural land. In 1900 just over 10% of the total grain grown worldwide was fed to animals. In the US over 60% of grain is fed to livestock.
Producing one calorie of animal protein requires more than 10 times as much fossil fuel input as a calorie of plant protein. Large scale agriculture and the growing of moncultures for animal feed is destroying fragile ecosystems and causing mass scale soil degradation. All over the world people are displaced through famine and drought conditions, caused by our insatiable appetite for animal products in the west and the resources this requires.
Vegan Organics
Foot and mouth, BSE, health concerns, environmental worries and concerns for animal welfare have brought conventional growing methods into the spotlight. Organic growing involves treating the soil as a resource to be husbanded for future generations: feed the soil and the soil will feed the plants. However, whilst 'organic' growing avoids artificial chemicals and sprays and GMOs, it often relies on livestock manures and animal remains from slaughterhouses or fish processing.
Vegan-organics refers to any system of cultivation that maintained by vegetable composts, green manures, crop rotation, mulches, and any other method that is sustainable, ecologically viable and not dependent upon animal exploitation.
The Vegan Organic Network, have now created a 'stockfree organic growing' certification scheme which is administered by the Soil Association. Vegan-organics is a practical system of food production which enables us to treat the earth and its ecosystems with respect.
VEGANISM AND ANIMAL CRUELTY
'We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for?' George Bernard Shaw Living Graves, published 1951
There are numerous ways in which our appetite for animal products cause suffering; from vivisection to factory farm. The real cost of the food on our plate often goes unnoticed.
Factory farming is about making money. Animals are specially selected, bred to grow fast and large numbers are kept in the smallest possible space. Organic, free range farming is often promoted as an example of more sustainable farming methods. But whilst the animals involved may have more time outside of their cages, they still are ultimately slaughtered and exploited for human consumption. We need to make this suffering explicit... and face up to the grim reality that lies behind the packaged food on our shelves.
Broiler Chickens
These chicks are reared for meat, and fed growth-hormones so that at just six weeks old they are the size of an adult. Most have week bones that break under their own weight, and they slowly die from dehydration, starvation and heart disease.
Battery Hens
24 million female hens are killed daily in the UK alone; 40 million male hens that are surplus to requirements will be killed at just one day old. Upto five hens will share a cage no bigger than a microwave oven, unable to spread their wings. Birds are often' de-beaked' and forced to stand all day on wire, or in their own faeces.
Cows
Cows produce milk for a reason. They are female mammals who need to feed their young - just like us. However, cows are no longer seen as mothers producing food for their young but as milk machines for human consumption.
A cow,s milk dries up nine to twelve months after birth. To keep the milk flowing she is artificially inseminated two to three months later. The burden of pregnancy and lactation for seven months out of twelve is a massive burden on her body. Excruciating mastitis, lameness, infertility and low milk yield are a common result. A quarter of all UK cows, mostly under five years old are killed every year.
Cattle
The idyllic pastiche of grazing cows is a myth. Over 80% of cattle killed for meat are the calves of dairy cows. Many are exported to Continental veal farms, others are simply shot in the head shortly after birth, worthless by products of milk production. Beef cows allowed to graze will face painful mutilation - castration and dehorning.
Pigs
All British sausage and ham start life in windowless sheds, thick with the stench of urine and faeces. Living on bare concrete and no bedding, the mother pig is forced to continually produce babies whilst imprisoned in a tiny 'furrowing' crate. The piglets are taken away at three weeks then she is impregnated again. At just five weeks, the piglets are slaughtered.
Sheep
The most free-range of farm animals but the most controlled. To get 'spring' lambs to market as early as possible, females are manipulated into bearing too many lambs, too early in the year - often three instead of one and often in mid winter. The death toll from cold, hunger and disease is enormous with over four million lambs dying every year.
Fish
In July 2004 the European Food Safety Authority issued a report on slaughter. They concluded that "many existing commercial killing methods expose fish to substantial suffering over a long period of time."With global resources massively depleted, fish farming has developed as a lucrative industry. There are 340 salmon farms in Scotland. Salmon are carnivorous, a large proportion of the oceanic catch is caught to feed them - it takes 5 tons of fish caught from the sea to produce one ton of factory farmed salmon. Antibiotics are widely used as intensive crowding on farms spreads infection and parasites.
VEGANISM AND HEALTH
'The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of real food for real people, you'd better live real close to a real good hospital.' Neal D. Barnard, M.D., President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Washington, D.C.
It is a common misconception that meat and dairy products are required for a healthy diet. All of the vitamins and minerals found in animal products are found in abundance in plants. Eating a balanced and varied vegan diet including plenty of brightly coloured fruit and vegetables will provide all of the vitamins, minerals and protein that you need. We do not need animal products in our diets, and as humans develop increasingly unsustainable methods of animal farming, hormones, toxins, antibiotics, drugs, diseases and pollutants are used in the creation of animal products.
Dairy
Milk is promoted in the West as a wholesome, healthy drink, rich in calcium for strong bones. However, if this were true, 75% of the world's population would suffer from calcium deficiency because they do not drink milk. Human beings are the only animals which consume milk after infancy – and the milk of another species at that. It is neither natural nor healthy.
Dairy cattle are so diseased through explotation that one in three has mastitis, an inflammation of the udder. Painful, swollen udders issue copious amounts of pus which transfers to the milk. There are up to 400 million pus cells in every litre. Milk is marketed as a natural food. However, every sip of milk contains a cocktail of 11 different growth factors and 35 different hormones.
Dairy is not the only source of calcium, nor is it the best. Westerners have the highest level of osteoporosis (brittle bones) yet eat the most dairy. Green leafy vegetables, nuts, tofu, soya milk, wholemeal bread and dried fruit are all good sources of calcium. If you follow a balanced dairy-free diet, take regular exercise, and do not smoke, you will have strong bones.
Eggs
A single egg contains almost the maximum daily limit of cholesterol, strongly linked with heart disease. Eggs are a major source of salmonella food poisoning. A tenth of all food poisoning incidents in England and Wales in the 1990's were caused by eggs.
Replacing animal foods with plant foods reduces saturated fat and cholesterol and increases fibre, vitamin C and folate. Research by the World Health Organisation has shown that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables can decrease the risk of having a heart attack or stroke, protect against a variety of cancers, lower blood pressure and guard against loss of vision as you get older.
Meat
A major cause of death in some parts of the industrialised world is coronary heart disease (CHD) and saturated fatty acids have been implicated as an important dietary risk factor. Meat fat contributes to about a quarter of the saturated fatty acids in a carnivorous diet. Meat eaters often have high cholesterol.
A number of epidemiological studies have suggested a link between the intake of animal protein (and the drugs and toxins found in meat) and cancers at various sites -pancreas, breast, colon, prostate and endometrium. Animals are often fed the 'waste' products of other creatures, including their bones. Because of this practice epidemics such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathies (BSE) have occurred. Viruses such as foot and mouth have decimated the countryside and led to the slaughter of millions 'stock' animals (animals reared for human consumption).
Still hungry?
By ensuring that our food is vegan, organic, seasonal and locally produced, we can eliminate one of the major sources of methane emissions, whilst reducing animal cruelty and improving our health! Take action on the 3rd of June this year and help highlight the role of the food industry in climate change, and join the growing movement promoting positive solutions to climate change.
For more info contact: info@daysofclimateaction.org.uk, manchester@climatecamp.org.uk
USEFUL WEBSITES
Veggies Directory
Veggies climate change campaigns
Climate Camp
Corporate Watch
Vegan Organic Network
Guardian - Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel shortages bite
http://www.goveg.com/environment-globalwarming.asp
http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/environment.html
http://www.vegansociety.com
http://www.veganorganic.net/
http://www.fao.org/foodclimate/conference.html
http://www.sustainablefood.com/guide/airissue.html
http://www.vegsoc.org/
Vegan Society- Veganic Gardening
http://iwvv.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/6feeding.htm
http://iwvv.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/3foodagr.htm