What if we all went Vegetarian?
10/06/2009
Experts say carnivores are causing an environmental disaster - time for the world to give up meat?
Laura Kelly
For years the idea that tucking into a burger might be up there with driving or flying in terms of the damage it causes to the environment was scarcely acknowledged, even within the green movement.
But after the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2006 study, Livestock’s Long Shadow – which showed that the livestock industry is responsible for a massive 18 per cent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions – the argument went mainstream.
The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, economist Rajendra Pachauri, has called on people to take responsibility for the impact of their meat consumption on climate change; the NHS is aiming to reduce its reliance on meat and dairy and the whole Belgian city of Ghent has declared Thursday a meat-free day.
Environmental historian and author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, Tristram Stuart says the world is just starting to catch on to the fact that current levels of meat consumption in the West are unsustainable. “Meat and dairy consumption in Europe is sustained currently by deforestation in South America because that’s where soya is grown and then shipped over the ocean to Europe and fed to livestock,” he says.
“So when we eat meat and dairy products, we are currently funding the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. That of course causes climate change and loss of biodiversity.” Stuart’s argument has been backed this week by a Greenpeace investigation accusing UK supermarkets and big brands such as Nike, Adidas, Timberland and Clarks shoes of profiting from illegal deforestation in Brazil.
Sarah Shoraka, Greenpeace campaigner, says: “Shoes, handbags and ready meals aren’t normally associated with rainforest destruction and climate change, but we’ve found a smoking gun.
“UK companies are driving the destruction of the Amazon by buying beef and leather products from unscrupulous suppliers in Brazil.
“The cattle industry is the single biggest cause of deforestation in the world and is a disaster for the fight against climate change.”
The pressure to go veggie continues to grow, but few have asked just what the impact would be should we reach the logical conclusion of this push. What would Britain look like if we all went vegetarian?
Liz Falkingham, director of communications for the National Farmers’ Union, says countryside as we know it only exists because of sheep and cows. “Livestock production plays an absolutely critical role in maintaining the look of the countryside that we all take for granted,” she adds.
As evidence of how the landscape would fare without sheep and cows, Falkingham looks back to the foot and mouth crisis in 2001, when huge numbers of livestock were culled and areas of the Lake District “were absolutely devastated”. “It had a very profound impact on how that area looked,” she says. “It had a knock-on effect on things like tourism and leisure because people enjoy the countryside as it is.
“It is that way because of farming, not in spite of farming. It you didn’t have large numbers of sheep and cattle in the uplands you’d find that the heather and the bracken would take over. The countryside would not look as nice.”
Tourism in the Lake District was indeed hit by foot and mouth, although that may have been as much due to the closure of thoroughfares and the fear of disease as the overgrown look of the place.
Former UK chief scientist and director general of the World Conservation Union, Sir Martin Holdgate questions whether the farming lobby are correct to characterise a countryside without animals as a “wilderness”.
At the time of the crisis, he said: “I sympathise with those who have suffered the consequences of foot and mouth disease, but these claims are simply untrue. Had we inherited Lakeland as it was before its settlement by pastoral and agricultural people some 5,500 years ago, it would be a land of unpolluted lakes, teeming with fish and rich in waterfowl.
“Ospreys would breed in trees around the shores. Forests, dominated by oak, would mount the valley sides. There would be beavers in the streams and eagles would nest on the high crags. The Lakeland countryside we cherish today is an artefact, and in biological terms an impoverished one. Would it be a disaster if, following the sad loss of many hefted flocks, farmers decided not to restock? The ecosystems, eaten out of existence by the sheep, would slowly begin to reclaim their ancient realm.”
The argument over aesthetics may come down to personal taste, but Falkingham argues that highland sheep are a productive use for a landscape that cannot support any crops, thus fulfilling a necessary function in feeding the nation.
True, says Stuart, whose family is involved in just that sort of farming, but if we ate less meat there would be huge efficiency savings in the amount of land we would need.
According to the US Department of Agriculture and the UN, using an acre of land to raise cattle for slaughter yields 20 pounds of usable protein. According to campaign group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, that same acre could yield 356 pounds of protein if soybeans were grown.
“At the moment around a third of the world’s arable land is used to grow fodder. If we cut down on our meat and dairy production the demand for deforestation would decrease and the land could be used for something else,” says Stuart.
Provided enough food had been produced to supply the population, Stuart says, there might even be a case for turning this spare land into forest – which would, in turn, soak up more CO2 and help further in the battle against climate change.
Although Stuart says it is essential we in the West drastically cut down our meat and dairy consumption if we want to address climate change, he does not go so far as to say we should all become vegetarian. “If we’re to avoid the environmental catastrophes that we’re causing at the moment we need to eat a lot less meat,” he says.
“But there is no fundamental environmental reason why people can’t eat some meat and dairy, in fact you want some livestock in your mixed-farming system to produce manure, but it’s a lot less than what we’re eating at the moment.”
For Falkingham, even cutting back on meat consumption would be a step too far – she fears a devastating impact on rural economies.
“Farming is at the heart of a rural town or village and when you start destroying livestock farming in those areas, then it has knock-on consequences. You’ll have less children going to local schools and less people there for local shops,” she says.
Despite the NFU’s doubts, there are some farmers who choose to run their businesses without animal products. At the Vegan Organic Network they disagree that animals are necessary to our farming system. Sally Ford, the organisation’s press officer, points to Tolhurst Organic Produce in Berkshire – the first farm in the world to be awarded the Stockfree Organic Symbol – as an example of how it is possible to run a functioning, profitable business on vegan and green principles.
Iain Tolhurst, affectionately known as Tolly, avoids all artificial chemical products, such as synthetic fertiliser and pesticides, as well as shunning animal manures and slaughterhouse by-products – all commonly used in commercial farming.
Yet he still manages to produce 120 tonnes of vegetables each year from 17 acres of fields, a two-acre walled garden and 17,000 sq ft of tunnels and glasshouses. The vegetables are then sold to around 400 local families. When The Big Issue catches up with Tolhurst he is in the middle of the busiest week of the year and in the field bringing in his seasonal crops. With only a few minutes to talk, he had just about enough time to say he has found success in working with the natural environment in a way that is scorned by conventional farmers.
He is helping to preserve the habitats surrounding his holding – including river meadow, chalk downland, arable fields and pastoral fields with beech and oak woodland – and to increase biodiversity. “Growing food for local families on a site which it’s reckoned has been used for horticulture for a thousand years,” says Ford, “Tolly is setting the standard for the next thousand years.”
Tolhurst may be in the minority at present, but soon the NFU may have to take notice of his radically different way of farming. The public pressure around climate change is continuing to grow and sooner or later something is going to have to give. After all, as Stuart points out: “You can’t have an economy on a destroyed planet.”
For years the idea that tucking into a burger might be up there with driving or flying in terms of the damage it causes to the environment was scarcely acknowledged, even within the green movement.
But after the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2006 study, Livestock’s Long Shadow – which showed that the livestock industry is responsible for a massive 18 per cent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions – the argument went mainstream.
The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, economist Rajendra Pachauri, has called on people to take responsibility for the impact of their meat consumption on climate change; the NHS is aiming to reduce its reliance on meat and dairy and the whole Belgian city of Ghent has declared Thursday a meat-free day.
Environmental historian and author of Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, Tristram Stuart says the world is just starting to catch on to the fact that current levels of meat consumption in the West are unsustainable. “Meat and dairy consumption in Europe is sustained currently by deforestation in South America because that’s where soya is grown and then shipped over the ocean to Europe and fed to livestock,” he says.
“So when we eat meat and dairy products, we are currently funding the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. That of course causes climate change and loss of biodiversity.” Stuart’s argument has been backed this week by a Greenpeace investigation accusing UK supermarkets and big brands such as Nike, Adidas, Timberland and Clarks shoes of profiting from illegal deforestation in Brazil.
Sarah Shoraka, Greenpeace campaigner, says: “Shoes, handbags and ready meals aren’t normally associated with rainforest destruction and climate change, but we’ve found a smoking gun.
“UK companies are driving the destruction of the Amazon by buying beef and leather products from unscrupulous suppliers in Brazil.
“The cattle industry is the single biggest cause of deforestation in the world and is a disaster for the fight against climate change.”
The pressure to go veggie continues to grow, but few have asked just what the impact would be should we reach the logical conclusion of this push. What would Britain look like if we all went vegetarian?
Liz Falkingham, director of communications for the National Farmers’ Union, says countryside as we know it only exists because of sheep and cows. “Livestock production plays an absolutely critical role in maintaining the look of the countryside that we all take for granted,” she adds.
As evidence of how the landscape would fare without sheep and cows, Falkingham looks back to the foot and mouth crisis in 2001, when huge numbers of livestock were culled and areas of the Lake District “were absolutely devastated”. “It had a very profound impact on how that area looked,” she says. “It had a knock-on effect on things like tourism and leisure because people enjoy the countryside as it is.
“It is that way because of farming, not in spite of farming. It you didn’t have large numbers of sheep and cattle in the uplands you’d find that the heather and the bracken would take over. The countryside would not look as nice.”
Tourism in the Lake District was indeed hit by foot and mouth, although that may have been as much due to the closure of thoroughfares and the fear of disease as the overgrown look of the place.
Former UK chief scientist and director general of the World Conservation Union, Sir Martin Holdgate questions whether the farming lobby are correct to characterise a countryside without animals as a “wilderness”.
At the time of the crisis, he said: “I sympathise with those who have suffered the consequences of foot and mouth disease, but these claims are simply untrue. Had we inherited Lakeland as it was before its settlement by pastoral and agricultural people some 5,500 years ago, it would be a land of unpolluted lakes, teeming with fish and rich in waterfowl.
“Ospreys would breed in trees around the shores. Forests, dominated by oak, would mount the valley sides. There would be beavers in the streams and eagles would nest on the high crags. The Lakeland countryside we cherish today is an artefact, and in biological terms an impoverished one. Would it be a disaster if, following the sad loss of many hefted flocks, farmers decided not to restock? The ecosystems, eaten out of existence by the sheep, would slowly begin to reclaim their ancient realm.”
The argument over aesthetics may come down to personal taste, but Falkingham argues that highland sheep are a productive use for a landscape that cannot support any crops, thus fulfilling a necessary function in feeding the nation.
True, says Stuart, whose family is involved in just that sort of farming, but if we ate less meat there would be huge efficiency savings in the amount of land we would need.
According to the US Department of Agriculture and the UN, using an acre of land to raise cattle for slaughter yields 20 pounds of usable protein. According to campaign group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, that same acre could yield 356 pounds of protein if soybeans were grown.
“At the moment around a third of the world’s arable land is used to grow fodder. If we cut down on our meat and dairy production the demand for deforestation would decrease and the land could be used for something else,” says Stuart.
Provided enough food had been produced to supply the population, Stuart says, there might even be a case for turning this spare land into forest – which would, in turn, soak up more CO2 and help further in the battle against climate change.
Although Stuart says it is essential we in the West drastically cut down our meat and dairy consumption if we want to address climate change, he does not go so far as to say we should all become vegetarian. “If we’re to avoid the environmental catastrophes that we’re causing at the moment we need to eat a lot less meat,” he says.
“But there is no fundamental environmental reason why people can’t eat some meat and dairy, in fact you want some livestock in your mixed-farming system to produce manure, but it’s a lot less than what we’re eating at the moment.”
For Falkingham, even cutting back on meat consumption would be a step too far – she fears a devastating impact on rural economies.
“Farming is at the heart of a rural town or village and when you start destroying livestock farming in those areas, then it has knock-on consequences. You’ll have less children going to local schools and less people there for local shops,” she says.
Despite the NFU’s doubts, there are some farmers who choose to run their businesses without animal products. At the Vegan Organic Network they disagree that animals are necessary to our farming system. Sally Ford, the organisation’s press officer, points to Tolhurst Organic Produce in Berkshire – the first farm in the world to be awarded the Stockfree Organic Symbol – as an example of how it is possible to run a functioning, profitable business on vegan and green principles.
Iain Tolhurst, affectionately known as Tolly, avoids all artificial chemical products, such as synthetic fertiliser and pesticides, as well as shunning animal manures and slaughterhouse by-products – all commonly used in commercial farming.
Yet he still manages to produce 120 tonnes of vegetables each year from 17 acres of fields, a two-acre walled garden and 17,000 sq ft of tunnels and glasshouses. The vegetables are then sold to around 400 local families. When The Big Issue catches up with Tolhurst he is in the middle of the busiest week of the year and in the field bringing in his seasonal crops. With only a few minutes to talk, he had just about enough time to say he has found success in working with the natural environment in a way that is scorned by conventional farmers.
He is helping to preserve the habitats surrounding his holding – including river meadow, chalk downland, arable fields and pastoral fields with beech and oak woodland – and to increase biodiversity. “Growing food for local families on a site which it’s reckoned has been used for horticulture for a thousand years,” says Ford, “Tolly is setting the standard for the next thousand years.”
Tolhurst may be in the minority at present, but soon the NFU may have to take notice of his radically different way of farming. The public pressure around climate change is continuing to grow and sooner or later something is going to have to give. After all, as Stuart points out: “You can’t have an economy on a destroyed planet.”
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