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The Forum > Article Comments > Factoring meat into our carbon footprint > Comments

Factoring meat into our carbon footprint : Comments

By Brian Sherman, published 30/7/2007

Reducing meat and dairy consumption, or even better becoming a vegetarian, is an easy way to help address global warming.

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Agreed -- for once, with *everyone* posting here.

Growing crops to feed animals in cages is both wasteful and cruel. It is certainly not a less greenhouse-emission-intensive way to produce meat than grazing.

Obviously a sudden decrease in demand would not immediately translate to less livestock-raising activity and a consequent drop in methane. Changes in demand are only gradually followed by supply.

Mountains of low-grade factory-farmed meat don't do anyone any good.

But small amounts of high-quality, free-range meat, eggs & dairy products from healthy, well-cared-for animals are good for healthy humans and not particularly detrimental for the planet as a whole.

Voluntary veganism doesn't hurt anyone, but you can't compel it or sell it to everyone.
Posted by xoddam, Monday, 30 July 2007 5:36:17 PM
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A timely argument. One further point worth mentioning is the matter of protein in a vegetarian diet.

Francis Moore Lappe (who is not a vegetarian), in her cookbook "Diet for a Small Planet", first explained in plain language the size of the ecological footprint of the meat industry. She also explained the concept of complementary proteins, which she applies in her recipes (some of which I still occasionally enjoy).

The idea of protein availability is that protein uptake can be optimised by making sure that all the necessary amino acids are available in a given meal. The same principle is successfully applied to feed supplements for domestic animals. The amount of available protein available in an optimised vegetarian meal is greater than that in the equivalent weight of meat.

My reservations about a diet heavily dependent on meat have dated from the early '70's, when I first read Diet for a Small Planet. Because meat is farther up the food chain, more land is required to produce the roughly 10 kilos of vegetation needed to produce about 1 kg of meat. Bioconcentration, hormones, antibiotics, antibiotic resistant bacteria, all are greater risks from meat than from vegetation, because animals are much more like us, physiologically. Pesticides and heavy metals may also be biologically concentrated in meats far more than in vegetable foods.

As if that weren't enough, because the agriculture methods used to produce the plant and animal protein are dependent on fossil fuels, meat requires more of these resources. I expect inflation due to increased fossil fuel costs will hit meat much harder than it does vegies.

And there's also the arguments about the suitability of European meat animals for Australian land. We'd arguably be better off eating kangaroo & wallaby rather than beef and pork.
Posted by Sir Vivor, Monday, 30 July 2007 7:01:11 PM
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One need only access photographs to learn of the amount of pus contained in the milk we drink. This is a result of man's zest for using the latest technology to extract blood from a stone. We are using methods to force cows to produce much more milk than nature intended.

The mastitis in cows becomes rampant which then must be cured by antibiotics to reduce the pus sufficiently to allow humans to drink this stuff. We, as members of the food chain then ingest the "cleaned up" results. Of course, when you fall ill from a disease, you may find that antibiotics don't work for you.

Many people I know eat cured and contaminated meats daily without question. These meats, particularly bacon, contain nitrosamines formed from nitrates (carcinogens.)

These are not the ancient meats consumed by our ancestors and we have become totally gluttonous in the consumption of flesh from other species.

Chimps, whose DNA sequence is 98.5% of humans, have a diet rich in plant matter where their meat intake is just 5% of the overall diet. Of course, they do not eat factory farmed cattle or sheep which contains all the hazardous contaminants of our "innovative" farming technologies.

Some months ago, the West newspaper exposed a farmer for ill-treating his pigs. The pigs were crammed in like sardines, forced to stand in their own excrement, on top of each other and reduced to cannibalism. The defence: "It's the economy stupid!"

Despite the innovative ag-technology, we have more animal diseases and more human dietary diseases. Despite the ongoing slaughter of feral animals to make room to grow more crops - not for the poor but to feed millions of factory-farmed animals, ferals have increased.

Pests and insects have increased therefore, hazardous chemicals have increased so has salination and soil erosion and farmers are increasingly stressed.

To continue expanding farming in this arid and drought prone country makes no sense.

We "evolved" flesh-eating mammals are indeed, a psychotic mob!
Posted by dickie, Monday, 30 July 2007 7:09:11 PM
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All this talk of meat is making me very hungry. I am going to have some steak (that's slaughtered cow), wrapped in bacon (executed pork), with a couple of eggs (robbed from a chook) and washed down with some delicious and refreshing milk (sucked from the cow without asking).

"Chimps, whose DNA sequence is 98.5% of humans, have a diet rich in plant matter where their meat intake is just 5% of the overall diet. Of course, they do not eat factory farmed cattle or sheep which contains all the hazardous contaminants of our "innovative" farming technologies."
They also live in trees and eat each other's fleas and lice. Relations dickie?

"In Australia, television shows such as Eco House Challenge and Carbon Cops have hit the screens and public protests with many thousands of people have hit the streets."
Come on, these shows are not that bad are they?

"Cut out beef from your diet and you'll save 1.45 tonnes of greenhouse gas a year."
Are you insane?

"if you were to switch from a normal sedan car to a hybrid car you would reduce your annual emissions by only just over 1 tonne"
What about the extra manufacturing emissions required to make hybrids.

Yet another article article with faux concern regarding the environment. In reality it is more concerned with intensive farming practices and is using the global warming "vehicle" as means to an end. They get worse by the day.
Posted by alzo, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 9:49:54 AM
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VK3AUU I hope your stomach rots from all those cheap egg and bacon breakfasts...You must be a walking cemetary!
Posted by Maisey, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 10:43:23 AM
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All this talk about how we need meat for our brains to evolve, funny it seems even with all this meat our brains are still small, narrow minded, unenquiring and unwilling to be challenged.
Posted by Sue Brown, Tuesday, 31 July 2007 1:30:27 PM
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