PROBLEMS OF
ANIMAL AGRICULTURE
Deemed as the heart of the environmental crisis. It contributes to water pollution, main causes of increasing scarce water resources and global warming. Abundant in water, the Earth has been referred to as ‘the blue planet’, however only 2.5 per cent of the Earth’s total water body is fresh water. The agricultural sector uses 70 per cent of those freshwater. Most of the water is utilised to irrigate crops that are used to feed livestock. The following graph shows the water footprint of several products from animal and vegetable origin.
The livestock agricultural sector is the faster growing agricultural sub sector globally. It employs 1.3 billion people and supplies up to 40 per cent of the total global agricultural output.The sector of livestock agriculture already uses 30 per cent of the earth’s entire land surface, and this percentage could still rise, as forests are constantly cleared to create new pastures. Most of the devastating effects of deforestation for livestock can be seen in the Amazon Forest. The Amazon rainforest is hailed as the lungs of the earth, yet 80 per cent of the rainforest is lost and turned into cattle grazing. Than any activity in the world, cattle ranching are the number one culprit to the loss bio diversity and decreasing rainforest Despite of damaging effects of livestock agriculture and the vast amounts of resources used to the expense of the environment. The demand for meat is still increasing rapidly. People are eating double the nutritional guideline for eating meat. If nothing intervenes, the global meat consumption will rise up to 76 per cent by 2050.
US MEAT CONSUMPTION
GREENHOUSE GASES EMISSION
WATER CONSUMPTION
LAND USE
GENETICALLY MODIFIED
ANIMALS
Genetically Modified Animals or GMA is one of the suggested solutions to solve the demand increase for meat by ensuring efficiency by overcoming diseases and guaranteeing certain adaptations.
Evidence shows that there is a lack of genetic diversity in commercial chickens making them more susceptible to disease. Modifying the genetic coding of an certainly may eliminate diseases, for example genetically modified salmon escaping into the wild could cause wild salmon go extinct. Encouraging genetic diversity in animals not only guarantees animals as a food source, but also conserving the lineage of the species of animals.
GMA has been a hot topic in the news for a long time. Certainly there are many speculations and myths surrounding the health implications of eating genetically modified meat. Certainly, genetically modified meat poses the same risk that genetic modification of any organism hold. Currently, there are no genetically modified meat and dairy product available in the market. Considerably, salmon is the only closest genetically modified meat available for consumption.
Growth Hormones and Growth Steroid
Before worrying about genetically modified animals, hormones and steroid saturated meat are more prevalent in the market than GMA. Despite a go signal from the government, many disagree how safe injecting hormones and steroids to animals. In an attempt to maximise output, since 1993 dairy cows has been injected a growth hormone called recombinant bovine growth hormone or rbGH. However lameness, mastitis, and reproductive problems are also linked to this hormone. In turn, more antibiotics administered to the cows, which is also excreted in the environment and also ends up in our dairy products. Beef cattle are also injected various types of hormones and as well as steroids to increase production of meat. Unfortunately this has a significant impact on to the environment. The hormones administered to the beef cattle ends up being excreted and enter the waterways.
Fish are particularly sensitive to hormones. This in turn alters their reproductive and gender characteristics. It is also believed that humans suffer detrimental damage to their endocrine systems when exposed to conventional meat.
INSECTS
Popularity of insects as a source of animal protein is increasing. Late quarter of 2015 the first insect restaurant in UK made its debut in London. The UN recognises insects as a nutritious food sources and can be utilised as a stock feed. In contrast to traditional animal protein source, insects require fewer resources such as water, food and space and therefore have a lesser pollution impact to the environment.
A recent study showed that crickets have the most efficient conversion of protein. However large operations of harvesting insects also poses the same threats as the other animal agriculture operations. It can harbour disease, fungus and bacteria, as well as salmonella, pesticides and heavy metals when exposed to animal manure.
Harvesting insects from the wild is also dangerous to human health, as we do not know what they were exposed to prior to the harvest. Insects are considered to be a food source in many cultures but currently they do not seem to be an effective solution for the high demand for meat.
IN VITRO MEAT
How do we meet the demand for meat in a humane and efficient way? In vitro meat might be the possible answer to our growing demand for sustainable meat supply. Unlike GMA, in vitro meat is fairly new. What is in vitro meat? In the basic idea, a tissue from a living animal is collected and ‘grown’ in a petri dish. This seems like a perfect solution, it is sustainable, no ethical dilemmas and no destructive impact to environment to face. Like any other offered solution, this method of producing meat also has its own cons. As mentioned earlier, in vitro meat is still fairly new. Even after 5 years of research making meat from this methods can be still be really costly, the cost of producing a five-ounce slab of meat got up to a whopping $333,000. Thirdly, an absurd amount of petri dishes and labs would be needed to grow meat to meet the demand of the consumers.
Additionally, the meat from this process needs to be ‘stretched’ and exercised as technically it essentially muscle tissue from an animal and to replicate the texture of meat, it is not as easy as ‘growing’ the meat.
PLANTS
Perhaps this is the most viable and effective way of catering the growing demand of food. All the agricultural methods and possible solutions mentioned to meet the demand for meat couldn’t match the efficiency of a plant-based diet. Adhering to a plant based diet will not only benefit the environment but also our health. The vast resources used in raising farm animal such as land and water resources, can be used directly to raise plants for humans to eat. One acre of land needed to produce 250 pounds of beef, we could grow 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, 53,000 pounds of potatoes or 30,000 pounds of carrots. The average person who eats plant-based can save 162,486 gallons of water a year, and cut their carbon footprint in half.
One Green planet suggests that changing our dietary habits can have big implications to the environment. This isn’t necessary mean you should adhere to a strict vegan diet overnight. Small little changes such as ‘Meatless Monday’ can easily cut down the demand for meat significantly. No one can deny that adhering to a vegetarians or veganism will improve and solve the destructive impact we have done to the planet and will evade the future catastrophic consequence if we continue living in an unsustainable way.
