Do you like a piece of meat for dinner? I do! A delicious and tender piece of beef or crispy fried chicken, I like it. And with me many others.
World meat production has quadrupled in the past 50 years and farmed animals now outnumber people by more than three to one. In other words, livestock are being bred into existence faster than the human population. Growing production of animal products contributes to malnourishment in the developing world, global warming, widespread pollution, deforestation, land degradation, water scarcity and species extinction. All livestock over the world produce together as much CO2 as all the traffic in the world. The more animals we raise for food, the more crops are needed to feed them. The planet is not capable of feeding both increasing human and farmed animal populations.
The amount of meat we eat together may be something to worry about. Maybe we should eat less or no meat at all. But as a meat eater I hope it will still be possible to eat meat in the further, without destroying the planet. So my question is, is it possible to keep eating meat in a sustainable way.
According to one of the fattening farms in America is the only way mass production of cows on a special diet. A diet totally against my natural cows image. The cows don’t eat grass anymore, but live on bare ground and get a diet of corn, growth hormones and antibiotics. In this animal unfriendly cows are turning in to robot machines. I do not think this is the solution. Shouldn’t be there another way?
Traditional a farmer and environmental activist from England thinks there is. He explains, on the basis of a graph that there is a way that we can eat meat without it doing enormous damage to the environment. We just shouldn’t eat such enormous amounts. He explains that if we do not eat too much we actually produce the food for free. Cows and sheep indeed put grass, something edible into something edible. But how much meat would be allowed to eat in order to get to this point? You might think that amount would be very little. But it is not that bad. In this eco-friendly way we would able to eat 40 tons of beef, 110 tons of pork and 40 tons of other meat around the world. This equates to 40 kilo per person per year. This means you’re able to eat 110 grams of meat every day.
So let’s try it all together, 110 grams of meat per day and ensure together that the planet will live another day.
