Meat Free Week

This week is World Meat Free Week. It began on June 17, and is going until June 23rd. Cutting meat from your diet is more than just not participating in the slaughtering of animals for our consumptions.

Eric Holt-Gimenez wrote an article in Huffpost called "Feeding the World Without Destroying It", in which he states that greenhouse gas emissions are a major cause to global warming. Fossil fuel and chemical-based agriculture produces high levels of GHG. These factory farms are growing on a large scale and the reason behind it is corporate consolidation, some examples being Monsanto and Bayer, who are waiting for approval from Trump administration "for the biggest agribusiness merger in history that will give them a third of the global seed market and a quarter of the global pesticide market." Holt-Gimenez says these agricultural systems require an increasing dependence on fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive technologies.

Agroecology is a solution to this. It offers transformative solutions to climate change and world hunger, which is one reason for industrial-scale factory farms, by "combining traditional knowledge with today's cutting-edge science for sustainable agriculture" says Holt-Gimenez. Agribusiness developments hurt farmers by substituting them with more efficient technologies, tied to fossil fuel-based agricultural economy. So, agroecological practices not only "increase resiliency to climate change by replenishing local resources such as soil fertility, water tables, species biodiversity, and carbon capture," it also helps to keep family farmers on the land, while preserving their community and ensuring their livelihood.

But even livestock itself is producing more GHGs, than all global transportations combined, says Holt-Gimenez, as 80% of the expansion for livestock industries comes from industrial-scale factory farms.

H. Charles J. Godfrey et al. writes an article on Sciencemag, titled, "Meat Consumption, Health, and the Environment." Godfrey et al. write that meat consumption is rising annually along with the growth of the human population. As a result, there are negative consequences for "land and water use and environmental change."

Meat may be a good source of energy and essential nutrients, such as iron, zinc, and vitamin b12, as is stated in the article, but it can also be found in meat free foods as well. Too much meat is not only bad for your health, as high intakes can lead to colorectal cancer, but meat itself produces "more emissions per unit of energy compared with that of plant-based foods," as the production of meat is an important source of methane, leading to "high warming potential."

John J. Hyland et al. write in "The role of meat in strategies to achieve a sustainable diet lower in greenhouse gas emissions: a review" write on how meat can be damaging to the environment, and what steps can be taken to have an alternative diet to not only benefit the climate, but also your own health.

To learn more, here are the links to the articles used in this blog.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6399/eaam5324

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/feeding-the-world-without-destroying-it_b_5910a108e4b046ea176aedad

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0309174017302176

References

Godfray, H. C. J., Aveyard, P., Garnett, T., Hall, J. W., Key, T. J., Lorimer, J., . . . Jebb, S. A. (2018). Meat consumption, health, and the environment. Science (New York, N.Y.), 361(6399), 243. doi:10.1126/science.aam5324

Holt-Gimenez, E., & Holt-Gimenez, E. (2017, May 08). Feeding the World Without Destroying It. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/feeding-the-world-without-destroying-it_b_5910a108e4b046ea176aedad

Hyland, J. J., Henchion, M., McCarthy, M., & McCarthy, S. N. (2017). The role of meat in strategies to achieve a sustainable diet lower in greenhouse gas emissions: A review. Meat Science, 132, 189-195. doi:10.1016/j.meatsci.2017.04.014