WWF are about to release a report which urges people to cut down on meat and dairy for the sake of the environment.

According to a Daily Mail article, WWF want meat and dairy to be labelled with a warning; meat labels should read ‘1 of 3 a week max’ and milk and cheese labels should say ‘1 of 3 a day max’. According to WWF, we are over-consuming red meat by 70% and dairy by 40%.

The idea of warning labels on meat is not new. Organisations concerned about the health impacts of meat have proposed this many times. But with both health and environmental concerns becoming increasingly urgent, maybe now is the right time.

It’s also interesting to note that Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn is vegetarian. Also, Jane Kennedy resigned from her post as Minister for Food, Farming and the Environment last month and has now been replaced by another vegetarian, Jim Fitzpatrick, who also opposes hunting. This is brilliant news, especially since Kennedy refused to take any personal responsibility for her consumption habits. Read what she had to say in March about the impact of animal agriculture here.

With the most recognised and powerful international environmental groups; WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, all now adding their voice to the message that we must cut down on meat and dairy consumption, surely it’s time for change.

Congratulations to Greenpeace, their report, Slaughtering the Amazon, which highlights the fact that cattle ranching is the major cause of deforestation in the Amazon, has prompted Brazil’s top three retail groups to ban the purchase of beef originating in deforested areas of the Amazon.

Greenpeace: Destruction of the Amazon, the world’s most important forest carbon store, is being driven by the cattle sector. The Brazilian Amazon has the greatest annual average deforestation by area of anywhere in the world. The cattle sector is the key driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. According to the Brazilian government: ‘Cattle are responsible for about 80% of all deforestation’ in the Amazon region. In recent years, on average one hectare of Amazon rainforest has been lost to cattle ranchers every 18 seconds.

In reaction to this, retailers CBD, Wal-Mart and Carrefour have pledged to ban beef purchased from farms accused of deforestation. Of course, while there is still demand for beef, and as consumption grows, the farmers will have to increase their land area and this will no doubt impact the Amazon.

Also this week, a study published in Science confirmed what we all know already; that slashing and burning the forest to produce soy and cattle doesn’t help anyone but big business. The Guardian reports that “Chopping down the Amazon rainforest to make way for crops or cattle has no economic or social benefit for local people in the long term. Conservationists showed communities develop rapidly but temporarily when forests are cleared. But rates of development quickly fall back below national average levels when the loggers move on and local resources near depletion.”
Read the article here.

The word seems to be getting around; meat and dairy is bad for the environment. Hamburger lovers had better watch out, their days are numbered! There are blogs and campaigns popping up all over the place urging people to reconsider their meat eating habits. Here’s a selection of what’s going on:-

A couple of great blogs
Price of Meat
Meat the Facts

New group
Save the Human is a new group formed in Hong Kong, with a brilliant video. They have a Facebook group and are working on a new website.

New campaigns
PETA’s ‘Meat’s Not Green’ campaign started this week, with a video and one of their usual saucy demonstrations!

Viva! have launched their Eat Green campaign. Their website has lots of great resources and they have a postcard campaign urging Gordon Brown to stop importing soy to feed animals, since it is destroying the rainforests.

Friends of the Earth launched their Food Chain campaign a few months ago; it’s early days, but this is set to be one of their major campaigns.

Greenpeace have been running a soy campaign for some time, but are now turning their attention to cattle grazing in the Amazon. They have not launched a campaign yet, but watch this space!

For information on some more long running groups and campaigns, check out the ‘groups‘ page under ‘resources‘.

“Right now, huge swathes of rainforest are being cut down to feed the global appetite for beef and leather”, so say Greenpeace, following te release of their new report Amazon Cattle Footprint.

The report confirms what we have known for some time; that cattle ranching is the main cause of Amazon destruction. Brazil is the world’s largest beef exporter with a market share of 30%. The Brazilian government has plans to increase their share to 60% in the next decade which can only result in further deforestation.

As the forest is destroyed huge amounts of carbon dioxide are released, which contributes to climate change (deforestation of tropical forests is responsible for approximately 20% of the global emissions
of greenhouse gases); many of the tens of thousands of species of plant, mammals, fish and birds come under severe threat of extinction and indigenous people lose their homes. In addition to this, cattle ranching itself results in further greenhouse gas emissions (methane from the cows) and subjects many workers to slavery (cattle ranching is responsible for the highest rates of slave labour in Brazil).

Whilst Greenpeace target industry and governments to take strong action to halt deforestation, we all, as individuals can take action too. The global meat industry exists because consumers create the demand. If you stop buying meat, there is no reason for the Brazilian government to clear any more forests to produce it.

Find out more about food choices that are sustainable, equitable and environmentally responsible.

At last Greenpeace joins the vegan and vegetarian campaigning groups and tells us we should go vegetarian to reduce our carbon footprint.

The scientists from the university of Aberdeen who wrote the report rightly point out that ‘a vegetarian diet produces much less Greenhouse House Gas over a lifetime’. They go on to look at the huge amounts of grain and forage required to produce just one kg of meat, the methane produced by sheep and cows and the fact that ‘the average amount of kcal fossil energy used per kcal of meat produced is 25. This is more than 11 times that of plant-based products, with an average input/output ratio of 2.2′

The energy needed to produce one kg of sheep meat is around 20 times more than that for potatoes, chicken meat uses around 11 times more.

For individuals wishing to reduce their GHG footprint, adopting a vegetarian diet, or at least reducing the quantity of meat products in the diet, would have beneficial GHG impacts.

Read the report.