Carl Le Blanc of Climate Healers best put the 26th annual Conference of the Parties or COP26 in two lines: “The cow in the room is being ignored at this Cop. Animal agriculture has been taken off the agenda and put on the menu.” Despite the ambitious goals, food systems, together with agriculture and particularly food and diet, were thought out-of-bounds during the two-week conference. Although there was a lot of talk about conserving forests and mentioning coal as the single biggest contributor to climate change, there was less about reducing meat consumption and firm pledges to change farming subsidy systems.
Why was it left out? “Energy is the fastest and most direct way to tackle methane emissions. Diet is just too controversial, we just don’t know viable solutions and the data isn’t conclusive,” Dr. Steve Hamburg of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) explained. This is despite the fact that global food production is responsible for a third of the overall planet-heating gases emitted by human activity, with the use of animals for meat causing more pollution than producing plant-based foods. According to research, animal agriculture, including livestock feed, is responsible for 57 percent of all food production emissions, with cultivation of plant-based foods accounting for 29 percent. In other words, to produce 1kg of wheat, 2.5kg of greenhouse gases (GhGs) are emitted, whereas a single kilo of beef emits 70kg GhGs.
Furthermore, animal agriculture creates more environmental concerns than it seems. Firstly, grazing animals need a lot of land, which is often cleared through the felling of forests and the areas are further cleared using fire, resulting in the release of huge amounts of CO2. Today, animal agriculture takes up over 40% of the planet. Beef and soy production, according to the WWF, are responsible for rapid deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and in many South American countries. The picture in the US is grimmer. 56 million acres of land are used to feed farmed animals, and 70% of the grain grown is used to feed them. So it’s safe to conclude that it takes 20 times less land to feed someone on a plant-based diet than it does to feed meat eaters.
Secondly, it’s not only the forests that are in danger. As land is repurposed, habitats across the world are destroyed or impacted and many species are already facing extinction or are under threat. It is estimated that about half of the planet’s habitable land is used for agriculture, with almost 77% of this used for grazing. The result is a catastrophic reduction of wildlife habitat.
Thirdly, rapid water depletion is another major concern. It requires lots of water to produce meat, and beef is the most water-intensive food. It needs two times more water to produce beef than pork and four times more to produce alternative plant-based protein sources. It is no surprise that about 92 percent of the freshwater is used for farming purposes, but one-third is used in rearing livestock and manufacturing animal products. Besides, there are hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, fertilizers and other chemicals running off into rivers, lakes and streams, causing more dead zones.
Lastly, soil is a large reservoir for carbon, absorbing it as plants and trees die, and when eroded, it releases that carbon as CO2 into the atmosphere. Animal agriculture plays a major role in the process of soil erosion. Farmed animals produce toxic excrement from the high levels of antibiotics and hormones they are given, and large scale animal farming creates unmanageable amounts of waste which is collected in cesspools.
Having considered these concerns and the fact that by the year 2050 human population will jump to 9.6 billion, the simple but inevitable question is, will the planet be able to host so many more humans? It is obvious that it would take a huge toll on the environment and the natural resources, with huge repercussions on our ecosystem and biodiversity. However, it is unfortunate that COP26 at Glasgow chose to ignore animal agriculture which should have been a major theme and declared as another biggest contributor. It is hoped that the world rethinks its stance to ensure that the big cow in the room is addressed for a better planet, and before it is too late.
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