By Ben Mills, Senior Editor
The UK is one of the biggest meat eaters in the world, but in recent years concern about the impact of eating meat on ourselves, humanity and the planet has led to a decline in meat sales
The UK is one of the biggest meat eaters in the world, but in recent years concern about the impact of eating meat on ourselves, humanity and the planet has led to a decline in meat sales. 40% of Britons say they are trying to reduce their meat consumption, and this year, around 300,000 people are taking part in the aptly named Veganuary challenge to go vegan for the entire month of January. A Quorn version of a Greggs steak bake and a chicken free KFC chicken burger are just some of the products which have went on sale this month as companies try to cater for and capitalise on the growing number of people cutting animal products entirely from their diet.
The vegan lifestyle, which involves not consuming or using any animal products (including meat, fish, eggs and dairy) has increased massively in popularity over the last few years. It's often billed as a more ethical, climate friendly and healthy diet to eating meat or even vegetarianism. So should we be abandoning meat in favour of a plant based diet?
The benefits of veganism are numerous. Perhaps the most obvious is that the less meat the world consumes, the less common the inhumane practices often seen in the modern meat industry become. Practices in farms and abattoirs are often overly callous and cruel. Livestock are kept in deplorable conditions with little care for their quality of life; cattle raised for beef are often kept in tiny cages barely bigger than their bodies in order to reduce their movements, which farmers say prevents muscle from developing, leading to higher quality meat. The cows are barely a few months old before they are killed for their meat.
Besides the ethical arguments, it's no coincidence that the rise in the number of people adopting a plant based diet has coincided with a greater anxiety about the climate crisis. The meat and dairy industries are heavy contributors to global emissions of greenhouse gases, with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimating that around 14.5% of all emissions of such gases are caused by the rearing of livestock like cows and sheep, with release of methane a particular concern.
This shockingly high figure doesn’t even take into account the emissions of gases caused by the transportation, processing and distribution of meat and dairy products. Deforestation of biodiverse habitats to make room for rearing livestock also has a huge impact on the planet; an estimated 5800 square kilometres of the Amazon rainforest, an important carbon sink, are cut down every year for cattle farming.
It’s clear that the meat and dairy industries have a significant responsibility for the intensification of the climate crisis. Greenhouse gases enhance the greenhouse effect, trapping heat reflected from the Earth’s surface in the atmosphere and therefore causing it to gradually heat up. The ecological effects of the process are disastrous and now widely known. The evidence of climate change is right in front of us; bushfires continue to rage across Australia, while famine caused by drought kills thousands across east Africa every year. With researchers at Oxford University suggesting that if everyone in the world adopted a vegan diet global food related emissions would drop by 77%, is it time we gave up meat to save the planet?
The benefits of veganism don’t just extend to the whole planet but to our own health and wellbeing too. Meat (processed meat especially) has often been linked to a number of diseases like coronary heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes. Cutting out meat completely from our diets would almost certainly lead to a reduction in deaths from these illnesses - up to 8.1 million fewer per year, according to research.
Not only this, but veganism may be an answer to the crisis of world hunger. Rearing livestock takes up a large amount of land, which could be used to grow crops to feed malnourished communities if everyone began eating a vegan diet. Harvard University researchers suggest an extra 40 million tonnes of food would be enough to eliminate the worst hunger in the world, and yet 760 million tonnes of food are grown to feed livestock every year. It seems clear then, that eating less meat would mean more food for the hungry.
The benefits of veganism seem endless. Of course, the lifestyle has its drawbacks, as Rachael Simm looks at later in the week in The CLV Phoenix, but at its core, the idea of eating only non-animal products is one way to care for our health, our animals and our planet.
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