needed to produce 1g of animal protein but produced from the soil in which they stand as
the rate varied from animal to animal. Broiler a result of organic decomposition.
chicken conversion rate was 16 per cent (nearly
six to one); for pork it was nine per cent (11 to A far-sighted report by European meat industry
one) and beef, six per cent (17 to 1). vets written in 1990 said the unsayable:
This inefficient form of agriculture is why “We are not able to destroy the Earth but we
livestock now demand 70 per cent of all the might change the climate in an unpredictable
world’s agricultural land as grazing or for direction – at worst endangering our survival
fodder production. as a species”.
For fossil fuel energy use by livestock, the
difference in Europe is between six and 20 Energy used on livestock farms
times greater for meat and dairy than a
vegan diet. For fish and fish processing it is for heating, lighting and
between 20 and 44 times greater than for
vegetable protein. various forms of equipment
The world is threatened not just by increased release 90 million tonnes of
CO2 but by the planet’s reduced ability to
absorb it and hold it captive in ‘carbon sinks’. CO2 per year.
Again livestock production carries much blame.
One of the greatest carbon sinks is soil itself Professor Peter Cox of Exeter University
and as the hooves and overgrazing of reported to the Royal Geographical Society in
animals degrade it, the CO2 it holds captive is 2007 that global warming could be
released. It then becomes incapable of unstoppable by 2050:
absorbing further CO2. Forests constitute
another huge carbon sink and a similar “You cannot mitigate yourself out of this
process is happening as a result of felling. problem… The choice is between a
damaged world or a future with a seriously
According to the Global Climate Project in damaged world.”
Canberra, 50 years ago, 600kg of CO2 was
absorbed for every tonne produced but in This damage will include:
2006 it was only 550kg – and reducing. square6 350 to 600 million people in Africa
There is a scientific consensus that things are square6
suffering water shortages;
a fall in agricultural yields of up to
happening much faster than predicted –
three times faster, according to the US square6
one half;
National Academy of Sciences. square6
a spread of eight per cent in arid areas;
one billion people in Asia suffering from
water shortages as Himalayan glaciers melt
A major worry expressed in the journal,
Proceedings of the National Academy of square6
and crop yields fall;
77 million people in Latin America
Science, is that once average temperatures suffering water shortages as tropical
rise by 3ºC – well within the predicted range
– the atmospheric CO2 currently absorbed by square6
rainforests become savannah;
storms, tempests and wide-scale flooding
plants will be outweighed by the CO2 happening almost everywhere.
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