Got Milk? Got any sense??

How much did this ad cost?

Heidi Klum is the latest celebrity to be lured in to starring in the National Dairy Board campaign Got Milk?

It really is shocking how many celebrities are willing to put their names and faces to this campaign. What is more distubring is the amount of money put in to promoting milk in the US.  Since 1983 the National Dairy Board and the National Fluid Milk Board have spent over $1.1 billion dollars on advertising. Despite this massive spending, consumption of milk has fallen continuously since 1978. (More)

Isn’t it about time that the milk industry admitted defeat and stopped wasting all this money on advertising? How about spending it on initatives to combat the global warming caused by the dairy industry due to methane and nitrous oxide emissions? How about not producing dairy anymore and instead putting the vast resources of land, water, energy and grain towards feeding the world’s hungry and helping them overcome poverty?

Here in the UK, it’s not looking good for the dairy industry either. Mansel Raymond, Pembrokeshire dairy farmer who chairs NFU Cymru’s Milk Board and is a director of the farmers’ cooperative First Milk, said this week that the number of dairy farmers in Wales has dropped from 4,270 in 1998 to its present level of 2,143 because of rising costs and low returns.

In light of the new UK government targets to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, I cannot see that the meat or dairy industries can continue as they are.  These industries have been damaging our planet for decades and now it is time to put that right.

Methane levels rising faster than CO2

New research has shown that the methane emissions have been rising at a much faster rate than carbon dioxide -  over the lasy 250 years, CO2 has increased by 31% but methane has increased by a staggering 149%. As methane lasts longer in the atmosphere it also has a higher global warming potential and has already caused a fifth of the global warming experienced since 1750.

The university of Portsmouth found that a herd of 200 cows produce annual emissions of methane equivalent to driving a family car more than 100,000 miles (180,000km) on more than four gallons (21,400 litres) of petrol.

The main source of methane? Animals.

It’s no wonder the National Farmers’ Union is getting a little nervous, they have already stated that the new targets for 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions will make it neccessary for massive reductions in meat production. This new research is not going to do them any favours.

Go vegan for World Food Day

Professor Tim Lang, advisor to the Government on issues such as food security and obesity, marked the UN’s World Food Day with a speech urging people to cut down on meat and dairy.

He said “the world could be eating its way to starvation”, by eating foods which are unsustainable and inefficient because of the amount of resources they require to produce them. In particular, meat and dairy require more resources than any other foods.

He added, “We must transform ourselves from being passive consumers to active consumers. We need to lobby government for change, eat less meat and fewer dairy products, and garden more“.

There are many recommendations for how we can reduce our carbon footprint, and changing our diets is by far one of the easiest. You can do it right now and it involves no extra cost, in fact it is cheaper. Costs associated with solar panels, hybrid cars, insulating your home, replacing electronic goods with energy efficient ones, buying a bicycle etc do not come in to it. All it involves is walking down a different aisle in the supermarket.

And what’s more, if you can start by cutting down and then move to a completely meat-and-dairy-free diet, you can massively reduce your carbon footprint.  The impact is real, and far more significant than the small fixes, such as turning lights off, car pooling orturning the thermostat down. A vegetarian diet is responsible for 50% less greenhouse gas emissions than a meat-based diet, and a vegan diet is responsible for 87% less! (read more). Why not give it a go?

Massive reductions in meat and dairy required to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets

The National Farmer’s Union have got all upset this week as they claim that the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation to the Government will not be possible without a massive reduction in livestock production.

The Climate Change Committee’s recommendation is to increase the target for greenhouse gas reduction from 60 to 80% and also to include all greenhouses gases in the targets, such as methane and nitrous oxide which are maining produced by the agricultural sector.

Also this week, a former head of the NFU, Hugh Richards, admitted two dozen breaches of animal welfare laws. Richards was awarded an OBE in 1999 for his services to agriculture and was described as “pillar of the community”. Hmmm, tell that to his animals.

So, not a good week for the NFU. But they best get used to it, climate change isn’t going away any time soon, and neither is the country’s sharp eye of animal cruelty.

DISASTER for the Amazon

The World Bank has lent $90 million to Bertin Ltda, Brazil’s second-largest beef processors.

According to Mario Menezes, of Amigos da Terra, Brazil looses 1.8 million hectares of Amazon forest every year, and around 70 and 80 per cent is because of cattle ranching. Brazil already exports 300,000 tonnes of beef per year (41% of which from the Amazon) which is more than any other country.  This injection of cash in to the cattle industry will create further destruction.

The Amazon is home to 75 million cows and Bertin Ltda slaughters up to 5,400 cows a day. However, with the use of this loan and others, they aim to double their capacity, which includes expanding their facility in the heart of the most deforested area of the Amazon. By expanding this slaughter house, they will, without question, encourage farmers to clear more forest to raise more cattle. Much of the land in that area is illegally cleared.

The Amazon rainforest is home to a fifth of the world’s plant and animal species and more than 200 indigenous cultures. As the forest is destroyed, we loose hundreds of species each year, indigenous people are forced off their land, the impacts of poverty is exacerbated, and carbon is being released in to the atmostphere – a major contributer to climate change. We are loosing the ‘lungs of the earth’ and we will all suffer as a consequence.

Brazil’s biggest importers of beef include the UK.  And remember, one of the other main drivers of Amazon destruction is soy, 90% of which is fed to animals raised for meat in Europe and China.

Be part of the solution. Stop eating meat and dairy, and ask others to do the same. In the grand scheme of things, it’s really not so much to ask.

KFC kicks the bucket

Well, nearly… Supplier of KFC and the largest chicken producer in the US, Pilgrim’s Pride, have announced that high animal feed costs have resulted in significant losses in their fourth quarter.

Pilgrim’s Pride share price dropped by 38% earlier in the week but then plummetted another 40% – to prices lower than 2002. They are now attempting to negotiate new terms with their lenders – with the current credit crunch they’ll need a miracle to pull that off  (good luck with that then!!).

Pilgrim’s Pride chickens are fed on soy and corn. Yes, the very same soy that is the cause of rainforest destruction (just ask Greenpeace, who exposed KFC’s secret recipe of ‘of illegal deforestation, land clearing and slavery’ and renamed them Klearing Forest for Chickens).

Morningstar equity analyst, Ann Gilpin, pointed out that the entire meat industry is suffering.  She said of Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson and Smithfield Foods, “”if we liken this to a sickness, they’re all sick.”

Well, she got that right. They are all sick. Sick animals, sick people. I hope they are all closed down.

To beef or not to beef? Metro way off the mark!

The Metro published a piece yesterday about meat consumption and it’s environmental impacts. Sadly, the article missed a few important points and came to entirely the wrong conclusion!

In the article, Lawrence Alderson of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust made the arguement that ‘the IPCC is discussing places such as Brazil, which doesn’t apply to Britain very well.’ Richard Perkins, of the World Wide Fund for Nature, implied that forest clearing for livestock grazing is responsible for much of the sector’s impact on the environment. However, they both miss a vital point – cattle grazing is not the only cause of forest destruction.

Brazil in the world’s largest exporter of soy; producing 62.4 million tonnes a year using 21.2 million hectares of land (1). It is widely recognised that soy production in Latin America is fuelling forest destruction and the cause of abhorrent human rights abuses. Before anyone starts pointing their fingers at tofu burgers; take note of this startling fact – only 9% of global soy is eaten directly by people, the rest is fed to animals raised for meat and dairy (2). The UK imported 1.9 million tonnes of soy in 2004 (imagine the food miles!), over half of which is genetically modified (3). Genetically modified crops are yet to be proven as safe for consumption and have been linked to life-threatening health impacts as well as disastrous environmental consequences.

The article concludes that we should all buy ‘quality British stuff, particularly rare breeds’. This is totally impossible based on our current consumption of meat. The average Brit consumes 8 cows, 36 sheep, 36 pigs and 550 poultry birds in their lifetime (4). That means our meat habit results in the slaughter of 6,965,018 cows, 31,342,583 sheep, 31,342,583 pigs and 478,845,022 chickens every year. Where is there room for all these animals in Britain? Considering we currently import around 40% of our food (5), how can it be feasible to meet the demands of our current meat consumption by buying only British meat, let alone rare breeds?

And can someone please explain how killing our rare breeds in the name of conservation is not a total oxymoron?

We need to face facts. Meat consumption is bad for the environment and simply not sustainable. Switching to a vegetarian diet reduces our emissions by 50% and going vegan results in a reduction of a whopping 87% (6). Not only that, if we were all to become vegan we would require only 3m hectares of arable land – half the current amount of land we use for food production (5), thus making it far more feasible for Britain to sustain itself. If that’s not enough, if we all became vegan, the 760 million tonnes of grains we feed to animals globally every year could be fed to the 820 million starving people in the world. 760m tonnes would cover the global food shortage 14 times over (7).

The only ethical choice is to go vegan. And if you can’t quite manage that, take a step in the right direction by cutting out meat and dairy one day a week and build from there.

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(1) Crop Tour “Rally da Safra” 2008. Agroconsult 2008.
(2) Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to save civilization. 2008. Earth Policy Institute http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/Contents.htm
(3) Genetically Modified Animal Feed. 2006. Friends of the Earth. http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/gm_animal_feeds.pdf
(4) Meat by numbers, Observer 7 September 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.beef
(5) Can Britain feed itself, The Land. Winter 2007/2008
(6) Report on conventional and organic agriculture and their greenhouse gas emissions. 2008. Foodwatch and Institute for Ecological Economy Research. http://www.deutschewildtierstiftung.de/_downloads/aktuell/foodwatch-Report_Klimaretter-Bio_20080825.pdf
(7) Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat. Guardian. 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/15/food.biofuels