Quite a debate has been going on in the media this week regarding carbon emissions and it has been suggested that we should either become vegetarians or at the very least drastically reduce our meat consumption.
Let’s face it
- Meat production produces far more carbon than obtaining the same amount of protein from plants.
- Meat production uses far more water.
- Animals such as cows and sheep produce large amounts of methane (in the case of cows not from their backsides as you might expect but from rumination), which is an even more dangerous greenhouse gas than CO2.
- Factory farming produces huge amount of faecal pollutants that find their way into our water supplies, water table, etc.
- Production of meat on the scale we consume it today is unbelievably cruel to the animals involved.(don't believe me check it out for yourself).
- Eating meat is not good for your health. Yes, I know people will argue we are carnivores but the truth is at best our ancestors were more like carrion animals, perhaps finding the odd animal killed by something else. There is no way that our early ancestors hunted down and killed mammoths as depicted in popular illustrations, they would have been far too big. Even as late as the 16th Century, North American Indians weren’t that good at hunting buffalo.
So would you become veggie to save the planet?