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Is giving up meat one day a week the way to save the world?

Meet a serious threat to the worlds climate: your Sunday roast. Meat production, says the

UNs Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is responsible for 14.5 per cent of theworlds greenhousegas emissionsmore than transport. Yesterday David Camerons climate

adviser joined with Sir Paul McCartney and environmental groups to try to create a mass

movement to reduce it.

Greg Barker, until recently the Governments climate minister, has thrown his weight behind

Meat Free Mondays the McCartneys long-standing campaign to persuade people to do

without meat for one day a week, after getting to know the former Beatle at the gates of a

school attended by their children. Yesterday he and two of Sir Pauls daughters designer

Stella and photographer Mary launched an online bid to get people to sign a Meat Free

Monday Climate Pledge, and plan to publicise the results at a climate summit at the UN in

New York in two weeks time.

Giving up meat for one day a week is equivalent to taking your car off the road for a month

each year, says Mr Barker. And if enough of us do it, we will send a very powerful and

loud message to world leaders. Sir Paul calls it a simple way to contribute to a more

sustainable future.

And its not just the climate that would benefit, since meat production which last year rose

to 308.5 million tons, a twenty-five fold increase over the last two centuries takes an

increasing toll on the environment and world hunger. Over 40 per cent of the wheat, rye, oats

and corn grown each year goes to feed cows, as do 250 million tons of soya beans and other

oil seedseffectively creating competition for the nutrients between cattle and people.

Over 70 per cent of the worlds agricultural land is used as pasture, while another ten per cent

goes to grow all those grains and oil seeds. Nearly a quarter of its available freshwater,

calculates Washingtons Worldwatch Institute, also goes to produce animal feed. And

ranching is one of the main causes of deforestation worldwide, while overgrazing is turning a

fifth of all pastures and ranges into desert.

Besides doing so much to drive global warming, an FAO report concluded, livestock

production also produces more than a hundred other polluting gases, including over two

thirds of the worlds emissions of ammonia, one of the main causes of acid rain. Wastes from

feedlots over nourish rivers, lakes and streams, choking of them of life and wash down to the

seas creating vast dead zones.

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And, if all that were not enough, heavy doses of antibioticsfour times as much are used on

livestock than on humans in the US are making a huge contribution to the terrifying growth

of growth of resistance to the drugs. This already kills 5,000 Britons a year and, in Mr

Camerons words, threatens to take the world back to the dark ages of medicine before the

discovery of penicillin, where a childs grazed knee could kill.

That joint on the dinner table may never look the same again.

Reference

Lean, G. (2014, September 9). Is giving up meat one day a week the way to save the world?

Telegraph Blogs. Retrieved October 15, 2014, from

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100285688/is-giving-up-meat-one-day-a-

week-the-way-to-save-the-world/