So people are protesting the use of foie gras in restaurants around Ottawa... and I got into a big argument with my friend over the ethical implications of the forced feeding of geese and ducks... which I find no more offensive (less, actually) than farmed cattle.
Let me explain briefly the underlying reason for its offensiveness. I have no time for people who say ducks and geese are cuter, and therefore more worth saving somehow. Frankly, if you eat farmed meat at all you have no right to say that one is more wrong than the other. In terms of what I care about, ecological sustainability goes a LOT farther than being cruel to some geese to produce the delicacy which Sydney Smith described as his idea of heaven, while eaten to the sound of trumpets.
As far as I'm concerned, the ecological impact of the cattle industry, which outstrips that of the automotive industry, is far greater concern and should be foremost in our minds, rather than a minute sliver which has zero impact on the human status of living and is simply cruel to animals, as though cattle farming isn't.
(I might add at this point something my friend Jess Ruano raised, that these protesters are targetting the new indie restaurants and threatening a burgeoning new food scene in Ottawa.)
I explained this to him, and he went so far as to say that the ecological impact of cattle farming was, in his words "not that bad." Which really got me going because agricultural cattle is recognized as one of the top environmental problems (not by the public, who still like to blame cars and only cars) in the world, contributing to severe environmental issues and wiping other species clean off the slate.
So here, I'm making a very annoyed and angry blog post to supplement one I was preparing and crunching the numbers for to assess the possibility of socialized healthcare within the budget of the United States and supplementing it with hard facts about the environmental effects of livestock.
I told him that I despaired of finding anything that would be comprehensive enough to prove it to him... those fears were unjustified.
This 400-page report (PDF) from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) outlines the environmental impacts of cattle.
Allow me to summarize... it is broken down into several distinct sections, covering climate change, acid rain (along with climate change under air polution), deforestation, water pollution, and water shortage. Many of these I became aware of over the last year as I was studying the effects of the cattle industry in Botswana and other places, but though I haven't finished reading this 400 page document the results are right bloody there.
Let's start off with the fact that 20% of all terrestrial animal biomass are meat and dairy animals now. 20%. We're talking a huge impact that is, in addition to what you'll read below, destroying local ecosystems with this simple gigantic imbalance.
Climate change is a big one, the one we like to talk about these days. Besides the fact that cattle produce more greenhouse gases simply from emissions of methane than automobiles (contributing to 37% of methane emissions, which at its lowest has 23 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of Carbon Dioxide), clearing vegetation for land use accounts for 9 percent of human-related CO2 emissions, and produces 65% of nitrous oxide which has 296 times (!!!!) the GWP of CO2.
It also produces 64% of the worlds ammonia as well as hundreds of other pollutant gases. Yes, ammonia is the stuff that causes and is in acid rain. Hooray!
But we're not just talking about air pollutants. We're talking massive deforestation, since Livestock uses a staggering 30% of the earth's land surface. Of that, 33% of the world's arable land is used to produce feed FOR livestock. I mean, most of us already know at the back of our minds that most of the former Amazonian forest (70%) has been turned into grazing land... but this is ridiculous.
This land that we have cattle on is also increasingly made useless and into desert through overgrazing, compaction, and erosion. It is actually turning our world into desert. We're also polluting the water with runoff from fertilizers, tanneries, pesticides used on the crops we use to feed the cattle.
Speaking of water, we're constantly told that the poorest nations of the world can't even get decent water supply. Why? In addition to poisoning it with the run-off from farms, cattle themselves USE UP a lot of water. It takes 990 litres of water to produce a SINGLE litre of milk. 990 litres traded off for ONE.
The runoff from livestock is estimated by this report to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen contamination in the South China Sea. We're not just content with killing the air and land, we're poisoning the oceans as well. Bloody wonderful.
I have included further reading below in links from reputable sources. Let's not forget this is the FAO we're talking about, the FAO is quite conservative, as are most agricultural organizations. They're still telling us to slow down our meat consumption.
What I'm getting at with all of this, besides getting at my friend for harbouring a terribly uninformed belief, is that if you want to save the planet, put down your burger and your pint of milk and eat some overstuffed goose and a glass of soy milk or something. Better yet, go all out vegan... and then, and ONLY then, can you maintain any kind of moral superiority. Till then, leave my little luxuries alone. It's the least of our problems.
And yes, that does mean if you're a vegan you may lambast me for eating foie gras. If you're not, go away.
Related reading on the interwebs:
University of Chicago -Study: vegan diets healthier for planet, people than meat diets
Environmental Impact of Livestock Farming in Europe : Summary
Environmental impact assessment of conventional and organic milk production