Meat the Truth

Cattle factory farms use an average of 30 kilos of cereals to produce 1 kilo of meat: this means that some agricultural production serves to create not food but forage for livestock. Furthermore, agricultural fertilizers emit nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with a climate-altering power 298 times more than carbon dioxide. This is why cattle, herbivorous ruminants, are responsible for emissions of nitrous oxide and methane, another greenhouse gas with a climate-altering power 23 times higher than carbon dioxide. This means that the industrial production of meat has a heavy impact on the environment in terms of climate change, water consumption, deforestation, soil erosion, environmental pollution and biodiversity loss.

The 18% of greenhouse gas emissions caused by factory farms comprises the change in use of land converted to livestock farming, methane produced by animals and the deployment of methane itself in the various stages of feed production, from processing to transport. In its lifetime, a cow produces as much gas as a car driving 70,000 km, the equivalent of one and a half times the circumference of the earth. According to Marianna Thieme, leader of the Dutch Party for Animals, “It is the consumer who wields the power”. In the course of their lifetime, every European eats an average of seven sheep, 24 rabbits, 43 turkeys, 789 fish, a third of a horse, five cows, 42 pigs and 900 chickens, a total of 1,800 animals. If Americans were to stop eating meat for a week, they would offset the pollution produced by all their cars for an equivalent period, while a single day in a vegetarian diet would save a quantity of emissions equivalent to 90 million air tickets from Los Angeles to New York.