Photo: Miss K ★ / Flickr

The meat industry is a major contributor to climate change. Rearing and processing meat creates high levels of pollution while natural habitats are being destroyed to make space for factory farming. The most greenhouse gases are generated by producing beef, lamb, farmed salmon and cheese. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has released a report called A Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change + Health: What You Eat Matters, hoping to spread awareness of the impact our diet has on the environment.

Huge impact on the planet

‘Producing tremendous quantities of meat and dairy requires large amounts of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, fuel, feed and water. It also generates greenhouse gases and massive amounts of toxic manure and wastewater that pollute groundwater, rivers, streams and, ultimately, the ocean,’ says the EWG.

Factory farms generate a huge amount of faeces and urine – 100 times more waste than human sewerage plants do. This manure is responsible for releasing greenhouse gases into the environment, while the fertiliser used on crops grown to feed animals is also a big problem, having destroyed marine life in 150 ‘dead zones’ worldwide.

The damage done

The EWG says that ‘More than 34,000 miles of rivers and 216,000 acres of lakes and reservoirs in the U.S. have been degraded by waste from confined feeding operations.’ Growing the crops that feed animals takes up 149 million acres of land, uses 76 million kilos of pesticide and 7.7 billion kilos of nitrogen-based fertiliser in the US alone.

It could get worse

‘From 1971 to 2010, worldwide production of meat tripled to around 600 billion pounds while global population grew by just 81 percent (US Census Bureau, International Data Base),’ says EWG. If meat production continues to grow at this pace, by 2050 that figure could be 1.2 trillion pounds, meaning even more damage done to the environment.

If you start eating less meat you won’t only be helping the climate – you’ll be helping your health, too. EWG points out that meat contains antibiotics, cancer-causing hormones and has high levels of DLCs, toxins that have been linked to diabetes and cancer.

Tags: eating healthily, food, Healthy diet