Raising meat is killing the Amazon rainforest. The pattern is clear: first, the forest is razed, then the cattle are moved in.
The vast Amazon rainforest is on the edge of unraveling. Between 10 and 47 percent of the Amazon rainforest may cross “tipping points” by 2050, according to new research published in the science journal Nature. A tipping point is a critical threshold at which a small disturbance can cause an abrupt shift in an ecosystem. As deforestation continues, the “point of no return” for parts of the Amazon is drawing ever closer. The Amazonian rainforest is of critical importance to the world’s ecology, from being a key protector of our climate to being home to a huge numbers of species of plants and animals, now at risk of extinction because of the harm being done to it.
The land is being cleared to raise cattle and grow soy that the cattle feed on. The scale of the destruction is devastating. For instance, more than 800 million trees have been cut down in the Amazon rainforest in just six years to feed the world’s appetite for Brazilian beef, according to a new investigation, despite dire warnings about the forest’s importance in fighting the climate crisis. The problem continues to get worse. The region has experienced an eight percent increase in cattle since 2020.
Dietary change is imperative to reduce animal agriculture’s impact on climate change, land use, biodiversity, freshwater use, ocean acidification, and as a future carbon sink, to strengthen biosphere resilience. Not surprisingly, the diet that will result in the greatest amount of change for the good is the plant-based diet.
JUST Egg, the plant-based egg company, has announced that it has sold the equivalent of over 500 million eggs since its inception in 2019. With their continual expansion, they are one of the fastest-growing egg brands nationwide.
Josh Tetrick, CEO and co-founder of JUST Egg, said, “We started with a hope that one of the many tens of thousands of plants in nature would be able to scramble like an egg. And a team made up of scientists, engineers, and chefs from across the world turned that hope into the one of the most innovative and impactful products in the market. We’re 500 million steps closer to a more sustainable food system, but we’ve got a long way to go. ”
By crafting eggs from plants, JUST Egg has mitigated the release of 87 million kg of CO2e, conserved 18.3 billion gallons of water, and preserved 26,900 acres of land previously earmarked for soy and corn cultivation. It’s the same impact as removing 18,913 cars from the road for a year, saving 32 Central Parks’ worth of land, and preserving 27,727 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water. These figures highlight the environmental toll of traditional chicken eggs while underscoring the efficiency of JUST Egg’s key ingredient, the mung bean.
Another factor contributing to the use of plant-based eggs is the risk of Avian flu. Nearly 82 million chickens, ducks and turkeys have been killed in the US alone since 2022 in an effort to contain the virus. This has at times caused egg shortages and added to their expense, encouraging workplaces to think about plant-based substitutions, especially in baked goods.
For example, a school district in Denver, Colorado, decided to cut its carbon emissions and save money by removing animal products from all baked goods made in its in-house bakery. Through this initiative, the school district has removed from its supply 3930 pounds of eggs, as well as 3450 pounds of milk powder, that it used each year. It is now using applesauce and soy oil instead.
Let’s hope that the switch to plant-based alternatives to eggs continues to grow, helping to reduce the impact of animal agriculture and save the lives of countless chickens. Here are some other egg substitution ideas.
More than 250 climate, environment, health, nutrition and food organizations and experts are urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to address greenhouse gas emissions from meat and dairy consumption. The move comes after USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed, at December’s COP28 climate conference, that he doesn’t hear much about reducing meat consumption as a climate solution, which is surprising considering all the research that has been done on this. In fact, a UN report stated that raising meat causes more global warming than all the cars, buses, trucks, trains, planes and ships in the world put together. Another report written by climate scientists at the World Bank determined that animal agriculture is actually responsible for 51% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite Vilsack’s claim, the call to address consumption of high-emissions foods was prominently featured at COP28. The highly anticipated FAO Roadmap, from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, was released on the conference’s first-ever day dedicated to food and agriculture, which Vilsack attended.
In a letter sent to the agriculture secretary, signatories called on the USDA to immediately make meat and dairy reduction a key part of the agency’s climate strategy, align food and climate goals in all USDA programs, and integrate sustainability into the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. According to Jennifer Molidor, a senior food campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, “We have to address our meat-heavy diets now, or the climate emergency will force us to.” The letter goes on to say, “The United States must take a leading role in reducing food system emissions,” the letter states. The signatories call for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to adopt “strategies that address both production and consumption of animal-based foods.”
The letter asks the USDA to adopt three simple, impactful solutions:
Make meat and dairy reduction a key part of USDA’s climate strategy.
Align food and climate goals in all USDA programs and policies. This would include increasing access to healthy, plant-based foods in the school meal program.
Integrate sustainability into the Dietary Guidelines for Americans with an emphasis on plant-forward dietary patterns.
However, while these measures are helpful they don’t go far enough. Only government support for a plant-based diet can cause the level of greenhouse gas reduction necessary to avoid global warming and the climate crisis it will cause.
People who follow a vegan diet avoid eating animal products, including conventional canned tuna, which is the key ingredient for popular dishes such as tuna melts and tuna salad sandwiches. Here’s why cruelty-free and sustainable vegan tuna is a better choice.
Traditional canned tuna is, of course, made from fish. Not just any fish, but one of the larger fish in the ocean, which means that it’s spent a lifetime growing and feeding on smaller fish. The problem is that as they feed on smaller fish, they absorb, store and concentrate the toxic chemicals, including cancer-causing chemicals and mercury, that the smaller fish contain. Once absorbed, it is very hard for the fish to get rid of these harmful chemicals. Since fish cannot be easily tracked, tuna may swim through very polluted waters without us knowing it. If we eat such a fish, we can absorb all the harmful substances it’s been storing up throughout its life.
While canned tuna is a very popular ingredient, children and pregnant moms are advised to limit their consumption because of the risk of damage to a child’s development from these chemicals. In addition, the cholesterol and saturated fat found in all fish don’t do our arteries any good, and no benefit has been found to consuming so called “heart-healthy fish oils”.
So it’s great to know that companies have been coming up with alternatives to tuna fish that taste very realistic. Most common brands use a blend of soy and wheat proteins, or protein mixes containing peas, chickpeas, beans and/or lentils, along with various seasonings including some seaweed or algae extract to give it a subtle oceanic flavor.
Is grass-fed beef any better than traditional beef? The short answer is not really. But some meat producers want you to think it is. Labels such as “grassfed” and “pasture-raised” are some labels you’ll often see on meat, designed to lead us to believe that they are better for us, the animals, and the planet.
While the “grassfed” and “pasture-raised” labels may provide some reassurance that the animal was well cared for and fed healthy grasses, it still has to be slaughtered in the end. And these labels don’t make the beef any better for us or the planet. Let’s take a look and see what some leading veg-authors have to say on the subject.
Environmentalist James E. McWilliams, author of Just Food, points out that grass-fed beef produces more methane, a global-warming gas more potent that carbon dioxide, than grain-fed cows do, and that large herds of grazing cattle cause enormous amounts of soil to be eroded, choking off the streams and wetlands. In choosing grass-fed beef, we trade some environmental problems in the switch and “no study I’ve seen convincingly shows that the exchange is worth it,” he says. He further warns not to translate what is being done at the more responsible, small operator “boutique level,” to the national and international scene, where problems associated with overgrazing are so common. But perhaps most importantly for the world’s hungry, even grass-fed cows are still poor converters of plants into nutrients, and in most cases, the grasslands used for grazing could more efficiently and sustainably be used for producing various crops directly for human consumption.
Geophysiscist G. Eshel explains that “Since grazing animals eat mostly cellulose-rich roughage, while their feedlot counterparts eat mostly simple sugars whose digestion requires no rumination, the grazing animals emit two to four times as much methane, a greenhouse gas roughly 30 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. This, and the faster weight gain by feedlot animals, result in significantly higher greenhouse gas emissions per pound of meat by grass-fed animals than by feedlot ones.” And there’s plenty of damage that grazing cows produce besides increased greenhouse gas production. Prof Eshel goes on to explain “Grazing cattle also compromise river systems in the fragile arid and semi arid environments in which they are disproportionately ubiquitous, and accelerate soil erosion. Because they eat much more dry matter then feedlot animals, they also pressure dwindling local water supplies exactly where they are most vulnerable.”
Eroded soil
Leading author and advocate John Robbins also takes issue with grass-fed beef. While Robbins broadly agrees McWilliams’ environmental assessment and notes that “cattle grazing in the West have polluted more water, eroded more topsoil, killed more fish, displaced more wildlife, and destroyed more vegetation than any other land use.” He also takes note of some other problems not resolved by grass-fed beef, and points out that “the lives of grass-fed livestock are more humane and natural than the lives of animals confined in factory farms and feedlots, but their deaths are often just as terrifying and cruel.” Finally Robbins warns that grass-fed beef still have nutritional drawbacks associated with them, saying “I wouldn’t get too carried away and think that as long as it’s grass-fed then it’s fine and dandy. Grass-fed products are still high in saturated fat (although not as high), still high in cholesterol, and are still devoid of fiber and many other essential nutrients.” Robbins also notes that it can take up to 4 times as long to raise a grass-fed cow compared to a grain-fed one which could result in very significant shortages of supply.
Dr. Richard Oppenlander, author of Comfortably Unaware, agrees with the problems associated with grass-fed beef pointed out by the others, but then goes on to point out that grazing the number of farm animals necessary to satisfy the American meat habit would require more land than the country has, and so really can’t be done anyway because it requires so much land per animal. For instance, he calculates that to raise the current number of just cows and pigs produced in the US every year would require 2.6 billion acres of land if grass-fed – an impossibility since the country only has 2.25 billion acres total land mass to begin with.
Some people ask if grass-fed beef raised locally is any better for the planet. However, that doesn’t help because most of the carbon footprint is from the production of beef not its transportation. In fact, in the average household, 83% of the footprint comes just from producing the food, while transportation is just 11%.
Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews of Carnegie Mellon University publishing the results of their research in Environmental Science and Technology say, “Shifting less than 1 day per week’s (i.e., 1/7 of total calories) consumption of red meat and/or dairy to a vegetable-based diet could have the same climate impact as buying all household food from local providers.”
Here’s the bottom line. Grass-fed beef is still bad for the environment. And of course, even grass-fed beef still contains unhealthy amounts of heart disease promoting saturated fat and cholesterol, and even organic beef still contains cancer-causing industrial toxins that bio-concentrate in the cow over its lifetime. Almost as bad, cooking grass-fed beef still produces cancer causing HCA’s (Hetero Cyclic Amines ) and diabetes-promoting AGE’s (Advanced Glycation End-products). Plus, let’s not forget that though its raising is a little better, even grass-fed cattle still face the slaughterhouse. The best choice is still going vegetarian.
At this year’s UN Climate Summit, COP28, for the first time world leaders have promised to tackle the impact of food and agriculture on climate change. The US, China, the EU and the UK, some of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita from food, all signed up. They now need to include emissions from agriculture in their plans to tackle climate change. Research has shown that a big meat-eater’s diet produces 10.24 kg of greenhouse gasses each day, and that food, worldwide, contributes a third of all the warming gases increasing global temperatures.
More than 130 countries signed a declaration about food, on the second day of the summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action has been welcomed by many experts and charities who say that it is long overdue.
However, key producers of meat and dairy came to this summit in force, to spread their false message emphasizing their “scientific evidence” of the environmental benefits of meat. Major players such as meat producer JBS, the Global Dairy Platform and the North American Meat Institute have been busy showcasing their stance on environmental issues.
“Any credible action to reduce emissions in the food sector will inevitably lead to a reduction in the total volume of meat and dairy products produced. The industry is terrified of that and has been deploying multiple tactics to delay the inevitable,” said Nusa Urbancic, CEO of the Changing Markets Foundation, commenting on the industry’s fears and resistance strategies.
The industry’s communication plan involves presenting meat as “sustainable nutrition” and promoting “regenerative agriculture.” However, this narrative faces criticism, as the UN notes that while meat and dairy account for just 18 percent of calories consumed, these industries use 83 percent of the world’s farmland. Let’s hope that this declaration has a real impact.
Sir David Attenborough, now 97 years old, has been narrating documentaries about the natural world for almost 70 years. His earlier work focused on the wonders of the natural world, but over time he has become more and more vocal in support of environmental causes, particularly climate change and biodiversity loss.
In recent years, he has been narrating the Planet Earth series. In his latest episode, named “Human”, Sir David praised plant-based diets for being “so much more efficient.” This is the first time he has been quite so direct in pointing a finger at animal agriculture as the number one cause of deforestation.
“Currently the vast majority of agricultural land – more than 75 percent – is used to raise livestock and this is very inefficient” he told viewers. He noted that we “rear 70 billion farm animals each year and every one of them needs feeding.”
He added “ If we shift away from eating meat and diary and move towards a plant-based diet, then the sun’s energy goes directly into growing our food. And because that’s so much more efficient, we could still produce enough to feed us, but do so using a quarter of the land.” This space “could then be given back to nature” he said.
In 2020 he released a film named A Life on our Planet, in which he also spoke about the huge impact of meat. “We must change our diet. The true tragedy of our time is still unfolding – the loss of biodiversity” he said in the film. “Half of fertile land on Earth is now farmland, 70 percent of birds are domestic, the majority chickens. There’s little left for the world. We have completed destroyed it.”
Hopefully his strong words, coming from such a renowned figure, will have an impact on meat and dairy consumption across the world.
If the whole world could be persuaded to replace 50% of the meat and dairy products consumed with plant-based alternatives by 2050, there could be a 31% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions linked to agriculture and land use, according to new research, published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
The research also points out that this swap could halve the degradation of forests and natural lands, providing many benefits to biodiversity as well as climate protection. In fact, the potential for reforestation on land released from farmed animal production could double the climate benefits. It underscores just how much dietary changes could decrease the detrimental effects of animal agriculture on the natural environment.
This was the first time that the environmental impacts and the impact on global food security of plant-based meat and vegan milk had been comprehensively assessed. The authors of the study developed scenarios of dietary changes based on plant-based recipes designed to be nutritionally equivalent to products based on beef, pork, chicken and milk.
They point out that as this change of diet happens, it’s important to consider the in position of smallholder farmers, who may need assistance during the transition from raising meat to raising crops.
Meat eaters may now feel that they can eat beef without worrying about the impact on the climate. In late 2021, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched a verification program that allows meat producers to label their product “low-carbon” if it meets certain criteria. They have subsequently renamed the “low-carbon” designation “climate-friendly.” Just last month, Tyson Foods and Schweid & Sons, in partnership, offered the first burger to earn that designation for sale.
This is a classic case of greenwashing – using language that intentionally misleads the public into believing that something is environmentally friendly. The USDA’s climate-friendly certification program is run by third party companies contracted by the USDA to evaluate meat producers’ agricultural practices to determine the emissions output. If that measurement is at least 10% lower than an industry benchmark set by the auditing company for emissions, the producer gets USDA approval to label their products “climate-friendly”.
The problem is three-fold. First of all 10% is not much of a reduction in emissions. But even worse, the benchmark is set so high that even average beef producers will qualify. The benchmark is set at 26.3 kilograms of CO2 equivalent emissions per kilogram of carcass weight. Reducing that by 10% means that beef producers must emit no more than 23.67 kg of CO2 equivalent per kilo of weight. But a 2019 study found that the US average for this metric is only 21.3 kg. In addition, the third-party verification process relies on the honor system, allowing companies to report their own calculations with a total lack of transparency, creating an obvious conflict of interest.
This new program is particularly harmful because it leads producers and consumers to think they are doing something to benefit the environment, when in fact beef is by far the least climate-friendly food a person can eat. Don’t be fooled by these new labels.
Scientists have made a surprising discovery about the plastic in the ocean’s coral reefs. The majority of plastic comes from fishing operations, not land-based plastics. Although the researchers found much consumer debris, such as water bottles and food wrappers, which are often the main source of plastic pollution in other ecosystems, nearly three-quarters of all plastic items documented on the surveyed reefs were related to fishing like ropes, nets, and fishing lines.
