Factoring meat into our carbon footprint

The intensification of farming processes has also resulted in large multinational companies dominating the global meat and dairy trade. Currently, 50 per cent of global pork production and more than 70 per cent of global chicken production comes from industrial systems - from factory farms. Small Australian farmers are being forced out of business, consumed by multi-national agribusinesses with whom they cannot compete on the scales of efficiency.

In terms of environmental impact, it would be of no use to move all the animals in factory farms outdoors to graze. Australia’s delicate soil is not able to cope with the pressure of millions of non-native hard-hoofed animals like pigs, sheep and cattle. Grazing animals cause a multitude of problems to the Australian eco-system such as compacted soil, topsoil loss, water pollution to name a few.

In Australia, 58 per cent of the land mass is used for agriculture and principally for grazing animals and the production of crops used in animal feed. This is more than half our country used for the livestock industry.

However, factory farming creates an equivalent environmental disaster. Animals in factory farms are fed on cereals and soya. Some 670 million tonnes of cereals were fed to livestock in 2002. This is projected to increase to 1 billion tonnes of feed in the next 20 years.

Cereals and soya are grown on land which has been converted from natural habitats, forests and grasslands, into croplands and paddocks for grazing. Since the 1960’s about 200 million hectares of the world’s tropical forest has been destroyed, mostly for cattle grazing and growing crops for animal feed. We need to consider the energy which is consumed by the production and transport of these huge amounts of feed.

While the figures above are sufficient to motivate many people to change their diet, the most important reason to consider our meat-eating habits is the lifetime of suffering inflicted upon the masses of animals rushed down the assembly line of factory farm production every year. The magnitude and extent of their suffering is greater than many of us are prepared to acknowledge.

This is why we need to keep in mind that while environmental arguments can be useful in bringing the issue to people’s attention, they can also distract and embroil us in a frustrating debate. Agribusiness is now grinding their PR wheels and trying to convince us that by re-using their waste to generate energy and power towns they are in fact, turning their factory farms ethical and “green”.

I think it is disgraceful. I challenge anyone to argue that a “green” factory farm will not inflict just as much pain and suffering on an animal. At the end of the day, if we are serious about addressing climate change, we need to broaden our focus and consider how our food choices impact upon all beings with whom we share this planet.