By: Jin Song, Peak Associate
Content warning: mentions of animal cruelty.
In another, far-off universe, humans might be photosynthetic — converting sunlight to energy as our source of food. Luckily, in our universe, we get to enjoy the great pleasure of eating food. As a primary ingredient to life, food has been driving human behaviour since time immemorial. It’s no surprise it has become a cornerstone in human culture, identity, celebration, and expression. Accordingly, debates and discussions around it can get heated quickly.
To some, meat is perhaps the most beloved and most contentious part of our diet. Opinions vary, but the evidence is pretty clear: if we ate less meat, we — along with the Earth and the rest of society — would be healthier. Here’s why.
Current health recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) “suggest that red meat consumption should be between 98 g and 500 g per week for adults.” The Canadian Cancer Society recommends eating less than 255 g of red meat per week. Some doctors like Michael Greger and T. Colin Campbell say that an entirely plant-based diet can be life prolonging for many humans.
Meat is the most inefficient and resource-intensive way of feeding humans. Livestock consume far more calories than they produce. Chickens only convert about 11% of the calories we feed them into edible calories for us. For cows, that number is a shocking 1%. Indeed, most of those precious calories are lost to us. However, 75% of all agricultural land is used to support animal production. It’s hardly a stretch to say that if we shifted our diet to incorporate more plants and less animals, efficiency would skyrocket. If we gave the plants we feed to animals to humans, it’s estimated that we could feed an additional 3.5 billion human mouths.
The livestock industry produces 15–20% of the world’s greenhouse gases, which is as much as all ships, cars, planes, and trucks combined. While greenhouse gases are a necessary part of Earth’s natural atmosphere, the scientific consensus is that their massive increase in concentration due to human interference is causing disastrous consequences. Glaciers melting, land burning, animals dying en masse, and air pollution are just some of these consequences.
The meat industry causes horrific amounts of animal suffering — seven billion male chicks are gassed to death soon after birth because they can’t lay eggs, and cows are constantly impregnated to produce milk. I could go on about the animal rights violations, but there continues to be massive human rights violations, too. The industry has some of the highest rates of workplace injury and illness. Conditions are often unsanitary, and workers are frequently exploited and treated harshly. When COVID-19 hit, workers were forced to keep working in unclean and unsafe environments in close proximity to other workers. If demand for meat decreases, the industry will produce less meat and less suffering.
You aren’t a bad person if you eat and enjoy meat. You don’t have to cut meat out entirely to see the health, environmental, and ethical changes. And you’d be surprised at how delicious a dish can be without meat if you put care into it. Our approach to environmentalism and animal rights does not need to be all or nothing — every bit matters.
