While we hear a lot about the human “population crisis”, the real population crisis, from the ecological point of view, concerns not humans but farm animals, whose numbers are growing twice as fast. Raising livestock requires a vast amount of resources, and 75% of the world’s farmland; a third of all cereal crops are used to feed them. Livestock farming creates more greenhouse emissions than cars, trains, planes and ships combined. And the “tide of slurry” they produce is overwhelming the world’s capacity to absorb it. Factory farms in the US generate 13 times more waste than the US human population. The moral is clear: if we were to eat less meat and dairy, our environmental impact would be slashed overnight. (George Monbiot, The Guardian)
There again, the statistics show that the problem is not dairy cattle so much, but the rearing of beef cattle. The dairy herds seem relatively stable, whereas the growth of beef herds throughout the world is exponential. Chinese consumption of beef has skyrocketed. Beef production in India, of all places, is a huge industry and important export, despite Hindu beliefs.
Consumption of beef seems to be a marker for increased prosperity. Epicureans, on the other hand, eat it in moderation; vegetables and fruit are better for you.
I don’t think we should blame Third World countries for wanting to have the same standard of living as us, or even simply a higher one than they currently enjoy. If eating meat is a part of that, then so be it.
Having said that, I’m not without hope. The West should lead by example: use our immense cultural clout to make a lifestyle of reduced meat consumption seen fashionable and sophisticated. There’s plenty of evidence that the rest of the world wants to be like us, whether its the popularity of our TV, music and social media, or the more extreme example of South Korean plastic surgery clinics making people’s faces look more ‘western.’ We should influence their diets in the same way.