Ethics of Food Production and Consumption - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 244

sustainability. The report showed that production of meat for consumption produces
more global warming than driving. Although transport is responsible for 13% of cli-
mate gases, livestock is responsible for 18%. In the wake of this finding, studies on the
pros and cons of meat production multiplied; moreover, research on various alterna-
tives to meat (like insects, and in-vitro meat) got a boost in both the Netherlands and
the rest of the world. The FAO report, especially through the film of the Dutch Party for
the Animals, Meat the Truth , got a lot of public attention. The movie is an attempt to
correct Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth , with regard to the environmental costs
of meat production. In a book with the same title (Koffeman 2009), the arguments are
put forward: In addition to greenhouse gas emissions by cows and the cultivation of
corn and soy and their transport, the water use of ruminants is very high (some say
200,000 liters per cow); add to this the erosion by intensive land use and the destruc-
tion of fertile land and of species, which lead to further loss of biodiversity, and finally
the grain used to feed animals instead of starving people. Intensive, non-land-based
farming has the greatest adverse environmental impacts through overuse of fertilizers
and pesticides. Other consequences include the increase of animal diseases of graz-
ers (increased by feed such as wheat and soy their stomachs are not built for), and of
zoonosis due to the large-scale housing of livestock. In non-land-based farming there
is no match between input and output streams, manure is not or insufficiently used
for fertilization of land, and due to the centralization of production, the search for the
cheapest concentrates and fattening and slaughter companies leads to a huge increase
in transport of feed and livestock. Cattle fed with concentrates produce more methane
emissions than grass-fed cattle.
However, the environmental problems of animal husbandry are not compelling justi-
fications for vegetarianism; they could also lead to confining farm animals in the small-
est possible space and to controling their output. Animal welfare is in trouble then. The
dilemma is: Do you really want to reduce greenhouse gases, when the risk of doing this
comes at the expense of animal welfare, or do you want to respect animal welfare (and
let animals graze freely) with the risk of not reducing greenhouse gases. Here the animal
rights and welfarist people clash with the environmentalists. Vegetarianism evades this
dilemma by recommending that everyone refrains from eating meat out of the deon-
tological reason that all mammals have the right to be respected; however, a vegetarian
world is today clearly not a reality. What to do in the meantime?
There is another approach that comes to mind when one distances oneself from veg-
etarianism and the abolitionist and animal-rights program. In a report launched by
the Royal Society of Protection of Birds (RSPB), the story is told of Tarnhouse farm, on
Geltsdale reserve in the North Pennines of UK, a piece of marginal land, where grazing
of cattle and sheep is combined with organic management of the soil and water sup-
ply. Here, one can see some environmental advantages of extensive animal farming;
recently, Fairlie (2010) has analyzed these benefits. He asks himself: Could it not be the
case that if we reconstruct the current system the result can be sustainable and animal
friendly? Do we not lose an important aspect of human-animal relationship, and live-
stock, when we reduce the use of meat to zero? He wonders why we feed our cows, pigs,