Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury : Do you want to reduce your carbon footprint? Do you want to do something to help the environment? The answer could be as simple as not eating red meat, particularly beef.
A recent study has shown that beef requires 28 times more land, 11 times more water and produces 5 times more greenhouse gas emissions than either pork or lamb. When compared with staples such as potatoes, wheat and rice, beef requires 160 times the land and produces 11 times the greenhouse gas.
This is, of course, a very controversial subject, particularly for those climate change deniers who still do not accept that climate change is exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels or the carbon emissions from animals reared for food. Agriculture significantly increases the production of greenhouse gasses particularly from livestock. The huge amounts of grain and water required to raise cattle is also causing a great deal of concern amongst experts worried about the need to feed an extra 2 billion people by the year 2050.
It has been a well known fact for many years that all the people in the world could very easily be fed if the majority of people in the first world countries did not eat a meat based diet. It has also been shown that a diet high in meat and dairy products is very bad for health and the main cause of the obesity epidemic that we see happening now.
Victoria Nicholls. Transition Deal
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