2018-10-17 |
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Eat Less Meat or You’ll Destroy the Planet
If we don’t take urgent action by eating less meat, we’ll destroy the planet – that’s the stark warning from the world’s leading experts in ecology, conservation, health, agriculture and animal welfare in a powerful new book.
Farming Food and Nature: Respecting Animals, People and the Environment, published by Earthscan on November 2nd, presents the case for urgent action to combat the damaging impacts of livestock production and to fix our broken food systems.
Professor Katherine Richardson, leader of the Sustainability Science Centre, Copenhagen
It includes the latest scientific evidence, case studies, detailed reviews, personal reflections and potential solutions from some of the world’s leading policy experts and scientists such as: food activist Raj Patel; author Carl Safina; leader of the Sustainability Science Center Katherine Richardson; famous primatologist Dr Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, UN Messenger of Peace; environmentalist Jonathon Porritt; sustainability policy expert Karl Falkenberg; and bee expert, Dave Goulson.
It includes the best thinking from the Extinction & Livestock Conference – the world’s first ever international event to examine this issue which took place at London’s QEII Centre in October 2017 – as well as new contributions on plant-based & clean meat innovation, insects as food and feed, and the growing environmental and welfare impacts of fish farming.
In her Foreword to the book, Jane Goodall, Phd, DBE, says:
“If
millions and eventually billions of us make ethical choices as
to what we eat and how it was produced we shall help to bring about
the change that is needed if we can about the planet and future
generations.”
Contributors to the book include Professor Katherine Richardson,
of the Sustainability Science Centre in Copenhagen, who warns that
there are limits to how much humans can ‘push’ the Earth’s boundaries
without risking changing the state of the ecosystem upon which
we depend. She says:
“We are over the ‘safe limit’ for four of
the nine identified planetary boundaries and agriculture has been
the primary driver in bringing us over these limits. Sustainable
development cannot be achieved without a major transformation of
our food system.”
Frank B Hu, Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and Chair
of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University, who co-wrote
a section for the book with colleague Elena Hemler on healthy sustainable
eating, says:
“A diet that that is higher in plant-based foods
and lower in animal-based foods is healthier and has less environmental
impact. Substituting just one serving of red meat per day with
other healthy foods is associated with a significantly lower mortality
rate.”
Compassion
in World Farming Ambassador Emeritus Joyce D’Silva,
who co-edited the book, said:
“The impact of livestock production
on climate change, biodiversity loss, soil health, water use and
water pollution needs to be addressed urgently and globally.
“Livestock production is driving two-thirds of wildlife loss worldwide, causing massive deforestation in countries such as Argentina and Brazil, using up the world’s precious natural resources, polluting our waterways and creating ocean ‘dead zones’ where nothing can live; creating the perfect breeding ground for superbugs and contributing to antibiotic resistance in humans. This is in addition to the suffering and misery caused to billions of animals in factory farms around the world.”
