Vegetarians are destroying the environment

In the latest example of envronmentalists gone wild, a new study is claiming that vegetarianism can be harmful to the environment.

That's right, all of you salad eating vegitarians need to put down your tofu and pick up some good old fashioned veal to save the environment. Eating a little bit of delicious dead baby cow meat is all it would take to end global warming.

Becoming vegetarian ‘can harm the environment’

Adopting a vegetarian diet based around meat substitutes such as tofu can cause more damage to the environment, according to a new study.

It has often been claimed that avoiding red meat is beneficial to the environment, because it lowers emissions and less land is used to produce alternatives.

But a study by Cranfield University, commissioned by WWF, the environmental group, found a substantial number of meat substitutes – such as soy, chickpeas and lentils – were more harmful to the environment because they were imported into Britain from overseas

The study concluded: “A switch from beef and milk to highly refined livestock product analogues such as tofu could actually increase the quantity of arable land needed to supply the UK.”

The results showed that the amount of foreign land required to produce the substitute products – and the potential destruction of forests to make way for farmland – outweighed the negatives of rearing beef and lamb in the UK.

Read more: Telegraph UK

So what do you say vegitarians, are you ready to put down your salad forks to save the environment?



mod edit, spelling in title


[edit on Mon Feb 15 2010 by DontTreadOnMe]

reply to post by FortAnthem


So, because a country chooses to import its veggies instead of producing its own agriculture it is the fault of those who EAT the veggies? now that is some backwards logic there, worthy of Monsanto's legal department.

There is no possible way that it can be factually argued that the damage done by producing meat is outdone by growing veggies, which actually REPLENISH the land, not destroy it.

It's an illogical argument seeing as you have to grow vegetables of some kind to first feed the livestock. How could this be better in the long run??.

In rural China water buffalo are used to turn the soil to grow produce and live for 15 years. A water buffalo, if slaughtered would feed a family for about 6 months. Seems to me keeping him alive makes more sense for the family and the environment.

I linked an amazing story of how the water buffalo fits into the Chinese family unit.



To see the end of the story vis the below link where you can see the video in it's entirety. For some reason youtube took the whole story off the site.

www.t2.com...

[edit on 12-2-2010 by sparrowstail]

The point is that soya is produced by first burning down rainforests to grown the crops and then shipping the product to Britain. This has a higher carbon footprint than eating lambs raised on Welsh moors.

The best solution is to eat what you like, but source it locally

Originally posted by Essan
The point is that soya is produced by first burning down rainforests to grown the crops and then shipping the product to Britain. This has a higher carbon footprint than eating lambs raised on Welsh moors.

The best solution is to eat what you like, but source it locally

And grazing land comes from...where?

The argument that rainforests are burned down more for veggies than for grazing is false to the point of being laughable...

everything in moderation. an appropriate serving of meat is roughly the size of a cassette tape. When's the last time anybody stopped after eating that much meat?

Everybody's body requires different foods. Rather than fight amongst ourselves to say which diet is best, we should simply tally up the destructive force that has been caused by the human stomach. One study may find that soy or tofu is more destructive to the rainforest, while another study that cattle are more destructive due to their greenhouse emissions. pick your poison, in moderation. A varied diet full of a wide range of vitamins and minerals is most likely best. If it ever comes down to survival, you'll learn quickly that you'll have to eat what you can find.

Originally posted by Essan
The point is that soya is produced by first burning down rainforests to grown the crops and then shipping the product to Britain.

I agree but why can't Britain grow soya beans? I live in eastern Canada, where the winters are long and cold and spring and summers are short and cool we grow them here just fine.

i think the argument can be made for both sides

the rain forest is cut down in Brazil so it can be made into farmlands for cattle,
while on the other hand the rain forests of Costa Rica, Africa and Indonesia, are cut down for crops, and rice fields, so pick your poison

Originally posted by captaintyinknots

Originally posted by Essan
The point is that soya is produced by first burning down rainforests to grown the crops and then shipping the product to Britain. This has a higher carbon footprint than eating lambs raised on Welsh moors.

The best solution is to eat what you like, but source it locally

And grazing land comes from...where?

That's why I said Welsh lamb - sheep grazed on upland moors not suitable for any other form of food production.

Sheep (and cattle) also graze coastal marshes again unsuitable for growing any crops.

Anyway the point of the article is that soya products have to be shipped halfway around the world, negating any benefit they may have in terms of reduced GHG emissions from their production (as compared with livestock). Why not just eat foodstuff produced here in Britain?

How did this happen....I finally sit down to write a thread on this very subject as a follow-up to my other thread, Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too, which focused on the "morality of consuming animals in its comparison to the consumption of plants, as well as the science and legitimacy of "just how alive are plants?", and you have this.....I should have checked first.

This boils down to the fundamental argument of vegetarians vs. omnivores from an environmental/political perspective.

Tofu can harm environment more than meat!



There's no avoiding the fact that humans will have an impact on their environment, but they can try and shrink that footprint. The whole "Going Green" mantra has caught on and it seems like it's not going away anytime soon. Companies are now using the environment as a marketing tool....that includes food producers.

Which is more "Going Green'; Vegetarianism or Ominvorism?

I would have to say, based on my research, Omnivorism.

-Dev

Originally posted by sparrowstail
...why can't Britain grow soya beans?

If our Govt had it's way we'd not be growing any food at all But seriously, I don't know why not - although given our limited space for food production it may simply be more profitable to grow wheat or beet or potatoes?

Anyway, does anyone in Britain really eat soya stuff?

[edit on 12-2-2010 by Essan]

reply to post by Essan


Yes, I live in Oregon, I know plenty about grazing. However, it takes more than grazing in the moors and marshes to provide for the world.

And MY point is that this is not a matter of the veggies being bad for the environment, it is a matter of the POLICIES that govern the veggies being bad for the environment.

Some of my favourite foods are vegetarian.

It takes approximately 5.75 acres of land per head to raise beef cattle. I'm sure that raising a crop (or a variety of crops) for human consumption based on the same acreage would be far more efficient. It also depends on the livestock being raised. You can throw a sheep or a goat on pretty much any topography and it will be just fine (dependent on your local predator situation - Britain has few natural predators, so a sheep on a Welsh hillside will be a little safer than one in an area with bobcats or mountain lions in the USA), but beef cattle require a little more consideration. If it broke down to a single family, the use of 5.75 acres would be better for growing sustainable crops than for raising a single head of cattle.

It's the export demand that is causing environmental issues, not the consumers themselves. A lot of the imported stuff is going into food processing at factory level, and most vegetarians I know wouldn't eat processed food.
If you can source locally, you're doing a lot less to harm the planet.

Oh yeah, that's right....we gotta keep those corn farmers happy, though.

reply to post by captaintyinknots


But we can provide for Britain

That issue raised in the news story isn't about feeding the world - it's the fact that eating soya products in Britain is more damaging than eating foodstuff produced in Britain. And that, IMO is what we should be doing.

Meanwhile, instead of burning down the forests to grow cheap food for Britain, Africa could start growing food for Africa. And so on.

Originally posted by FortAnthem
In the latest example of envronmentalists gone wild, a new study is claiming that vegitarianism can be harmful to the environment.

That's right, all of you salad eating vegitarians need to put down your tofu and pick up some good old fashioned veal to save the environment. Eating a little bit of delicious dead baby cow meat is all it would take to end global warming.

So what do you say vegitarians, are you ready to put down your salad forks to save the environment?

So, I'm confused. Are you being sarcastic because you're a vegetarian and you don't agree with the article?

-Dev

It isn’t just that we humans consume too much food. There is too much food that is thrown away because it goes bad. This same food could have gone to people who really needed the food and are starving with there being a surplus left afterwards. Instead we overstock supermarket shelves, and restaurants, and in doing so help with the need to have more food grown for the livestock.

I do not know what the simple answer to this is, but it is not “vegetarians put down your salad forks and Pick up a chicken wing”, and it is not “meat eaters put down that leg of lamb and have some tofu” either.

Humans are designed to be omnivores, just look at the human teeth, but reaching the balance between the two is not something most due, but if we did, then we would also have to start not overstocking food, which destroys the environment as well.

Still, there is no easy answer on how to accomplish this though.

reply to post by Essan

I certainly agree that each nation should take more responsibility in growing their own crops, etc.

But this issue is still about policy, not about the crops themselves.

reply to post by DevolutionEvolvd


I'm being sarcastic because I think the environmentalist wackos are idiots!

The idea that vegitarians are destroying the environment is just plain silly. The fact that someone actually paid for this study is completely stupid and a waste of money.

I eat both meat and vegitables and I don't have anything against vegitarians as long as they don't attack me for what I eat.

Edit to add: But I do like to tease them from time to time.

[edit on 12-2-2010 by FortAnthem]

reply to post by l neXus l


Actually I think the majority of rainforest land is being cleared to meet the mass demand for commercially consumed coffee by North America, Japan, and Europe. No doubt the other crops factor in but it is the global obsession with coffee that is making a huge impact.

"The changes in coffee production over time have drastically changed the natural environment in Costa Rica. As cleared land is necessary for the modern, sun-grown plantations, increased deforestation has resulted, raising questions about atmospheric protection, water quality, wildlife loss and more. With a loss of forest, less and less carbon dioxide can be absorbed, adding to the greenhouse effect and global warming. Runoff and erosion increase as well, especially during rains, causing floods into the river systems and hurting water quality and water ecosystems.

The loss of biodiversity that results from clear-cutting for sun-growth plantations is astounding. Mainly due to habitat loss, wildlife is removed as its natural home is destroyed. In depth studies by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Centre indicates that over 90% fewer bird species are found in sun-grown plantations as compared to shade-grown (Impacts of Coffee, CafŽ Unidos). Billions of birds fly south to the tropics of Central America to escape the winters in the forests of North America. These neotropical migrants have steadily declining populations due to the massive changes in the ecological landscape (Pendergrast 400)."

jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu...

The masses should eat less burgers and drink less coffee in my opinion.

reply to post by FortAnthem


But you have to understand why such a study would have been conducted in the first place. If you read the link I provided in the first post it might make sense. And...this "study" was likely inexpensive.



Should make sense now.

-Dev