Eco-Eating

I have some awesome news for the planet. The food and drinks the average person consumes are the single largest determining factor of their overall ecological footprint. Why is this good news? Because knowing this, it’s easy and affordable to make major improvements in one’s global impact. But what are the most ecological choices?

Local eating is the latest environmental buzz. People want to know how “green” their tomato is. Is it an island hopper with pages of stamps in it’s passport or is it a down home local from the farmer’s market.

I appreciate the efforts of "Locavores" to buy and eat regionally. Changing one’s diet is a noble, and often difficult pursuit. However, what few people realize is that in terms of eating carbon consciously, choosing a tomato is always a better option than choosing an animal product, regardless of the proximity in which it was produced. A closer look at production and distribution mechanisms behind local animal products reveals that they are far from being the “green superstars” many in the local food movement think they are.

While buying regionally grown and produced food is usually good for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, choosing a plant-based product over an animal product reduces our environmental impact significantly more.

A 2008 study in the Journal Environmental Science and Technology found that shifting less than one day per week’s calories from meat and dairy products to a vegetable-based diet achieves more green house gas reduction than buying all locally sourced food.

Local can be good. When we buy fruits and veggies grown on our area, we are eating more seasonally, supporting our local food co-ops and farmer’s markets and possibly reducing emissions. However, local is not always the more ecological option.

For example, a farmer that lives 50 miles from your house may travel many hundreds of miles throughout the week going from one farmer’s market to another to sell his veggies. In comparison, an organic farm a couple hundred miles away with a semi-truck and one route delivering directly from the farm to store can travel less miles, carrying much more produce, while producing fewer emissions. Scenarios vary, but the point is that local is not necessarily more ecological.

Upon deeper investigation into production, local animal products have far more environmental impact than a tomato with a tropical tan.

There is more to assessing the ecological consequence of a food product then the proximity in which it was grown or produced. The total production effect as well as energy and water needed to produce the product must be taken into account. When gauging the carbon footprint of food, transportation (or how ‘”local” the food is) is only 11 percent of the equation, while production is a stunning 83 percent.

Few people ever stop to ask where the feed for local farm animals come from. Animals raised for meat, dairy and eggs are fed soy, oats, alfalfa, corn etc. Feed crops are usually not grown locally. Even “grass-fed” cows are feed imported grain the majority of the year. Grain that could be going directly to people are shipped hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to feed farm animals.

This is just the beginning of the ecological trounce that animal agriculture, “local” or otherwise, is inflicting on the health of our severely stressed planet. Here’s a look at some of the numerous other environmental problems that apply to the production of “local” animal products:

Global Warming-
According to the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Committee, animal agriculture releases more greenhouse gasses than all the world’s transportation combined!1 A University of Chicago study recently revealed that switching to a vegan diet is actually more effective for climate change than switching to a hybrid car.

Water Waste and Pollution-
Enormous quantities of water is wasted on the grains grown to feed livestock, then huge additional amounts are used to water the animals, clean the equipment, etc. Producing 1 lb. of animal protein requires about 100 times more water than producing 1 lb. of grain protein.2

As for waste, one dairy farm with 2,500 cows produces as much solid waste as a city with around 411,000 residents.3 This waste concentrates on the farm and runs off into our groundwater polluting our waterways. Animal feed lots create more water pollution than factories and sewage treatment.4

Wasted Resources-
For every 1kg of animal protein produced, livestock are fed about 6 kg of plant protein. At present, the US livestock population consumes more than seven times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population. Enough to feed the entire human population of the country five times.5

Energy Use-
Massive amounts of energy is wasted in the artificial environment of the factory farm, slaughterhouse and processing plant. Indoor environments, conveyor belts, milking machines, lighting, heating, mechanized slaughter process all require excessive energy. In fact, it takes eight times as much fossil fuel to produce animal products as it takes to produce plant food.6

Sadly, this is just a small taste of animal agriculture’s devastating ecological impact. So please, the next time you’re assessing a food’s ecological footprint, be sure to remember: organic is important, local is good, but vegan is best.

A plant-based diet is by far the most ecological dietary choice we can make.

For more information on animal agriculture’s environmental impact, check out: www.farmanimalprotection.org/fapp/environment.htm and
www.earthsave.org

Footnotes

1Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 2006, pg. 272

2Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2000, U.S. Geological Survey, Hutson, Barber, Kenny, Linsey, Lumia and Maupin, 2005

3US Environmental Protection Agency. ""Risk Management Evaluation for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations." US EPA National Risk Management Laboratory. May 2004: 7

4Profile of the Agricultural Livestock Production Industry United States Enforcement and EPA 310-R-00-002 Environmental Protection Compliance Assurance September 2000 Agency (2221-A) pg. 35

5Sustainability of Meat-Based and Plant Based Diets and the Environment, Pimentel and Pimentel From the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell University, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 78, No. 3, 660S-663S, © 2003, pg. 661, 662

6Energy Costs of Intensive Livestock Production, Roller, American Society of Agriculture Engineers, Cited in Diet For a New America, Robbins, pg. 376