Global authoritative organizations like the United Nations, the World Watch Institute, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the World Health Organization, and many others are frequently and fervently publishing alarming reports about a variety of environmental and interrelated human health concerns: climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, hunger, groundwater depletion, groundwater pollution, ocean dead-zones, oceanic acidification, a rising diabetes epidemic, exploding cancer rates, heart disease – humanity has a lot to contend with in the 21st century. But what if all these seemingly disparate issues have a single cause in common? What if all of those different issues could be significantly alleviated by one lifestyle change: eating less meat?
By the United States Department of Agriculture’s own admission, the agriculture industry (which is dominated by livestock and feed production) accounts for 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States (Hynes) and 80% of those agricultural emissions are from livestock (Steinfeld 2006, 112). The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a sub-agency of the United Nations, asserts that emissions that come directly from livestock account for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire transportation sector combined (Steinfeld 2006, 112); while other research suggests that emissions from domesticated animals may account for more than 50% of global GHG emissions (Goodland & Anhang 2009, 10)
Coupled with the fact that greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture are expected to rise by 80% by the year 2050 (with the majority of that growth being driven by livestock) (Tilman & Clark 2014, 520), it is safe to say that the climate of planet earth is in dire straits and it is only getting worse.
According to the FAO, livestock production is a leading cause of biodiversity loss and deforestation as well as a leading cause of groundwater depletion and pollution (Steinfeld 2006, 29, 125, 181).
According to the United Nations, processed red meat is a type 1 carcinogen, the same categorization given to tobacco (Bouvard et al. 2015, 1600). Further, unprocessed red meat is still a type 2A carcinogen – the same category as glyphosate and anabolic steroids (Bouvard et al. 2015, 1600).
A meta-analysis published in 2017 by the European Heart Journal demonstrated that elevated blood cholesterol plays the primary causal role in the progression of atherosclerosis – the clogging of the arteries by atherosclerotic plaque (plaques made up of cholesterol) that results in heart attack or stroke. This meta-analysis drew data from more than 200 studies, including randomized trials, prospective cohort studies, and Mendelian randomization studies. Combined, this meta-analysis contained more than 2,000,000 human participants and 20,000,000 person-years of follow up (Ference et al. 2017, 1).
According to a 2017 report published by the Centers for Disease Control, one in three Americans ages 18 or older in 2015 had prediabetes (84 million people)(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2017, 7), while nearly 10% have diagnosed diabetes (more than 30 million people) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2017, 2). According to the same report, the total direct and indirect cost of only diagnosed diabetes in 2012 was more than 240 billion dollars.
But what does diabetes have to do with the consumption of animal products or saturated fat? Contrary to public understanding, diabetes is not caused by sugar consumption but rather by genetics, lifestyle factors and new research is showing that fat consumption plays a causal role in the progression of the disease (Barnard & Trapp 2014). In fact, a 2017 meta-analysis with more than 250,000 participants found no statistical association between total sugar consumption and prevalence of type 2 diabetes (Tsilas et al. 2017). Actually, those that ate the most sugar in the study had a 9% lower risk of type 2 diabetes than those that ate the least sugar. The consumption of animal products is increasingly being tied to the type 2 diabetes epidemic because of their high saturated fat content (Talaei et al. 2017) with some research suggesting it plays a causal role (Risérus et al. 2009) while other research identifies meat and animal product consumption as a significant risk factor (Barnard & Trapp 2014). The bottom line is that there is a huge body of medical and nutrition literature tying saturated fat and animal product consumption to a public health epidemic that threatens to explode American healthcare costs. Maybe we should stop providing billions of taxpayer dollars for an industry that is playing a role in that epidemic.
The United States government has subsidized the production and consumption of animal products (especially meat, dairy and eggs) for decades, even though this activity directly and indirectly damage the environment and public health. Through the United States Farm Bill, which in its recent renewal was dubbed the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (H.R. 2, 115th Cong. 2018), the government provides and has provided tens of billions of dollars in economic incentives to produce environmentally destructive and disease-causing animal food products.
According to a study published in 2007, factory farms saved roughly $35,000,000,000 between the years of 1997 and 2005 due to the reduced costs of feed provided by Title I of the Farm Bill (Starmor & Wise 2007, 1). Title VII is another section of the legislation that provides a significant but smaller indirect subsidy via programs for research and development.
Title II is a direct subsidy concerned with Conservation. Specifically, I want to look at EQIP – the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. This program pays farmers and livestock producers to help reduce the environmental impact of their operation and it provides technical assistance to farmers as they figure out how to achieve these goals. This program used to exclude concentrated animal feeding operations, but in 2002 this exclusion was removed (Stanley et. al, 13). Now it is estimated that 11% of all EQIP funds are paid out directly to CAFOs (approximating $113,000,000) (Stanley et al, 13). These funds are used for the transfer of manure, the purchase of waste storage facilities, and facilities for the slaughter of livestock. While the intent behind EQIP may be admirable, as it is not a bad idea to make efforts to reduce environmental harm, what it effectively amounts to are large transfers of wealth from the American taxpayer to multi-million or multi-billion-dollar livestock firms to reduce the externalities produced by their operations.
Title V of the Farm Bill provides large sum federally secured loans to livestock producers, with loans for concentrated animal feeding operations often receiving the largest amounts. Farmers and ranchers are able to borrow more than $3,000,000 per year from the feds under Title V (Stanley et al, 15). Through this program the federal government encourages the creation and expansion of animal agriculture operations by providing large sums of capital to these livestock firms. Title XII – Miscellaneous, provides $120,000,000 per year in funding for fiscal years 2019 through 2023 for the creation of a vaccination and disease prevention program for farm animals as well as more than 400 million dollars for a beginning ranchers development and outreach program – yet another way in which the Farm Bill encourages the expansion of an environmentally destructive economic sector.
A vast “agriculture-industrial” complex has propped up around the agricultural and livestock sectors, that spends millions lobbying congress for continued renewal and expansion of the Farm Bill. In 2017, the livestock sector spent more than $3,500,000 lobbying congress, the dairy industry spent nearly $6,000,000, meat processors spent nearly $5,000,000, and poultry and egg producers spent $1,700,000 (Stanley et al, 8).
A new massive 745-page report published by the United Nations asserts that meat production currently uses 77% of the world’s agricultural land, while GHG emissions from livestock grew by 51% from 1961 to 2010 and demand for meat in developing nations rose by more than 100% (UN Environment 2019, 149). Later the report goes on to say that meat consumption is expected to increase 89% by the year 2050 (UN Environment 2019, 290).
So, what can we expect in a world where meat production and consumption has been significantly scaled back to meet the UN’s recommendations? According to research referenced within the GEO-6, 2,700 million hectares of pasture and 100 million hectares of crop land would be freed up and abandoned (almost as much land as the continent of Africa) (Stehfest et al. 2009, 83). That newly freed up land would then become massive carbon sinks. So, from just looking at the change in land use alone nearly seven billion acres of land are transitioned from contributing towards a global crisis to becoming part of the solution. Furthermore, the same research finds that transitioning to low-meat sustainable diets would reduce the costs of curbing carbon emissions to reach targets laid out by the Paris Agreement by a massive 47% (Stehfest et al. 2009, 98).
If the costs of curbing climate change are truly a top priority for us, perhaps we ought to start getting serious about changing the way we eat. But the Stehfest et al. research is just making assertions about the effects this could have in fighting climate change; what about stopping it altogether? According to the GEO-6, if the entire planet stopped eating just red meat, we would pause climate change completely for 25 years.
the main driver of Amazonian deforestation is livestock production - 70% of previously forested Amazonian forest is now pasture land for livestock (Steinfeld 2006, 256). The regrowth of the Amazon forest would further expand the planet’s carbon absorbing capacities. The world’s oceanic fisheries are predicted to collapse by mid-century (Worm et al. 2006, 788), so avoiding that with a global low-meat diet (which means low-fish as well) would probably be for the best if we decide oceanic health is a priority of ours. As mentioned earlier in this paper we also know that animal agriculture is a leading cause of groundwater pollution (Steinfeld 2006), so another benefit of the elimination of this industry would be the alleviation of nitrogen contaminated drinking water supplies around the country. We could expect colorectal cancers to virtually vanish as this is a cancer specific to heavy meat-eating populations.
