Shooting the messenger
Announcement posted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Australia 19 Feb 2019
Dear Editor,
"Shooting the messenger" has been a popular sport for at least 2,000 years (although back then, Plutarch tells us, the messenger would be decapitated for bringing bad news).
Australia kept up the absurd tradition of shooting the messenger this week when WA Labor MP Lisa Baker stated the undeniable fact that "meat-eating men produced more greenhouse gas emissions than vegan women”. She was shouted down by lobbying groups like the Pastoralists and Graziers Association and WAFarmers, as well as their spokesperson, the Federal Agriculture Minister.
As a man who, twenty years ago, used to eat a lot of meat, I can only concur with Ms Baker’s statement. Recent research shows the enormous carbon footprint of animal agriculture – it provides just 18% of calories but takes up 83% of farmland. The most comprehensive analysis ever done of the damage farming does to the planet, covering 38,700 farms in 119 countries, found that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, the European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world.
Science shows that eliminating meat is the best way to reduce food's environmental impacts. It would allow reforestation, significantly reduce a range of human health problems – from obesity and diabetes to heart disease, strokes and certain types of cancer – and save billions of animals from lives of terror and agonising deaths.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577 416
desmondb@peta.org.au
"Shooting the messenger" has been a popular sport for at least 2,000 years (although back then, Plutarch tells us, the messenger would be decapitated for bringing bad news).
Australia kept up the absurd tradition of shooting the messenger this week when WA Labor MP Lisa Baker stated the undeniable fact that "meat-eating men produced more greenhouse gas emissions than vegan women”. She was shouted down by lobbying groups like the Pastoralists and Graziers Association and WAFarmers, as well as their spokesperson, the Federal Agriculture Minister.
As a man who, twenty years ago, used to eat a lot of meat, I can only concur with Ms Baker’s statement. Recent research shows the enormous carbon footprint of animal agriculture – it provides just 18% of calories but takes up 83% of farmland. The most comprehensive analysis ever done of the damage farming does to the planet, covering 38,700 farms in 119 countries, found that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, the European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world.
Science shows that eliminating meat is the best way to reduce food's environmental impacts. It would allow reforestation, significantly reduce a range of human health problems – from obesity and diabetes to heart disease, strokes and certain types of cancer – and save billions of animals from lives of terror and agonising deaths.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577 416
desmondb@peta.org.au