We are all responsible for what is happening in the world through our choices and our consumption. Inspired by an article in La Repubblica I want to introduce a topic relevant to the Easter holiday: the consumption of meat.
The consumption of meat - especially red meat - is a luxury in terms of resources used for nutrition: one hectare cultivated in grain produces five times more protein per hectare than the production of meat, a hectare cultivated with spinach produces 26 times more protein.
In the world there are 1.3 million cattle, an immense herd which occupies, directly or indirectly, 24% of the Earth's surface and consumes an amount of grain sufficient to feed hundreds of millions of people.
It has been estimated that 1000 grams of vegetable protein is necessary to produce 60 grams of animal protein. That a kilo of beef "drinks" 3,200 litres of water. That it takes 22 grams of oil to produce 1 kilo of flour against 193 to produce 1 kilo of meat.
Cattle are a nutrition source which need tons of water and energy. The result of it is food for only 20% of the global population of the planet. That 20% uses 80% of the world's resources.
If all this were not enough to reduce the consumption of red meat, one must think that a part of the cereal crops needed to feed cattle are cheap-imports from countries where hunger is killing human beings. Children of poor countries do not have enough cereals to let us eat our steak.
Popeye was eating spinach. If we imitate him the world would be better.
Bruno Picozzi (in translation)
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2 comments:
Is McDonald's still getting its meat from the cows that eat the rainforest? I just wondered... And meat is also not the healthiest food btw.. but should less developed countries stop growing cows and chicken?
Poor tribes like traditional Masai in Africa grow cattle in a sane interdependance with the environment. There is no bad in it, they don't starve.
Somewhere else people are starving for lack of proteins and the government introduces more cattle, whose products are too expensive for poor people, instead of growing cereals, which prices are still affordable.
Definitely, we should stop subventioning our cattle, which makes the prices of meat largely affordable, so that people would naturally go back to cereals, vegetables and fruit.
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