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April
8 , 2004 (Globe and Mail)
Before you
sink your teeth into that burger
These appear to be tough times for meat-eaters in Canada: ostracized
by popular movies like Babe, Chicken Run, and The Meatrix (a cult
Internet hit); lambasted in the bestselling book Fast Food Nation;
fearful of mad-cow disease, avian flu and PCBs in farmed salmon.
Yet meat continues to be a fixture at almost every
meal in Canada. Individual Canadians eat about 100 kilograms of
meat a year, twice as much as the global average. That works out
to 275 grams a day (equal to three good-sized burger patties),
three times higher than the level recommended by the World Cancer
Research Fund.
From a health perspective, eating meat is associated
with health problems that are widespread in Canada: heart disease,
stroke, obesity, cancer and diabetes. Nutritionists and mothers
are right: We should eat more vegetables, fruits and legumes.
An added benefit of eating less meat would be less strain on our
medical system.
In recent decades, small-scale farm operations
have given way to industrial livestock operations, also known
as factory farms. In Canada between 1961 and 1996, the average
number of animals per farm rose dramatically: cows, 147 per cent;
chickens, 1,610 per cent; and hogs, a mind-boggling 2,451 per
cent.
Canadian livestock operations produce 132 billion
kilograms of manure annually, equal to 4,000 kilograms per Canadian.
In Ontario and Quebec alone, livestock produce a volume of manure
equal to the sewage from 100 million people. While manure can
be used beneficially as a natural fertilizer, it can also contaminate
water with nitrate, phosphorous and coliform bacteria. Between
1988 and 1998, there were 274 manure spills in Ontario, including
53 spills that killed fish. Although Canada spends billions of
dollars to treat human sewage, far greater volumes of animal manure
receive no treatment at all.
Ontario's environment commissioner concluded "environmental
laws created when small operations were the norm may not address
the associated environmental risks that come with more intensive
farm operations."
Many people are aware of the world's growing water
crisis but few recognize the connection between meat and water.
It takes about 40,000 litres of water to produce a kilogram of
beef, 6,000 to produce a kilogram of pork, and 3,500 to produce
a kilogram of chicken. Far less water is required to grow grains,
legumes, fruits and vegetables.
We can't simply replace red meat with fish either.
The human quest for animal protein is devastating the Earth's
oceans. Globally, the volume of wild fish caught has increased
almost 500 per cent in the past 50 years. As a result, 70 per
cent of the world's fisheries face serious difficulties as a result
of overfishing. Pre-eminent fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly examined
45 years of United Nations data on species from around the world,
and concluded that the "continuation of present trends will
lead to widespread fisheries collapses" and, ultimately,
the breakdown of ecosystems. Nor is fish farming a panacea, as
it relies on a kind of protein pyramid scheme whereby wild fish
are caught and ground into feed for distant fish farms, an environmentally
reckless and grossly inefficient system.
The good news amid all this doom and gloom is
that there is a simple solution to the myriad problems caused
by meat consumption: Eat less meat! A healthier diet for both
people and the planet involves dining lower on the food chain
and only eating meat that is raised responsibly -- that is, organic
or free range. There's no need for everybody to become vegetarian,
but we'd all be better off if meat consumption declined.
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