Social Issue Paper final draft
11/25/09


Meat Production is a Serious Environmental Risk

The aim of this paper is to present a sociological perspective on food, describe how different kinds of food are produced, and analyze what different methods of food production mean for people and their environment. Feeding people is an interesting phenomena. It is so common and natural, all of us are sometimes hungry, all of us eat several times a day. Food is the subject of our everyday practice that we hardly think about it at all. And if we do it is because of our health troubles or it is a matter of lifestyle. In my opinion these common things, the natural aspects of our lives which we perform every day, should be more deep analyzed in order to employ our sociological imagination. What I intend to do is to focus on agriculture and I will pay a special attention to the livestock sector of the business. My point is that increasing meat production is a serious environmental and social risk. If we will conttinue the current trends aiming to satisfy the growing hunger for meat we put everyone in a risk and we should be considered as insane.

The beginning of this paper will introduce you to brief history of the last couple thousand years. Patterns of human eating behavior were quite different in the past, which is important to know so we can deconstruct the nature of the meat-eating pattern which is still growing in absolute quantity. I will also present an attempt of historical shift in well-being when humans settled down, stopped hunting animals, and started to grow crops. The concepts of food, hunger, famine will be defined to aid the discussion. Then I will proceed to describe current food production system. Figures of consumption and costs of production will be provided. Numbers can tell us a lot about the steak on our plate. With meat production come environmental and societal risks. I will focus on the effect of agriculture on global warming through greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and depletion, health risks and tensions between particular segments of society. After discussing all this evidence possible solutions will be proposed with a special emphasis on making change to eating habits.

A Short History of Food

We can trace human eating habits back approximately ten or fifteen thousands years. In this remote history the role of food was more important than it is today. Eating habits and their changes had direct impacts on the structure and properties of society, if we can say there was a society at all. In the Pleistocene epoch, which lasted roughly from 2.5 million to 14,000 years ago, people fed themselves mainly by means of hunting and gathering. The food consisted of stationary plant and fungal food sources on the one hand, and of hunted animals on the second hand. This accidental and unsure form of food production implied the social structure – people lived in small tribes with very restricted culture and limited developments. The big shift known as the neolithic revolution was crucial for human development. Approximately 14,000 years ago people settled down and agricultural techniques were invented. Planting crops and the domestication of livestock as well, allowed people to gain some control of food production. Surplus production and reduced incidentalness of food enabled development and birth of more complex societies. Establishment and growth of cities, hierarchy power and the horizontal differentiation of segments and functions of society can be dated precisely to the event of the neolithic revolution. The point of this historical lesson is to notice that the methods of food production were strongly linked to whole human society. All people depended on the food, and when they coped food shortcomings then the further development was enabled. In my opinion it means that if we cope with defects and imperfection of present agriculture system we can proceed in human development.

What is Food?

Even most obvious things should be re-thought. So what is the food? We can consider food as any substance, which can be consumed by people and animals in order to get energy and nutrition. Nowadays this substance is dominantly produced by agriculture industry. Agriculture industry is globalized as much as other business fields, for example the growing middle class of Chinese people and their demand for a meat, raises costs of all food around the world.

Agriculture products are divided in two kind of commodities. First, crops, are produced as a primary food. Soil, water and sun are needed to raise crops. Human can eat directly crops and we do. The second commodity is meat. Meat comes from animals, mostly from beef, pork and chicken. Animals are bred in farms in various ways. For instance cows can be bred on pastures extensively or can be bred in animal houses. For breed of animals we need crops (that means water and soil for crops production), water for animals, soil for the pastures. When is crop grown there is only minimal amount of waste produced, but when animals are bred, farmers need to cope with lot of waste – the most serious are feces. So we need to include the cost of waste management as well.

Let's move on to hunger and famine. When there are food shortcomings, people become hungry. Simple, isn't t? When there is a significant part of population hungry and no food for them is provided we can call this situation famine. Nowadays are famines caused mainly by governments of non-democratic regimes, North Korea is a common example of this government caused famine. This should be enough to clarify our terms, we can continue with deeper analysis of production and consumption systems.

Food Production, Consumption and the Environment

Meat is produced because people buy it. There is no relevant society (like a nation or society, which has a power over its sources) which is completely meat free. All societies employ meat producers and consume meat. But differences between societies or countries are huge. For example, each American consumes on average 124 kg of meat each year so USA are at the first rank (Pimentel 2003). The bottom of chart is occupied by developing countries, average of Bangladesh is 3 kg a year. The world average is then 31 kg a year. Figures are still growing, consumption of meat has doubled in the last 15 years. Because of intense development in many countries, we can name China and other Asian countries, hundreds of millions people become wealthy and change their eating habits towards to meat consumption (Fiala 2008). According to Fiala's estimates, “ if current consumption patterns continue, the amount of total meat consumed in the year 2030 will be 72percent higher than the amount consumed in 2000, lead mostly by large increases in chicken and pig consumption” (Fiala 2008: 2). Pattern of growing meat consumption has to be acknowledged. In next paragraphs I will present environmental consequences of meat production.

Meat production requires vast water sources. Use of water for meat production leads to pollution of water sources and also to depletion of water sources. I mentioned above that there is a double need of water for meat production. Numbers say more, I give you a short chart of water amount needed for product:


1 liter milk 990 liters
1 kg beef 16000 liters
1 kg rice 3000 liters
1 kg wheat 1350 liters
(Chapagain and Hoekstra 2004: 41).

Beef is the most water demanding product of all(poznamka pod carou na konci dokumentu 1), other kinds of meat are less demanding. Livestock production pollutes the water by various means. Huge animal farms produce lot of feces every day. If the waste management is done in some bad way the feces can pollute the sources of fresh water. Fresh water is also polluted indirectly by chemicals and antibiotics. Use of pesticides, applying antibiotics on animals and usage of heavy metals cause water pollution (Steinfeld et al. 2006).

Greenhouse gas emission is another serious trouble caused by livestock sector. According to various authors is livestock production responsible from 8percent to 18percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (Fiala 2008; Steinfeld et al. 2006). Livestock industry differs from other industries, e.g. transportation, let see how contributes to spectrum of greenhouse gas. Livestock account for 9percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, for 35-40percent of methane emissions, for 65percent of nitrous oxide emissions and for 64percent of ammonia emissions (Steinfeld et al. 2006). All together put livestock production before road transport according to greenhouse gas emissions. It is said that you can have either hamburger or you can travel 200 miles by car. But you can't experience this directly, lets see what a meat production and consumption mean for us and our health.

Food and Health

Over-consumption of a meat, like in USA or other developed countries, leads to serious health issues. Obesity is the most obvious one. There are direct consequences of obesity, high health risks and reduction of life quality. But we can consider other point of view on obesity. John Powles (2009) elaborated two models of populations and compared them. One population has a “normal” body mass index which correspond to Britain in 1970 and for the second one, overweight population, was assigned body mass index distribution predicted for Britain in 2010. His conclusions show the high costs for obese population. We can imagine what is involved in these high costs – treatment of diseases caused by improper diet like cardio-vascular disease, diabetes and certain kinds of cancer (Steinfeld et. al 2006). Another threat comes from diseases transmitted by animals, for example mad cows, bird flu or nowadays swine flu. I stop with data presentation now and in next section I will try to propose some solution.

Solutions

Authors and scientists paying attention to agricultural system have various proposals. There is an idea of implementing of high technologies into farm in order to work with and use methane produced by livestock. Change of consumption pattern would also help. Promotion of local farm would reduced transportation. Extensive livestock production on pastures would may reduce greenhouse gas emissions by half. More courageous authors say that we have to change the price construction, environmental costs must be included.

The solution which I offer is simple. If we don't eat meat then we won't solve the consequences of livestock production. Imagine that people turn to drastic reduction of meat consumption. Animal farms wouldn't need crops as a feed for animals, therefore there would be more crops on the market and crops would be cheaper. Our health would be improved and health services would save money and time, which could be devoted elsewhere. Reduction of livestock would slower global warming and pressure on scarce fresh water sources would be reduced as well. I try to think about some negative consequences of livestock sector reduction but I still can't find any.
Everyone can reduce his or her meat consumption and thus help world to be better place, it is so simple. And there is no need for policymakers or for system reform. We can just in bottom-up direction change the system, it is so easy.

Conlusion

Focus of this paper is on agriculture and especially on livestock and meat production. Meat production is considered as a risk and analysis provides evidence to show what consequences are caused by this kind of industry. There is a pattern of growing meat consumption, it has doubled in the last 15 years for example. Livestock production is often seen as standalone, when our farmers are in troubles, there is always state to help and to subsidize this field. There should be more critical approach in order to get into picture all costs involved with meat production, like environmental and societal risks. In my opinion is simplest solution best one – improvement of diet and drastic reduction of meat consumption, could solve all the issue.






References:

Chapagain, A., K. and A., Y Hoekstra,. 2004. “Water Footprints of Nations. Volume 1: Main Report.” UNESCO-IHE. Retrieved November 17, 2009 (http://www.unesco-ihe.org/content/download/1904/20199/file/Report16_Volume1.pdf).

Fiala, Nathan. 2008. “Meeting the Demand: An Estimation of Potential Future Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Meat Production.” Ecological Economics, 67:3. Retrieved November 17, 2009 (http://www.nathanfiala.com/Meetingpercent20thepercent20Demand.pdf).

Powles, John. 2009. “Commentary: Why diets need to change to avert harm from global warming.” International Journal of Epidemilogy, 38:4. Retrieved November 17, 2009 (http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/extract/38/4/1141).

Pimentel, D. and M. Pimentel. 2003. “Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment.“ American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 78:3. Retrieved November 25, 2009 (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/78/3/660S)

Steinfeld, Henning et al. 2006. “Livestock's Long Shadow. Environmental issues and options.” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved November 17, 2009 (http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM).



Footnotes

(1) „In general livestock products have higher virtual water content than crop products. This is because a live animal consumes a lot of feed crops, drinking water and service water in its lifetime before it produces some output. Let us consider an example of beef produced in an industrial farming system. It takes in average 3 years before it is slaughtered to produce about 200 kg of boneless beef. It consumes nearly 1300 kg of grains (wheat, oats, barley, corn, dry peas, soybean meal and other small grains), 7200 kg of roughages (pasture, dry hay, silage and other roughages), 24 cubic meter of water for drinking and 7 cubic meter of water for servicing. This means that to produce one kilogram of boneless beef, we use about 6.5 kg of grain, 36 kg of roughages, and 155 litres of water (only for drinking and servicing). Producing the volume of feed requires about 15340 litres of water in average.“ (Chapagain and Hoekstra 2004: 42)