At Reach we do not have an evangelical approach to our beliefs. We believe that people need to arrive at their own decisions and make their own choices based on their experience and what they believe as a result of those experiences.
What we offer is empowerment through education, in the belief that when we have the information/facts about any given situation, we can then decide how we want to proceed.
Our experience has taught us that a conscience-driven approach is much more likely to lead to lasting change, because when we seek to force, intimidate and coerce people with our impassioned arguments, the motivations generated in them are not strong enough to sustain positive change.
We speak a lot about mind, body, spirit and environment and the fact that they are inextricably linked. For those of you familiar with the Story of Health diagram (see below), you will know that the circle, which represents the environment, encompasses everything and so we cannot divorce our destinies from it.
We now stand at a point in history, where our relationship to the environment is more critical than ever… and if we don’t change our attitude and approach, we will carry on creating the conditions where we bury ourselves alive.
This is why a new approach to eating and our diets is required because currently most of the pollution we are generating is as a result of our agricultural husbandry and the food choices that drive the food industry; and the facts speak for themselves. Please don’t take our word for this, do your own research and then search your own conscience, and act accordingly.
Below are some of the commentators, researchers and facts that have been accumulating around this topic.
Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University, is warning that the global demand for meat products is driving huge changes in the oceans and our ecosystem and a better understanding of the relationship between our food choices and planetary outcomes is needed.
Jeremy Rifkin is the President and Founder of the Foundation on Economic Trends, which is a nonprofit organisation, established in 1977. The primary thrust of the foundation is to observe and report on the economic, environmental, social, and cultural impacts of new technologies introduced into global economies.
Over the past three decades Rifkin has, through his books and research, been informing governments, decision-makers and policy makers who are driving global economies, that our progress in food technologies is threatening our very existence. The data he has accrued quite clearly states that, ‘Our diet is taking us to the abyss’.
Forest clearing is now taking place on a massive scale. Every two years an area about the size of Portugal is cleared. Most of the forest clearing is taking place because of commercial agriculture. In other words, we are removing millions of acres of forest to create land for those animals which will go on to be consumed. The irony of this onslaught is that we need the trees to absorb carbon dioxide and give us back oxygen in return. So, we are diminishing the quantity and quality of the air that we breathe.
It should be stated for clarity that over 9 million acres of forest is cleared each year illegally and there does not appear to be enough political will to address this crime against Mother Earth. What compounds this massacre is we are only replanting each year about 5 billion trees, and we are cutting down around 15 billion, leaving us in negative equity.
Once the forests are cleared, the animals graze the land bare which means we have to feed the animals in preparation for slaughter because the natural environment cannot support their consumption needs.
Farmers then grow food to feed the animals, which have now taken over the land which would have been used for growing human crops. It is now calculated that about 50% of the agricultural land around the world is being used for livestock farming; this is an area that is about 20% of the total landmass of the Earth and this figure is rising.
To find out more on this subject see the work of Dr Tara Garnett – Food Climate Research Network. University of Oxford; and discover the research work of LEAP (Livestock, Environment and People).
This short video offers a useful introduction:
Farm Forward is a non-profit organisation which promotes agriculture that combines the best in traditional husbandry and animal welfare science to eliminate the worst practices in factory farming. “Animal agriculture contributes to climate change, water pollution, and the destruction of ecosystems. Intensive meat and dairy production are significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions, consume large quantities of fresh water, drive biodiversity loss, use vast stretches of land, and pollute our air, water, and soil”.
Here are some of the facts that they have produced as a result of their research in this field:
1. If cattle were their own nation, they would be the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses.
2. Globally, an estimated 27 percent of the water “footprint” of humanity is attributable to meat and dairy production.
3. 30 percent of our planet’s total ice-free land is devoted to feeding or raising chickens, pigs and cattle.
4. Without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75 percent—an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined—and still produce enough food to feed the world.
Joseph Poore, Dept of Biology, Oxford University and Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Food Sustainability, has sought to increase our understanding of the environmental impacts of agriculture and create solutions to mitigate these impacts.
He is currently co-investigator along with E.J. Milner-Gulland on the HESTIA project. HESTIA is a data platform that enables researchers and producers to store the environmental impacts of different products and production practices in an open, transparent, and consistent way. The platform aims to make significant progress on sharing the latest agronomic science with food producers globally, supporting science-based reductions in food’s environmental impacts.
In some of the research Joseph has been involved in we are reminded what the cost of farming is to the planet. This raises the question ‘are we making best use of the land’.
Here are some more facts concerning the amount of land being used for common widely consumed produce:
- Milk – size of Brazil
- Beef – size of Canada/USA/Central America, Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador combined
- Eggs – size of Sweden
- Aquaculture feed – size of UK
A plant-based diet would reduce the land required to the size of Africa.
Here are some more disturbing facts that call into question our current approach to food production and the dietary choices we are making, which threaten our very existence.
1.Less than 60% of soy grown across the world is used for human consumption – The rest is being fed to animals.
2. 18 million acres of forest (the size of Panama) are lost every year – 50% of the world’s forests are already gone! At the current rate only 10% will remain by the 2030s
3. ‘The single greatest cause of deforestation is animal agriculture’ NASA. This is a crime called: Agribusiness.
4. In 2018 it was discovered that the world’s top five livestock corporations produced more greenhouse emissions than Exon, Shell and BP. There is a serious conflict of interests in the area of pollution and food security. To find out more see the work of Roger Roberts – Food Industry and Policy Consultant, Cambridge.
5. Dr Sameul Jutzi, former Director of the U.N food and agriculture organisation, warned in 2010 that food lobbyists were seeking to conceal from the public data/evidence relating to damage to the environment because this threatened Agribusiness.
6. In 2013 a report produced by the United Nations, called Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock, stated that the greenhouse gases from livestock emissions are responsible for more greenhouse effects than all forms of transport combined. This report was later called into question by the food industry organisations that had actually funded and participated in the report, largely because they had the most to lose from this damning scientific report, which is why many subsequently called its integrity into question. Also worthy of note is that in 2009 Nestle admitted, in a suppressed document, that as a result of animal agriculture we are set to run out of fresh water in 30 years without some drastic change.
7. Dr Sylvia Earle is an American oceanographer and explorer known for her research on marine algae. Her books and documentaries have been responsible for raising awareness concerning the threats that overfishing, and pollution pose to the world’s oceans. She has passionately sought to educate the world that our fate is intimately entwined with the oceans. Her research has contributed to our understanding that the spraying of insecticides and pesticides has led to the erosion of fertile land especially around the coasts. Added to this, nitrogen from the fertilisers runs off the land into streams, rivers and eventually into the oceans, changing the habitats and eco systems.
The nitrogen fertilisers generate an overgrowth of algae so large that these algal blooms can be seen from space. This algae starves oceans of oxygen leading to the death of marine life, and other wildlife. As the demand for meat grows these low oxygen dead zones are expanding.
‘Livestock farming is the lead cause of ocean dead zones’ according to the Environmental protection agency, USA.
Dr Earle’s primary proposition is that ‘what we do to the oceans we do to ourselves’. Every other breath we take is produced by the ocean. So, if the dead zones keep increasing, we reduce our oxygen levels and therefore we die.
8. At the current rate of fishing, the world’s fisheries will collapse in less than 30 years (see: scientific journal Nature). Our desire for fish is draining the oceans of life. Over 90% of large fish have disappeared from the oceans, due to the over-fishing and mass fish farming, known as aquaculture, which is the breeding, raising and harvesting of fish, shellfish and aquatic plants.
9. ‘One third of all edible fish caught in the ocean are fed to livestock and farmed fish…’ United Nations data. This has led to a rise in aquaculture.
About 70% of the fish we eat today now come from fish farms. Disease and lice have become a marine problem in fish farming as fish are tightly packed together in these farms. As a result, pesticides, disinfectant and antibiotics are being used to try and address the problem.
The evidence has shown that despite the intensive antipathogen regime employed in an attempt to rid the fish of lice and other bacterial infections, it isn’t working because toxins still end up on the plate. (For more information, see: Report on the Environmental Impact of farming of North Atlantic Salmon in Norway, where it is purported that farmed fish is Norway’s most toxic foodstuff).
The run-off, of pesticides and the numerous chemicals used in fish farming are finding their way to the ocean bed and having a devastating effect on the ocean eco system and aquatic life.
The sludge that sits at the bottom of the ocean is creating methane which is also adding to global warming. Researchers at Oxford university have found that in some instances, fish farming is releasing more methane than beef production.
10. In a report on the environmental impact of the farming of North Atlantic salmon in Norway, it was reported that PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyl), dioxins, cadmium, methyl mercury, arsenic and artificial colourings found in the fat of fish from aquaculture were having devastating consequences and those fish that die are riddled with lice, parasites and other bacterial diseases, which is approximately 15 to 20%. Hydrogen peroxide and formaldehyde are widely used (both highly toxic) to try and suppress these diseases.
Antibiotics are being rendered useless because of their overuse in livestock/fish.
“By 2050 more people will die from antibiotic resistance than from cancer”. UK Government research.
For more information on this issue, see: ‘Good food institute’ – which is a nonprofit organisation promoting plant and cell-based alternatives to animal products. The organisation is founded on the mercy of animals and is busy exploring and educating on matters of food security and climate change.
11. 80% of plastic in the oceans comes from used fishing gear – and doesn’t as first thought come from plastic bottles and straws. The growing consensus in the scientific community is that the best way to stop plastic finding its way into the oceans is to switch from fish to a plant-based diet.
Professor Pennie Lindeque, Head of Science: Marine Ecology and Biodiversity at Plymouth University, stated that it’s estimated that there are over 5 trillion tons of plastic in the oceans, and micro plastics have been found in every sea and ocean both on the surface and the bed. There is now more micro plastic than plankton and fish larvae.
What’s happening, is the plankton are ingesting the micro plastics, and the larger fish who eat the plankton are imbibing those micro plastics – and evidence of those plastics are now being found within the flesh of fish.
Researchers at Plymouth University found that over one third of all the fish humans are consuming is contaminated with these micro plastics, which are having incalculable effects on human health.
Since 1970 60% of the animal population has become extinct. If we carry on at our current rate, a mass extinction event is on the cards, because each time a species dies, the eco system radically changes.
12. Currently 26,000 species are at threat of extinction – all due to land grabbing, agriculture, and animal farming. (Dr Joseph Poore – Zoology department, Oxford University).Dr Tara Garnett (Oxford University – Food Climate Research Network) said, ‘A major driver of biodiversity loss is livestock and animal farming. It is estimated that if the entire world was to switch to a plant-based diet, we would free up over 75% of the world’s available land and many of the forests cut down for livestock farming could be fully restored’.
13. Dr Marco Springmann is a Senior Researcher on Environment and Health at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. He is interested in the health, environmental, and economic dimensions of the global food systems and often uses systems models to provide quantitative estimates on food-related questions. His work is widely published in the scientific literature.
The most recent in-depth study on the impact of what we eat, was a peer reviewed paper by an international team of researchers – Headed by Dr Springmann (2019).
This research found that if we are to avoid heating up the planet by an additional 2o as agreed at the Paris Summit (2015), then the consumption of meat needs to be drastically reduced – in particular in high income countries.
Since 1750, methane has caused one third of global warming. Livestock is the largest source of methane we can control. This is our greatest weapon to slow global warming estimated to give us 15 – 25 more years.
If you’re interested in exploring this topic further look at the comparisons between Normal air/CO2/Methane and Nitrous Oxide, using the Infra-Red Absorption Experiment.
14. There are over 70 billion animals reared for human consumption each year. 90% are chickens and 90% of these are intensively farmed. Chickens generate forty times more climate related global warming per calorie of protein when compared with chickpeas… and use fifty times more water. (To find out more, see the work of Dr Marco Springmann – University of Oxford). Plant based diets reduce your carbon footprint by a factor of about 100. For more information on these topics, see the work of Joseph Poore, Dr.Michael Greger (nutritionfacts.org) and Dr Jane Greatorex (Virologist) University of Cambridge.
15. The water cycles around the planet are beginning to change. This is leading to more chaotic and unpredictable water events each year.
These changes in the water cycle have led to opposing global events, with increased flooding in many parts of the world, whilst other parts of the world are experiencing extreme drought.
These contrasts in weather events are leading to what many are describing as a global food system collapse. Crops are dying as land is becoming baron and infertile, leading to shortages of food items, which is increasing the production and cost of what food is available.
Almeria in the south of Spain produces half of Europe’s fruit and vegetables which are essential in the supply of the continent’s food system. But with the increasing incidence of drought in Spain this food supply is being threatened, with all of the social and health consequences that come with that. The drought in Spain has been going on for 20 years.
The drought in Africa has been going on for 60 years. Rivers and lakes that once supplied people with fresh drinking water are beginning to run dry. As a consequence of this there is a massive exodus from the south of Africa to the North. In fact many of the intertribal conflicts are about the scarcity of these precious resources, such as water, land and crops.
This in part is why ‘climate refugees’ are trying to make their way to what they see as the safer shores of Europe. Spain has built a massive wall on its southern most boarder in response to this mass climate migration.
16. The Gobi Desert in the heart of Mongolia, as a result of climate change, is expanding with the passage of each year. Many of the lakes that support animals and people have now dried up. The amount of water used to sustain livestock farming is 70 trillion gallons of water per year. This water consumption is part of what is disrupting the water cycle, with all of the climatic disruption that it brings.
A quarter pounder takes 660 gallons of fresh water to produce, which is the equivalent of showering for 2 months. It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce just one pound of meat. This example highlights the lack of awareness about the amount of fresh water needed for animal production and this ignorance is helping us to eat our way to extinction.
So, we are using water at a far greater rate than the renewal rate (nature’s ability to replenish her stocks). One third of all the fresh water in the world is being used for meat and dairy production. 98% of the total volume of water for animal farming is used for feed production. It is water above all else why we need to make these changes, because the disruption to the water cycle is wreaking havoc across the planet.
‘Avoiding meat and dairy is the single biggest contribution we can all make to saving our planet’
Joseph Poole – Zoology Dept Oxford University
Conclusion
We end as we started… which is inviting you to consider the facts and decide what you can do differently. It’s clear that if we all take some small steps in this area, the results would be substantial. The time for us looking to someone else to fix our environmental problem has long passed. The question we all need to be asking, is ‘what can I do?’