The controversial issue of meat

Regardless of personal convictions, it is a fact that meat consumption has an impact on climate change due to the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions at scale. According to statistics, greenhouse gas emissions would fall by 75% if meat were removed from diets.^[1] In particular, the contribution of cattle farming to the climate crisis cannot be underestimated: every time a cow eructs or flatulence, the climate-damaging methane produced during digestion is emitted. In the atmosphere, it does 20 times more damage than CO2.^[2]

Methane and nitrogen oxides are also released when the manure from all the livestock is spread on the fields as fertilizer. However, with our current mass livestock farming practice today, far more slurry is produced than needed for fertilizing. As a result, much more is spread than the soil can absorb, causing the nitrate contained in the manure to enter our waterways. Nitrate stimulates the strong growth of algae and cyanobacteria (so-called blue-green algae), which die and begin to rot. This process deprives the water of oxygen, creating so-called dead zones, where marine life can no longer exist. When nitrate solution seeps into the groundwater and thus into our drinking water, it causes a direct impact on our bodies. It produces so-called nitrosamines, which are suspected to cause cancer and to trigger cyanosis for infants. Due to the massive amounts of slurry from industrial farming, it is becoming more and more difficult for waterworks to comply with the prescribed nitrate limit of 50mg/l.

Residues of antibiotics or other medicines used in conventional animal farming could also be detected in manure and thus in the fields. Filtering these residues is a difficult effort for a sewage treatment plant. Despite the efforts, antibiotic resistance is still being spread in this way. Due to the excess amount of liquid fertilizer, some of it is passed on from one farmer to another and thus transported supraregional – together with residues and multi-resistant germs. It is not only our waters that are polluted. Meat production requires large areas of land. Not only for the livestock itself but especially for the animal feed, such as corn and soy, with which a large number of farm animals are fed and fattened. Since the cultivation of these crops in Europe is not possible -in terms of area and expense- animal feed is mostly imported from abroad. Only for this purpose, large areas of rainforests are deforested and replaced by monocultures, which of course have a negative impact on the climate balance due to habitat and biodiversity destruction. Livestock farming is responsible for 91% of deforestation in the Amazon.^[3] Many areas that are used to grow animal feed or provide pasture for cattle could instead be used to grow crops or vegetables for human consumption. In this way, more people on the planet would be fed and as a result, less people would suffer from hunger. According to a study by Oxford University, we could even reduce global agricultural land by up to 75 percent^[4] without meat and dairy products, thus creating more space for wilderness and ecosystems that remain intact.

For the health of those who have the opportunity to eat meat regularly; reducing meat consumption would have a positive impact as red or processed meat is classified as a probable carcinogen by the World Health Organization (WHO).^[5]

The meat industry’s enormous water consumption should not be forgotten either, starting with feed production, through animal husbandry itself, to the process of slaughter. Just to give you an idea of the scale: Approximately 15,000 liters of water are needed for one kilo of beef.