What do you think is the best way to minimize the environmental impacts of eating meat and seafood?

Bernard David Perhaps the Bible has a suggestion: Exodus 23.11: And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and gather in the increase thereof; but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie fallow, Letting fields lie fallow is a normal practice in many agricultural societies. The Boers in South Africa would leave a seventh of their fields fallow. Delineate the world's seas into seven zones. Each year one zone would be declared off-limits for fishing of every description. Enforcing this method should be simpler than current quota schemes that are honored more in the breach. Perhaps the fish will be too clever for us and each year disappear into the no-fishing zone. I would hope so.

Factory farms are horrific for both the animals and the environment and the oceans are being emptied of life at an astounding rate. But if we changed the whole industry to free-range and reduced the transport to only local markets, wouldn't we just run out of land quicker? Wouldn't we be trading the pollution issue for the land-loss issue? The problem originates with the human population, as with most environmental issues. If we're going to keep multiplying like rabbits, we're going to have to learn to live without certain luxuries. This includes meat and seafood. Nothing is sustainable for 7 billion people. It'll be 2030 and 20 billion of us will be fighting over grain and vegetables if we keep this pace up. Meat and seafood consumption will be a fond memory we describe to future generations that won't even know what it tastes like.

Although I am a vegetarian (encouraged in this direction for health reasons) I think it is most do-able to limit meat consumption based on locally available resources, i.e., if there is local grazing land, eat some meat. If there isn't much, eat more vegies than meat or all vegetarian. This of course rules out the use of distant feed lots. Having been in the health care research field for many years I advocate vegetarianism of any variety for its health benefits. My health status improved dramatically, even surprising my cardiologist, when I switched to the Dean Ornish lifestyle (part of which is a very low fat vegetarian diet)several years ago, and it has been wonderful. Humans in general almost always change our behavior because we are forced to, not because there is a more reasonable alternative: We eat less transfat when our doctor tells us we'll die if we don't (and even that doesn't work much of the time!), and when localities change the law; we smoke less when tobacco is taxed heavily; we use less gas and oil when the price gets high, etc. As a whole population, it is likely that our eating habits will change significantly when similar dynamics happen to food marketing and consumption, so we need to not only increase our information and social marketing efforts around diet and consumption to more sustainable and healthy practices, but press for policy changes in many different forms such as advocating for use of local foods in schools, reducing trans, and saturated fats in foods, reducing the price of organic and vegtarian offerings, etc. Although the cost of organic foods has come down somewhat over the past few years, it is still usually much more expensive than the standard fare you can get at Walmart or Safeway.

I agree that the answers are too limiting. I speak from the experience of being a small poultry producer who was regulated out of existence by Washington State's WSDA. They have insisted that one must build a factory to kill a chicken safely. We should reduce meat, poultry and fish consumption. We are a nation of lard-asses and our current dietary habits are based on gluttony, encouraged by corporate profit. But without animal production (and consumption) I have a hard time seeing how we'll ever achieve sustainable agriculture. We need the manure, we need the higher profit levels of meat, poultry, and dairy production so small farmers can live with dignity. And only ruminants can sustainably achieve production from the vast areas of our farmland that should be returned to permanent grasslands. The third choice comes closest to something I could choose, but by saying "certified" instead of "local" you lost me. Our agricultural agencies at every level are committed to preserving corporate, industrial agriculture. Regulations currently in place or being promoted either inherently support this bias, or are enforced selectively to that end. Even private certifying organizations, while perhaps better intentioned, place a seal of approval on stuff that is not sustainable, nor will it eventually lead to sustainable production. We need tougher, strictly enforced regulations for corporate agriculture. We need to strip them of their many subsidies immediately. (Here in Washington we are planning to build them some new dams so they can continue to export our topsoil). Small farmers direct sales of food to consumers and restaurants should be completely de-regulated. You'll find that their products are inherently safe, produced humanely, and these facts are easily checked by consumers. We need a huge influx of people who care about the land and our species into farming if we are going to achieve sustainability. That means we have to make it profitable for them. The market will allow this, I did quite well selling broiler chickens for ten years. It is the corporate rulers of agriculture who stand in the way. I'll vote for anyone for president who'll promise to make Wendell Berry Secretary of Agriculture, (although he's probably far too smart to take the job).

When I was a student my roomate's girlfriend, from Syria, always admired our beautiful vegetables and fruits. When I asked her about our meat, to us the luxury product, she said that Syria has plenty of meat, from goats and sheep grown on marginal land that is too poor for farming. Vegetables came from a narrow strip of coastal land. Meat has always been humanity's way of collecting resources from land that isn't suitable for farming. There is more pasture land in the world than good farmland; the pasture is useful only if animals are raised on it. The wasteful part of meat production is the feedlot, where animals eat grain that could be consumed by people. So the New Zealand contributor has it right: the optimal sustainable mix of animal and plant products includes a modest amount of meat from grass-fed animals, plus a small amount of sustainable seafood. Bruce Bridgeman Professor of Psychology and Psychobiology University of California, Santa Cruz

It's extraordinarily unlikely that we could convince the whole world to turn vegan or even vegetarian. Here in England there is a lot of media coverage of the options of sourcing food locally and of choosing free range/organic over intensively reared meat, and people do seem to be responding to this. A combination of local organic food and a reduction in the proportion of meat in the diet (when I was a kid, we kept chooks and killed one for Christmas; it was a luxury) would go a long way to help. Actions such as buying one free renge organic chicken instead of a two for one offer of battery hens might just help with the obesity crisis into the bargain. I'm in full agreement with the pecan farmer who runs livestock under his trees: definitely a better (and tastier) option than eating imported soya.

- fast frozen swordfish steaks in super markets are troubling, makes one wonder what the volume is - it cannot possibly be sustainable. - as one who has carried out species inventories in African rainforest I am deeply disturbed by the bushmeat trade and the incredible by-catch and waste. I believe these products are finding their way to open air markets in major cities worldwide. In Canada, I doubt very much that this trade is monitored effectively, if at all. In fact, I doubt if few know the impact of ignoring this trade. A Canadian university student in Africa once asked me as if there must be some doubt: "Are the forests really empty"? Yes they really are, I know because I have surveyed forests when they are full. The bushmeat trade helps no one and harms everyone. Multinational resource extraction companies do often facilitate poaching. bushmeat trade is indiscriminate in terms of species and markets - even world class multinational hotels carry it on their menues. Without DNA analysis the diner would not know if gorilla or blue duiker is being consumed. The product is in such a terrible state of preservation that it poses a health risk at many levels. Yet this is a subject that no one wants to tackle because indigenous incomes might be at risk. Pursuing an ever distant and diminishing resource certainly puts poacher's families at risk.

Jack Alpert
www.skil.org

Everyone being a vegetarian will not produce sustainability. Changing meat eating habits to vegetarian habits in its most optimistic scenario can reduce a meat eating person's food footprint 87%. It is not hard to convert the released resources to "sustaining a much larger vegetarian population with the same global production."

But this could be true only if food was the predominant component of sustainability. Factoring in that the food component to the meat eater's total footprint is near 5%, we are looking at a 2% reduction in total footprint of each convert. Certainly with the meat impoverished diets of the global community, there is little chance that removing meat from the human community's diet that we can expect much more than a one percent reduction in total human footprint.

The human community's sustainability depends on reducing the total global human footprint. Some suggest by a factor 10 to achieve equity. Others when factoring in oil depletion, climate change, and soil loss, the sustainable number drops to between 95 and 99 percent of the present population. (Both these numbers depend on not damaging the environment any more than we have)

Let me suggest that converting to not eating meat is not only too little to late, it contributes to rapid population increases if the freed up grain gets into the mouths of the starving.

Lets use stop proposing solutions for sustainability that have little chance of doing more than making things worse. And start focusing on actions that actually can decrease footprint 95 to 99%. For example, the rapid population declines that is achieved when all parents on the global limit themselves to one child per family.

Could we implement this practice (establish a net birth rate of .7 per woman ) we might achieve a 95% reduction in global population in 100 to 150 years. (for more detail see www.skil.org)

Jack Alpert

Sheep & beef farmed in New Zealand usually graze on lush digestible pastures that require no artificial nitrogen fertiliser because of the presence of white clover in the pasture. They spend the whole year grazing in our mainly temperate climate without being fed grain. The relatively small carbon footprint of shipping meat to other parts of the world means eating New Zealand ruminant animal products is a sustainable choice. When you consider their extremely high nutritional value, especially because of the way such animals are reared, in comparison with growing grain products, a diet of New Zealand grown meat and vegetables is probably the ideal for the future of our planet.

The question of methane emissions is being addressed, and because of our aforesaid comparatively digestible pastures, we have a big advantage over other countries in countering this problem already.

Ruminants have roamed the grasslands of the world for aeons, and I contend they have the right to continue to enjoy fresh air, sunshine, clean water, and nutritious grasses.

I think the argument against eating meat is floored.The land used to grow beef cattle is generally not suitable for growing of grain. It is pasture - much of it natural pasture and this is a good way to produce food. Yes, in Australia we would be better off to eat Kangoroo and in Africa Antilope etc

I'm a Pecan grower. There is a lot of grass growing between the trees. Should I mow regularly or is it indeed better to have my cattle growing fat under them and fertilizing the trees? Should I really buy soy from 1000's of miles away? no, surely my local protein is better for me and the environment.

I have a large garden, drive a small car, produce solar electricity and collect rain water for the home.

We need to look at the full picture and each situation is different.

When I received the Worldwatch State of the World report, I eagerly turned to this chapter and was extremely disappointed. The only positions stressed in the chapter was stopping factory farming, trying to eat less meat, and trying to switch to "sustainable" species. Veganism and a plant based diet were not introduced and supported and many significant points were not made. Eating meat and other animal products are not sustainable no matter how organic and humane the farming techniques. Given the global population, the increases in animal consumption, the inefficiency of feeding of grains to animals, the forests cut down to raise more animals for consumption - the environmental, human (health and global starvation), and animal (to farmed animals as well as destruction of habitat) impacts are all severe. Yes, I ask my students to consider eating less meat and sea animals but even this cannot be sustained so I introduce them to veganism and help them get started through cooking delicious vegan foods. The article was far below your normal excellence in research standard.

I remember a woman on my adoptive home island telling me about her days as a child, maybe 70 years ago.

Her family would cook up a huge 50 litre pot of rukau - dark green leaves from the taro plant, a root crop - and into that one pot would go one half kilo tin of corned "bully" beef. She and her siblings would look for the smallest shreds of meat. Compare that with today. Meat often forms the main part of a meal. Children only reluctantly eat their "greens."

Less than a century ago we had free-range, small-scale animal farming with meat as a luxury, not a staple. Today hyperfactories slaughter millions of clucking, squeeling, lowing fowl and beast, in scenes like a sci-fi horror flick to feed humanity's free-market lust for dead flesh.

Where's the beef? It is this: we are living in an extreme perversion of human history. From this extreme we will need to swing to another if we are to survive as a species - back to rural-based survival on, mostly, vegetables and grain.

- - - - - - - - - -
jason brown
avaiki news agency

The options for answers are not adequate. I do believe the best solution is to reduce meat and seafood consumption almost to zero - with some exceptions, we can all very well live and be healthy without it - but it's not true that we cannot minimise the impacts other way. Of course we can! Through local, seasonal, organic, ecologic, certified production. The question is: will that reduction of impacts be enough if we keep eating more and more meat and seafood? No! We need all those things and also reduce consumption.
Why did you not put that option on the poll?