Reply To: Meat eating and the flexitarianism
At a time when scientists are calling for significant reductions in meat consumption nearly a fifth of the EU’s total budget – more than £24bn of taxpayer money – goes to support livestock farming across Europe, according to Greenpeace. Greenpeace said that EU farm subsidies should be redirected towards incentivising more fruit and vegetable production.
125 million hectares (308 million acres) of land in Europe is used to graze livestock or produce feed – this includes more than 60% of arable land that could otherwise be used to grow food directly for human consumption. Intensively raised livestock is given specialised feeds, including soy and wheat, that fatten them up faster, rather than by grazing on grasslands.
Instead of the intensive model of grain-fed livestock, the campaigners argue that meat and dairy production should be restricted to grass-based systems, where the animals are reared outdoors and fed a largely grass-based diet. This would free up large amounts of land to growing crops directly for human consumption.
“If Europe produced and consumed exclusively grass-fed livestock, we’d be a long way towards producing and consuming less and better meat and dairy in line with what science tells us is necessary to protect nature, the climate and our health,” said Greenpeace EU agriculture policy director Marco Contiero.
“In the long run it makes increasingly less sense to incentivise production that creates more costly impacts to society than economic benefits,” said Professor Tim Benton, the UK’s former “food security champion”. “Farmers are not the ‘bad guys’ in a simplistic story: they are trapped in a system that rewards producing more at the expense of wider social costs arising from environmental and health impacts,” he said.
The Pasture-Fed Livestock Association said the research had clearly identified that environmental damage does not arise from livestock per se, but as a result of the way in which some animals are reared.
“The problem is the intensification of livestock production across Europe made possible through feeding grains to animals. Such practices have resulted in fewer small mixed farms and more specialised farms and monoculture production systems – along with a corresponding increase in fossil fuel consumption, nitrate fertiliser production, air and water pollution and loss of biodiversity,” said the executive secretary, Russ Carrington.