Our Plate and the Planet - A proposal for RotaryPurpose of Document

Ambaree Majumdar,Singapore Rotary Club, Marina City

October 2019

Whenever the causes of climate change are discussed, fossil fuels top the list. Oil, natural gas and coal are often cited as major sources of anthropogenic emissions of carbon-dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). The purpose of this document is to pull out another complex player in the current scenario that is contributing massively in heating up our planet, but which has managed to remain unnoticed for far too long.

That is, Livestock!

Climate change. Ocean dead zones. Fisheries depletion. Species extinction. Deforestation. World hunger. Food safety. Heart disease. Obesity. Diabetes. The list goes on. The one industry that lies at the heart of each of these global problems but often manages to get overlooked by private individuals and policy makers alike is Animal Agriculture. Our demand for and reliance on the products and byproducts of Animal Agriculture need to be addressed if we wish to have a holistic discussion on Sustainability.

This document aims to bring together credible facts and statistics, on how tremendously resource-intensive this one industry is, based on research and studies conducted by organisations like the United Nations, World Watch, Oxford University, Harvard University and so on.

Livestock’s Impact on the Planet

Today, we are grappling with a problem that concerns us all and equally across communities, cultures, countries, and species. Presently, an irreversible imbalance is being caused in the ecosystem and biodiversity of the planet which is causing rampant incidents of water shortage, unpredictable weather conditions, air pollution across the globe. The gravity of the problem is such that there is an existential crisis looming over the human race and life itself in the near future, according to several United Nations reports. These reports also indicate that our future generations

1October, 2019

are destined to be subjected to water scarcity, food insecurity, floods, draughts and air toxicity on a daily basis.

The question here is, how big a contributor the Livestock industry is in this situation. The answer might surprise many.

1. Deforestation, Wildlife Extinction, Habitat Loss due to Animal Agriculture

It is not news that virtually all deforestation is driven by human activity. The biggest drivers of deforestation are agriculture — both industrial and subsistence — and cattle ranching. According to Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, cattle ranching being the largest driver of deforestation in every Amazon country, accounts for 80% of current deforestation rates.

According to a document by the World Bank, compared with 1970, 91% of the increment of the cleared area has been converted to cattle ranching.

By the 2000s, more than three-quarters of forest clearing in the Amazon was for cattle-ranching. Over the last thirty years, the Amazon rainforest has become one of the main cattle ranching regions in the world. According to the UN, with 5 to 8% annual expansion, the growth of cattle herd is still strongly affecting forest resources in this region. Negative ecological impacts are evident.

The figures appear to be varied because of the chronology of the reports published. If we consider the minimum number of acres of land being

2October, 2019

deforested on a daily basis in order to either grow feed crops for cattle or for ranching, the figures are staggering.

According to several recent reports published in April 2019, 136 million rainforest acres have already been cleared for animal agriculture. The industry is continuously bringing havoc in the rainforests and puncturing the lungs of the planet in order to make space for either growing feed crops for growing farm animals or for cattle ranching.

Due to extensive deforestation of the rainforests and much of other land spaces, hundreds of species of plants and animals of the forests are going extinct everyday because of extensive deforestation all over the world, according to the Centre for Biological Diversity.

Much of the large-scale production causing deforestation is not consumed locally — instead it is sent to cities or overseas. That means consumers who may live far away from rainforests are usually at least partly responsible for the destruction of these beautiful and important landscapes.

2. Water - Scarcity, Wastage and Pollution

Since the Second World Water Forum in 2000, a few organizations such as the United Nations Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation have made it quite clear that there is a rapidly expanding gap between the demand for water and our supply.

700 million people worldwide could be displaced by intense water scarcity by 2030 (Global Water Institute, 2013)

Today, as millions of people living in water-scarce regions struggle to meet their daily basic water requirements, the livestock industry in other countries ranks as one of the leading causes of depletion of freshwater resources. Freshwater is either being used up to hydrate livestock and irrigate fodder to feed them or it is being polluted by disposing of waste byproducts of the industry leaving water sources toxic and unfit for human consumption.

According to World Watch, a few years ago water experts calculated that we humans are now taking half the available freshwater on the planet—leaving the other half to be divided among a million or more species of life which

3October, 2019

includes plants. Since we depend on many of those species for our own survival (they provide all the food we eat and the oxygen we breathe, among others), that hogging of water poses a dilemma. If we break it down, species by species, we find that the heaviest water use is by the animals we raise for meat, dairy and eggs.

At this point, it is safe to say that a substantial and one of the most effective ways to reduce the gap of water’s demand and supply, on an individual level, is to reduce the amount of meat, dairy and eggs we eat.

- According to a report by American Institute of Biological Sciences, each year, a total of 253 million tonnes grain are fed to US livestock, which requires a total of about 25 × 1013 L water (Pimentel et al. 2004).

- Worldwide grain production specifically for livestock requires nearly three times the amount of grain that is fed to US livestock and three times the amount of water used in the United States to produce grain feed (Pimentel et al. 2004).

- According to a report published in 2010 by UNESCO - IHE (Institute for Water Education),Global animal production requires about 2422 Gm3 of water per year (87.2% green, 6.2% blue, 6.6% grey water).

- 1/3 of this volume is for the beef cattle sector; another 19% for the dairy cattle sector.

- Most of the total volume of water (98%) refers to the water footprint of the feed for the animals.

4October, 2019

- A report from the International Water Management Institute, noted that 840 million of the world’s people remain undernourished, recommends finding ways to produce more food using less water. The report notes that it takes 550 liters of water to produce enough flour for one loaf of bread in developing countries…but up to 7,000 liters of water to produce 100 grams of beef.

—UN Commission on Sustainable Development, “Water—More Nutrition Per Drop,” 2004

-- Simplified version and sources

5October, 2019

Manure and Waste Disposal causing Water Pollution

6October, 2019

Data Source and Remarks

2,500 gallons of water are required to produce 1 pound of beef

Data on how much water it takes to produce a pound of beef varies greatly, depending on geography and calculation methods. Estimates from different sources range from 2,500 gallons to 7,500 gallons per pound. The validity of this data is available here.

1 pound beef = shower for 6 months

Let’s say you take a shower every day…and your showers average seven minutes…and the flow rate through your shower head is 2 gallons per minute…. You would use, at that rate, 5,110 gallons of water to shower every day for a year. When you compare that figure, 5,110 gallons of water, to the amount the Water Education Foundation calculates is used in the production of every pound of California beef (2,464 gallons),you realize something extraordinary. In California today, you may save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you would by not showering for six entire months. —John Robbins in The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and the World

A single egg takes 53 gallons of water

https://pacinst.org/publication/assessment-of-californias-water-footprint/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/food/A pound of chicken takes 468

gallons of water

1 gallon of cow’s milk takes 880 gallons of water

Water pollution is a global challenge that has increased in both developed and developing countries, undermining economic growth as well as the physical and environmental health of billions of people. While human waste is treated in municipal sewer systems and subject to strict regulation, animal waste is stored in open ponds (called lagoons) or pits and is applied untreated as fertilizer to farm fields. The mixture in lagoons consists not only of animal excrement but of bedding waste, antibiotic residues, cleaning solutions and other chemicals, and sometimes dead animals. Most lagoons are lined only with clay and can leak, allowing the waste to seep into groundwater. So how prominent a contributor is the waste produced by livestock to this problem that is the reason for public health challenges?

Simplified version and sources

Data Source and Remarks

A farm with 2,500 dairy cows produces the same amount of waste as a city of 411,000 people.

https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/901V0100.txt?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=2000%20Thru%202005&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&UseQField=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D:%5CZYFILES%5CINDEX%20DATA%5C00THRU05%5CTXT%5C00000011%5C901V0100.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C-&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=

7October, 2019

0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=hpfr&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1&slide

130 times more animal waste than human waste is produced in the US – 1.4 billion tons from the meat industry annually. 5 tons of animal waste is produced per person in the US.

https://www.gao.gov/archive/1999/rc99205.pdf

3. Greenhouse gases

We are all aware of how the temperature of the planet is rising at a catastrophic rate. We are facing a potentially staggering expansion of dangerous heat over the coming decades, with rapid and widespread increases in extreme heat projected to occur across the globe due to climate change. Average global sea level has increased eight inches since 1880, but is rising much faster on the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. Global warming is now accelerating the rate of sea level rise, increasing flooding risks to low-lying communities and high-risk coastal properties.

The 3 main greenhouse gases that have tremendous potential in trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere are methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Ironically, Livestock happens to be a major contributor to the mission of all of them.

- Simplified version and sources

Data Source and Remarks8October, 2019

Methane is roughly 30 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111724.htm

Livestock is responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas with 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years, according to a report by the US Energy Information Administration.

http://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/ghg_nitrous.php

Livestock’s Long Shadow, the widely-cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), estimates that 7,516 million metric tons per year of CO2 equivalents (CO2e), or 18% of annual worldwide GHG emissions, are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, horses, pigs, and poultry.

http://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e.pdf

An evidence based analysis by World Watch shows that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2e per year,or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.

It also points out that basic respiration of billions of farmed animals alone is the cause of 8,769 million tons of CO2e,

http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf

9October, 2019

which accounts for more than 13% of annual GHG emissions globally.

A major study published last year in the journal Science calculated the average greenhouse gas emissions associated with different foods.

❖ Derived Facts

➢ Livestock accounts for more GHG emissions than the combined emissions from all transportation

➢ Even without fossil fuels, we will exceed our 565 gigatons CO2e limit by 2030, all from raising animals. (calculations based on http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294)

4. Industrialised Fishing & the Seafood Industry

We humans take everything from the oceans and give nothing back. Time is rapidly running out for the world’s oceans and the creatures that live in them as the Earth’s climate continues to warm, say scientists. Only ‘immediate and substantial’ reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can hope to prevent

10October, 2019

‘massive’ impacts on marine ecosystems, warn the experts. Meanwhile, overfishing and other similar threats have caused the number of fish and animals in the ocean to have halved since 1970 with conservation group WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) calling the situation ‘critical’.

Data Source and Remarks

3/4 of the world’s fisheries are

exploited/depleted

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/

1,000,000 species threatened

with extinction

We could see fishless oceans

by 2048

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5800/787

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2006/11/seafood-biodiversity/

Bycatch

A Threat to Public Health

In today’s world of high urbanization, the demand for meat and animal by products (mainly dairy and eggs) is humongous. Anyone who can afford them, eats them, as much as they wish to, unlike how it used to be a couple of decades back when this scale of supply was not available. Because the demand for animal products has gone through the roof, the demand was not being met by industrialised scale of livestock.

According to a UN Report, as income per capita is predicted to increase many times in the coming years which is directly proportional to the probable

11October, 2019

demand for livestock and dairy products. By 2050, the meat production has to be increased by over 200 million tonnes.

According to a report, the most pressing public health issue associated with Factory Farming stems from the amount of manure they produce. Though sewage treatment plants are required for human waste, no such treatment facility exists for livestock waste. While manure is valuable to the farming industry, in quantities this large it becomes problematic. Many farms no longer grow their own feed, so they cannot use all the manure they produce as fertilizer.

Factory farmed animal manure contains a variety of potential contaminants. It can contain plant nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, pathogens such as E. coli, growth hormones, antibiotics, chemicals used as additives to the manure or to clean equipment, animal blood, silage leachate from corn feed, or copper sulfate used in footbaths for cows. Depending on the type and number of animals in the farm, manure production can range between 2,800 tons and 1.6 million tons a year (Government Accountability Office [GAO], 2008).

According to a report by American Institute of Biological Sciences, 90% of infectious diseases in developing countries are transmitted from polluted water.

Rotary - a powerhouse of hope for the next generations

“We face a direct existential threat.”, said the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres in a speech in September 2018. Humble and modest terms like “climate change”, “global warming” etc are being replaced with more apt and aggressive expressions like “climate emergency”, “climate crisis” and “global heating” by researchers all over the world because the current crisis has a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate catastrophe than previously thought.

Avoiding further damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historical precedent.”

What Rotary Can do

12October, 2019

The extent to which Rotary can reach is not hidden from the members or the rest of the world. As an organisation as large and motivated as ours to bring positive changes, we have the power and calibre to bring down the much predicted catastrophic effects of Climate Change. Here is a list of proposed actions we can collectively take:

1. Global Cooling Club Contracts

We are nearing a catastrophe very soon if we do not take charge of our actions. Hence, not eating meat 1 day a month is not enough anymore. The facts about how powerful our food choices are in the context of the wellbeing of the planet are staggering and we cannot call it our “personal choice” anymore. Choices that can potentially destroy our only planet are in the interest of humanity.

Clubs around the world could be encouraged to sign a contract that during all or at least half of their regular meetings, plant based meals would be served to the members and guests. This could also lower the price of their meals.

All the clubs might not be able to come on board at the same time. Some clubs might take more time than others. However, after the transition phase, when hundreds and thousands of our members around the globe eat a plant-based meal during meetings, a tremendous amount of cumulatively benefit can be brought to the world.

2. Promote plant based meals in schools around the world

Children of today are the global decision makers of tomorrow. The habit of eating healthy, rich in plant sourced food is important for the planet as well for their own health. Billions of dollars across the world is being spent on diseases that are completely preventable, like Diabetes, Hypertension, certain Cancers and Autoimmune Diseases. Therefore, cultivating a practice of eating meals rich in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, lentils and beans is of utmost importance for a better future of the world.

This will also promote local vegetable farming businesses that are often sidelined because of the perception that animal foods are better than fruits and vegetables for human health.

13October, 2019

3. Ample plant-based options made available at district and international conferences

There seems to be a bit of a conflict of interests when at Rotary conferences, there are absolutely no options available for an environmentally conscious member or guest. They often either do not attend these conferences anymore or remain hungry (speaking from several personal experiences) there. On the contrary, because Rotary’s global image is that of an organisation that has the calibre to bring positive change for the world, there should be enough environment-friendly green meals available. This will also encourage the world to refrain from doing activities that are harming the planet irreversibly.

Conclusion

We are living at a time when actions that might please a handful of elites, but gradually destroy the planet and her billions of inhabitants, need to be re-evaluated. We need to be aware that every choice we make on a daily basis has an impact on the planet. Unfortunately, gone are the times when individual actions were miniscule on face of the overall impact they had on others. What we do today to the planet decides the future of the global citizens of tomorrow and we are 100% accountable for them.

14October, 2019