We’re a family of meat eaters, both coming from a long line of carnivores (except for my vegetarian sister). Mike and Sofie and I love meat, plus Mike is on a high-protein diet in which he eats lots of it. However, yesterday we started Meatless Thursdays as a new tradition in the DeForbes household.
Our reasons have nothing to do with diet or moral issues. It’s environmental; we’re taking another small step to fight global warming.
Last year, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that meat production accounts for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. These are mainly emitted during feed production, livestock transportation and animal gases. Those cute grazing cows emit methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon.
Photo by wwarby/Flickr
If everyone went meatless one day per week, the demand for meat would greatly decrease and do much to offset the threat of global warming. Less demand for meat frees up farmland that could instead be used for growing fuel crops, which would reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, or for vegetation, which would suck up some of those carbon emissions.
Our diets account for almost twice as many greenhouse emissions as driving! Beef is the biggest contributor since cows take up much more space and emit lots more potent methane gases. Every time you eat a meal free of animal products, you save 2.5 lbs. of greenhouse gas emissions, 24 square feet of land and 133 gallons of water. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
In May, Ghent, Belgium became the first city to officially declare and promote a meat-free day. Since then, there has been a growing international movement for Meat Free Mondays, including petitions from 11 countries.
As a family, we reduced our beef consumption years ago, filling our freezer with chicken, pork and turkey instead. But, inspired by the Ghent story, we felt it was time to go a step further, and kicked off Meatless Thursdays with a yummy Mexican bean casserole.
An interesting if somewhat depressing side note: in researching this issue online, almost all of the newspapers and documents that spread the UN’s “Eat Less Meat” mantra were from foreign countries, mainly Europe. Barely a peep from the meat-loving, meat industry-driven USA.
