A groundbreaking report from GRAIN and the
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy analyzes the world’s 35 largest meat
and dairy companies and concludes that they’re on track to surpass the oil industry as the world’s
biggest polluters.
The report finds that the meat and dairy
industries are being secretive about their emissions data and have hardly set any
targets to deal with their pollution. In fact, if the meat and dairy industries
continue down this dangerous path, the authors of the report caution that the
livestock sector could be responsible for a whopping 80 percent of the
greenhouse gas budget by 2050.
What’s more, the report reveals that the world’s
top five meat and dairy companies are already responsible for more emissions
than ExxonMobil, Shell, or BP. Let that sink in for a minute.
Devlin Kuyek, a researcher at GRAIN, told the Independent:
There’s no other choice. Meat and dairy production in the countries where the top 35 companies dominate must be significantly reduced. These corporations are pushing for trade agreements that will increase exports and emissions, and they are undermining real climate solutions like agroecology that benefit farmers, workers and consumers.
Similarly, a recent study from researchers at
the University of Oxford found that ditching animal products could reduce your carbon footprint by up to 73 percent.
The researchers also found that if everyone went vegan, global land use could
be reduced by 75 percent. This would be comparable to the size of the United
States, China, Australia, and the whole European Union combined.
Another shocking environmental report, this one
from Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return, found that the meat industry is jeopardizing the Paris climate agreement
by failing to properly report its emissions, despite being the single largest
contributor to climate change.
Raising animals for food produces more
greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, planes, and other forms of
transportation combined. According to the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations, carbon dioxide emissions from raising farmed animals make up about 15 percent of global
human-induced emissions, with beef and milk production as the
leading culprits. In fact, even without fossil fuels, we will exceed
our 565-gigaton CO2e limit by 2030.
There is no such thing as “sustainable meat,
and plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs take a mere fraction of the resources to produce as
their animal-based counterparts.
But a vegan diet isn’t just good for the
planet—it also spares countless animals a lifetime of misery at factory
farms. Pigs, cows, chickens, fish, and other farmed animals suffer
horribly. From birth to death, these poor animals are caught in a nightmare:
cruelly confined, brutally mutilated, and sadistically killed.
Join the millions of people helping protect
farmed animals and the planet by switching to a vegan diet. Click here
to get started, and click here for our Pinterest page with hundreds of
vegan recipes!