“Meat is nourishing, wholesome, and good. We evolved as meat-eating creatures, with cooperative hunting essential in the development of our societies and the evolution of our remarkable intelligence. To give up on it now would be to abandon what makes us human.”
—Anthony Warner, author of Ending Hunger:
The Quest to Feed the World Without Destroying It
***
If you love meat – in the form of lechon, fried chicken, shawarma, sisig, beef steak, and hamburger, among others – then you are one of those who contribute to the production of another greenhouse gas: methane.
Methane is a colorless, odorless gas that occurs abundantly in nature. Globally, about two-thirds of the emissions are a product of certain human activities. Almost half (42%) of those activities come from agriculture, according to Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC).
“Methane absorbs heat 21 times more than carbon dioxide and it has 9- to 15-year life time in the atmosphere over a 100-year period,” says Dr. Constancio Asis Jr., a recipient of the 2011 Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship Award.
The journal Science reported that the atmospheric concentration of methane has more than doubled during the last 300 years and is increasing at an annual rate of about one percent each year.
But unlike carbon dioxide, the atmospheric lifespan of methane in the atmosphere is a relatively short 10 to 12 years. “While its lifetime in the atmosphere is much shorter than carbon dioxide, it is much more efficient at trapping radiation,” explains the CCAC.
The Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underscores the necessity of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Immediate and substantial reductions in methane emissions could achieve a significant impact, reducing expected global warming by nearly 20% by 2045.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said 14.5% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions come from global livestock.
“When it comes to livestock and climate change, the focus often falls on the notorious methane-rich burps of cows, goats, sheep, and other ruminants,” explains Anthony Warner, author of Ending Hunger: The Quest to Feed the World Without Destroying It. “(These) animals have bacteria in their stomachs that help them digest their food, and these bacteria produce methane as a by-product.”
According to Warner, meat is the food that the world aspires to, a near-universal symbol of wealth, prosperity and status. “Meat eating is not just a matter of taste or the environment, it’s a foothold, it’s a stake in the rich, modern world,” commented food historian Rachel Lauden.
Take the case of beef. Global consumption of beef is projected to increase by 0.75% annually between 2022 and 2025 through a combination of both income and population growth, primarily in Asia. In the Philippines, the proliferation of fast foods has contributed to the increase.
Meat consumption is bad for the environment, although it is good for the economy. “Meat production puts immense pressure on earth’s ecosystems,” The World Counts points out. “And global meat consumption is increasing non-stop.”
Cattle growing, for instance, is one of the most resource-intensive and environmentally impactful foods to produce. “Beef production requires four times more land (and four times as much greenhouse gas emissions) than dairy for every unit of protein consumed,” said the global food policy report. “In addition, beef is seven times more resource-intensive than pork and poultry, and 20 times more than pulses.”
Damian Carrington, writing for The Guardian, agrees. “The popular red meat requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions.
Think globally, act locally, experts advise. Some scientists believe that eating less meat would be a better way for people to cut carbon emissions than giving up their cars. Or, as Prof. Mark Sutton, of the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, puts it: “Avoid excessive meat consumption, especially beef, is good for the environment.”
“Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth,” said The Guardian. “Vegan diet would slash climate emissions,” The Times pointed out.
Eating less meat is not only good for the environment but also for your health. “Meat is high in saturated fat and may cause colon, breast, and prostate cancer,” said Dr. T. Colin Campbell, co-chairman of the World Cancer Research Fund. “In my view, no chemical carcinogen is nearly as important in causing human cancer as animal protein.”
Rice production also produces methane. “An estimated 19% of the world’s methane production comes from rice paddies,” said Dr. Alan Teramura, a botany professor at the University of Maryland. “As populations increase in rice-growing areas, more rice – and more methane – are produced.”
Estimates of global methane emission rates from rice fields range from 20 to 100 Tg per year (1 Tg is equal to 1 million tons), according to Dr. Heinz-Ulrich Neue in a paper published in BioScience.
Rice is the staple food of Filipinos.
