Province Neuquen - Bétail près de Los Pinos - Argentine © ALTITUDE/Arthus-Bertrand Yann Eating better Eating less meat is simple. It is good for the planet, for one’s health and for one’s purse. It doesn’t mean depriving oneself but rather to give oneself a treat by favouring quality. Rather than buying a lot of frozen meat from animals fattened with hormones in insalubrious factories, buy yourself a nice steak from an animal fed on grass by a local farmer from time to time. |
Animal husbandry accounts for 18 % of greenhouse gas emissions. It is not well-known that breeding cattle is the prime cause of deforestation in South America. Every day, hundreds of hectares of the Amazon rainforest are destroyed so that we can eat meat. Why? Firstly because demand for meat is increasing: the forest is therefore cut down to create space for new farms. And also because most of the animals – even in France – are now reared on soya grown on land that has also been taken from the Amazon Forest. As well as all this, methane is released when cattle break wind and burp. It is a powerful greenhouse gas and each cow releases almost 100 litres of it per day! When the deforestation and the methane are put together, stockbreeding accounts for 18 % of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. This is more than the transport sector. It is a good thing that meat has become available to most people. But there needs to be some moderation! |
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