LLast week a coalition of associations, including Greenpeace, Legambiente and WWF, presented the text of the law Beyond intensive farming. The objective is to make an ecological transition possible in our livestock sector. A transformation that puts small companies at the center and protects the environment, human health, animal welfare, workers in the sector.
Today, however, the Meat Free Week, announced by the WWF, starts. An invitation to take a small step (and a good meal) every day to protect our health and that of the Planet.
What does the bill include? Beyond intensive farming
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Because intensive farming is unsustainable
The reasons are many and of various nature. Let’s try to list them in no particular order and everyone will find the one that appears insurmountable to them. Yet, let’s remember, in Europe we eat more than 80% of our meat from intensive farming.
In Italy, where meat consumption has tripled compared to 60 years ago, as many as 85% of chickens and over 95% of pigs are intensively raised, and almost all dairy cows do not have access to free pasture.
Pollution
Intensive livestock farming is unsustainable because it produces pollution, 16.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (a figure comparable to the effects of the entire transport sector, considering trains, cars, planes and trucks). And 60% of the emissions from the entire agri-food sector.
Pm10 concentrations are influenced by agricultural practices. Both directly, through the emission of primary particulate matter, and indirectly with the emission of secondary particulate precursors. That is, mainly ammonia coming from animal waste. In Italy, livestock farming is actually the second cause of fine dust (PM) pollution.
The resources consumed: land, water, forests
Intensive farming consumes resources. Up to 10% of the planet’s fresh water and up to 30% of the land not covered by ice.
They are unsustainable because they have created a clear separation between animals and the environment, between livestock and the crops that feed them. 60% of rainforests (in the Amazon this percentage reaches 70%) are cut down precisely to grow large quantities of vegetables. Above all soya and cereals intended for feeding cows, pigs and chickens which are then raised elsewhere.
A cruel system
Because they are a cruel system, which forces animals to live their entire lives in overcrowded spaces, with artificial light or darkness and no possibility of carrying out natural behaviors.
Inefficiency and antibiotic resistance
They are unsustainable because they are not efficient. Although 77% of the world’s agricultural land is dedicated to livestock, they generate only 18% of the calories and 37% of the total proteins consumed by the world’s population.
They are unsustainable because they fuel the plague, which the WHO recently defined as a “global health emergency”, of antibiotic resistance. This is due to the drugs administered to animals that live their lives locked up in narrow spaces, which amplify the risk of developing zoonoses (i.e. diseases that cause the so-called “species jump”).
A week without meat: the WWF Meat Free Week
As for the week without meat, or without meat from intensive farming, the Meat Free Week is an invitation to try it. As Eva Alessi, Sustainability Manager at WWF Italy, explains, «Two-thirds of the mammals on the planet are the ones we eat».
Switching to a meat-free diet globally would reduce food-related land use by 76%. Food-related greenhouse gas emissions are 49%. Eutrophication (i.e. the excess of nutrients, in particular nitrogen and phosphorus compounds, in water and soil) is 49%. Again, by 35% the use of blue and green water together.
The benefits of a vegetarian diet
The benefits would also also be health-related: if the vegetarian diet were adopted worldwide by 2050, it would lead to a reduction in global mortality of up to 10%, avoiding around 7 million deaths per year, while veganism would raise this estimate to 8 million.
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