Tanzania: Love Letters to Tanzania - Beans or Beef for Dinner Tonight?

Tanzania: Love Letters to Tanzania - Beans or Beef for Dinner Tonight?

Posted on :Wednesday , 19th July 2017

 Hearing young people thoughtfully articulate their visions for a better future is a wonderfully uplifting aspect of teaching. Recently, I had the pleasure of assessing students' persuasive speaking skills as they presented on a range of environmental issues.

 
When a student began to speak in favour of vegetarianism, her words fell on fertile ground and ruined my dinner plans - partially because she is a gifted orator, and partially because my self-image as an environmentally-friendly citizen was suddenly under threat.
 
Urged to reflect upon how ethical it is to eat meat, I would have liked to plead ignorance but remembered why, during my teenage years of idealism, my food choices had reflected ethical considerations. Unable to dismiss as naïve the typical belief of youngsters that they hold the key to all problems faced by humanity, I felt guilty about having fallen back into my carnivorous habits decades ago when youthful ideals gave way to realism and convenience.
 
If this sounds familiar, dear reader, let us face an inconvenient truth together: the careless food choices of financially comfortable citizens help destroy our global environment. Our insatiable appetite for meat exacerbates a range of environmental problems from deforestation and water pollution to land degradation and climate change. Be it the methane produced by cattle or the effluent of intensive piggeries, meat production is seriously destructive. In the United States, for instance, factory farming pollutes waterways more than all industrial activities combined, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
 
Experts say that drastically reducing personal meat consumption is the single most significant contribution an individual can make to help save the planet. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organisation which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, warns that our carnivorous food choices are not sustainable, if we are serious about combatting climate change and addressing food shortages on a global scale while the world population continues to grow rapidly.
 
According to a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, global animal production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation together. In addition, raising animals for meat consumption is a very inefficient way of producing food. Currently calling the driest inhabited continent on earth home, I see the injustice of using scarce fresh water resources for meat production - of us meat eaters claiming around fourteen times as much water for our diets as vegetarians. Growing 1 kilogramme of beef requires around 20 times the amount of water needed to produce 1 kilogramme of white rice, while commonly grown fruit and vegetables are of course even more environmentally friendly than rice.
 
Can we ignore the rapid rate of deforestation, especially in Central and South America, where forests are cut down or burned to make room for grazing cattle, many of which end up as frozen hamburger meat shipped abroad to satisfy the growing global demand for junk food? As hard-hooved cattle compact the earth and leave loosened top soil vulnerable to erosion, the resulting land degradation adds yet another challenge in our quest to feed a growing global population in the long run.
 
Thankfully, just as I pledged to become a better global citizen by re-reconsidering my food choices to reduce my negative impact on the environment, the student speaker kindly summed up some rewards for my impending vegetarianism:
 
Plant-based diets prevent - or delay considerably - many degenerative illnesses. Vegetarians are usually slimmer than meat eaters, lacking the "spare tyre" which tends to form around the midriff when life's many demands reduce the amount of time available for exercise. Vegetarians also outlive their meat-eating peers by up to ten years and have lower cholesterol levels and blood pressure, as well as lower rates of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and many cancers.
 
Ah, there is no strategy more persuasive than appealing to the listener's self-interest. I will have beans tonight!

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