|
Media Response #1
Brian Martin's letter ("Don't blame sheep", 10/12/07
- see right) perfectly illustrates the general incomprehension
about livestock and water. Nobody's talking about how much
the animals drink!
That, along with the water used for animal care, maintaining
pasture, and abbatoir processing, pales in comparison with
the quantity of water "embedded" in meat via the feed which
the animals consume.
The sheer numbers of animals raised for food, especially
in arid environments like Australia, necessitates that most
animals can't be raised on pasture alone. 95% of the world's
soybeans are fed to animals, yet it can take 20 kg of plant
foods like soybeans - which could be consumed directly by
humans - to produce just 1kg of meat.
That's why it takes 50,000 to 100,000 litres of water to
produce 1kg of beef (no Brian, not "some biased vegan testing
farm", that's from CSIRO scientist Wayne Meyer) and 170,000
litres for just 1 kilo of wool ("The Advertiser", 13/3/2007),
while cutting just 2 cups of milk from your diet saves 13,000
litres of water and 250kg of greenhouse gas (ACF 'Greenhome'
website).
Vegetarian Action
Media Response #2
Brian Martin ("Dryland Farming", 19/12/07), it's great
that you can run your farm on rainfall alone. Sadly, that's
not the case for many other farmers, especially those who
farm animals intensively. Feed for these animals must be
grown using water drawn from rivers, lakes and aquifers.
Indeed, the livestock sector is one of the world's most
profligate users of fresh water, according to the UN Food
& Agriculture Organisation ("Livestock's Long Shadow", 2006).
That's one reason that, both at a global and local level,
from the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute to the South
Australian Government's "Sustainable Living" website, we
are encouraged to eat lower on the food chain, that is,
to eat more plant foods and less meat and animal products.
Vegetarian Action is by no means anti-farmers. We need
you! But images of starving animals and reports that herds
are being culled due to drought and climate change (on farms
less fortunate than yours, Brian) should suffice to demonstrate
that farmers would be the first to benefit from a general
shift of economic focus to products with a lower environmental
impact.
Vegetarian Action
|
|
The Advertiser, 4 December 2007
The Advertiser, 6 December 2007
The Advertiser, 10 December 2007
The Advertiser, 12 December 2007 |
The Advertiser, 19 December 2007
|
|
