NEWS
EVENTS
Today, Make a Cheese Toastie Not A Bacon Sarnie
Let’s talk about the one thing we all love avoiding. Not wars, politics or immigrants apparently “coming here taking all of our jobs” (sort it out England) and not tax rises. Let’s talk about shifting our life choices. Yes, OUR life choices!
We all love to put our two cents in about saving the world but how much are we actually doing? How much are we contributing to saving our planet? God knows it needs saving. The average British citizen carnivore eats more than 11,000 animals in their lifetime. 11 FUCKING THOUSAND! Each meat filled meal needs huge amounts of fuel, land and water before it makes it from the farm to our plates. We all seem to think about taste, but what about waste? Is it all necessary?
The ugly truth is this: if any of us genuinely care about the environment and want to make some kind of impact, we have GOT to cut down on our meat intake. Beyond that tasty bit of bacon in your sandwich is an energy consuming, wasteful farming system that we have no idea about. That crazy amount affects our forests; it pollutes the oceans, river, air and sea and is a huge factor towards a major climate fuck up. The reckless way that we’re breeding animals for our dinner is scary.
Did you know that we’re now eating twice as much meat as we did 30 years ago? Cows, chicken, sheep and pigs all need a hell of a lot of food and water for this to be possible. They also produce an incredible amount of physical waste – where do you think it all goes? Into our glorious river of course. As well as that, the UN calculated that the climate change emissions of animals killed for their meat were more than planes, cars and all other forms of transport put together – all because we can’t settle for a cheese toastie instead of a bacon sarnie in the morning?!
The stress isn’t over just yet; nearly 30% of the planet’s ice-free surface is being used to grow food for the meat that we’re eating. What do you reckon we could be using those areas for? Housing? Schools? Hospitals? Hospices? One million people go hungry every single day yet the livestock that we want to eat consumes the majority of the world’s crops. Why? Do we really need to eat this much meat?
Academies and scientists in the UK have calculated that if the grain used to feed the animals were eaten by people instead, we could be feeding at LEAST twice as many people as we’re now able to. Why don’t we all take a little step (it really won’t impact your life as much as you might think) and decide to eat a little less meat this year? Twitter is already going jumping on the Meatless Monday wave, so let’s jump on it. Let's try to cut down our meat intake (you’ll feel better physically too) and feel the glow of being an earth loving citizen.
For all of you rebels out there, here's a documentary about the reality of animal farming. Warning: it's graphic, unsettling, brutally honest and might make you cry.
