“We are destroying our planet by eating meat”
A new BBC documentary lays bare the devastating impact meat farming is having on the environment...
It may be hard to believe, but every time you eat a mass-produced beef burger, you are more than likely damaging the Amazon Rainforest. That’s just one of the worrying findings of a new BBC show – fronted by scientist Liz Bonnin – which aims to open people’s eyes to the damage caused to the natural world by eating meat.
Each year, the UK imports thousands of tons of beef from Brazil, and in doing so, we are causing destruction to the rainforest – known as the “lungs” of the planet as they create 20 per cent of our oxygen – as new land for the animals to graze on is created. This summer, an area of forest roughly the size of a football pitch was cleared every minute to make way for new cattle ranches. This is just one of the potentially catastrophic effects on the environment that meat production is causing globally – and the problem has now reached critical level.
Witnessing the devastation first hand, scientist and presenter of new BBC documentary Meat: A Threat To Our Planet?, Liz, says, “I didn’t fully understand just how important the rainforest is for our survival until I started making this show. It’s hard to put into words the stark realisation of how much we are destroying our planet by eating meat – and what that actually means for our future.”
Across the world, the rearing of animals for slaughter is damaging natural ecosystems, and raising livestock for meat production has a massive carbon footprint.
THREAT
IF WE CAN MAKE GRADUAL CHANGES TO OUR DIET, IT WILL GO A LONG WAY IN HELPING
The BBC’s aim is for this oneoff show to raise awareness of the damage caused by the meat industry, in the same way David Attenborough’s groundbreaking Blue Planet II changed attitudes towards plastic waste. The final episode of that series, which saw albatross parents unwittingly feeding the ocean’s rubbish to their chicks, shocked the nation and was widely heralded as a key moment in sparking the war on plastics. Research has shown that an incredible 88 per cent of people who watched the programme have since changed their behaviour as a result.
In this new show, Liz explains how farmed animals around the world produce three billion tons of waste every year, which causes serious pollution as the overspill fills ocean water with sewage.
The programme also reveals that off the coast of South
Africa, four million tons of fish – mainly sardines – are caught and sold every year globally, after being ground into a proteinrich powder to feed livestock such as pigs and chickens. This means that native penguins are starving to death, as there isn’t enough food in the once-rich waters. Within the next 25 years, it’s predicted the South African penguins will be extinct – because of meat production.
Liz says that seeing for herself the environmental consequences of meat instantly changed the way she eats. “I stopped eating red meat altogether,” she says. “I can see myself getting into complete vegetarianism very soon.” She hopes that the show will force us all to ask ourselves questions about how comfortable we are regarding the way meat is produced.
GRADUAL CHANGE
Liz adds, “The show is offering scientific facts – we aren’t telling everybody what to do. If we follow the latest scientific research, which says we should reduce our meat consumption to two portions a week, we could mitigate some impacts on the environment. We’re not telling people to turn vegetarian, but inherently we are evolving in our understanding of our relationship with the planet. If we can just make gradual changes to our diet, it will go a long way in helping.”
By Caroline Blight