Save the Humans

A few years ago, I was talking with Al Gore (yes, I’m name dropping). I asked him a very simple and pointed question: “Animal agriculture contributes about 18 percent of the gases that cause climate change. Why didn’t you mention this in your book or movie?”

His answer was disconcertingly honest. I’m paraphrasing, but he said: “For most people, the role of animal agriculture in climate change is too inconvenient of a truth.”

We like our animal products.

Well, you like your animal products. I’ve been a vegan for 28 years, so to be honest I don’t even remember what they taste like.

But collectively, as a species, we seem to like animal products. A lot.

To wit: Each year, the U.S. grows and kills about 10 billion livestock animals. Globally, we’re raising and slaughtering about 56 billion animals animal agriculture each year. If you do the math, that means we’re killing 1,776 animals for food every second of every day. That doesn’t even include fish and other seafood.

But even though I’m a vegan for ethical reasons, I don’t want to write about the animal ethics of animal agriculture. I want to write about the ways in which animal agriculture is killing us and ruining our planet.

I know, that sounds like left wing hyperbole. “It’s killing our planet!” But sometimes hyperbole isn’t hyperbole. Sometimes hyperbole is just the clear-eyed truth. I’ll start with climate change.

The U.N. released a conservative report wherein they stated that animal agriculture causes about 18 percent of current greenhouse gas emissions.

To put it in perspective: animal agriculture is responsible for producing more climate change gases than every car, boat, bus, truck, motorcycle and airplane on the planet. Combined.

But we like our animals — or at least growing and eating them. So we make the trade-off: animal products for climate change.

Climate is complicated. And climate change is complicated. But the role of animal agriculture in climate change is simple.

And how about famine? There are over 7,000,000,000 people on the planet, and many of them are very, very hungry. Article after article and book after book ask the question: “How will we feed a planet of 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 billion people?” The discussions turn to fertilizer and GMOs and arable land.

But here’s a painfully simple idea: stop feeding human food to livestock.

It takes around 15 pounds of grain to make one pound of beef – which can feed a couple people for a few hours. In comparison, 13 pounds of grain fed to humans directly can feed 13 people for most of the day.

“We’re killing 1,776 animals for food every second of every day.”

Globally, we don’t have a famine problem; we have a livestock problem. Feeding food to animals and then eating the animals is kind of like heating your house during the winter by burning wood outside.

Speaking of winters: a few years ago, tired of cold winters in New York, I moved to California. Last year in L.A., we had around 362 beautiful days of sunshine. It was 80 degrees on Christmas, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Which is great, apart from the fact that California and most of the West are now experiencing the worst drought in recorded history.

As Californians, we’ve been asked to take shorter showers and use less water on our lawns. Both are good ideas. But let’s put it in perspective: a long shower uses around 40 gallons of water. Whereas it takes 4,000 to 18,000 gallons of water to create a 1/3 lb hamburger.

More than 90 percent of the water in California goes to agriculture. Some agriculture is very water responsible. It takes about 216 gallons of water to make one pound of soybeans, for example.

But other agriculture is egregiously water intensive – including rice and cotton, but especially animal agriculture. Each pound of chicken requires about 500 gallons of water, and pork requires about 576 gallons of water.

“Personally, I’d like to make a deal with California. I’ll take much shorter showers if you stop subsidizing water use for livestock.”

Personally, I’d like to make a deal with California. I’ll take much shorter showers if you stop subsidizing water use for livestock. If I just jumped in the shower and bathed quickly, I could even get it down to five gallons of water per shower. And after 132 showers, I would’ve used as much water as is needed to create one pound of beef.

So we’ve established that having an estimated 56,000,000,000 livestock animals on the planet uses a lot of water and grain and creates a lot of methane and carbon dioxide.

But these billions of animals also make waste. The really disgusting waste, not just invisible climate warming gases.

Let’s put this in perspective: the good people of Philadelphia create roughly1,000,000 tons of urine and feces per year. And one, only one, large pig farm will produce roughly 1,600,000 tons of urine and feces per year.

“One large pig farm annually creates 600,000 tons more urine and feces than the city of Philadelphia.”

Our lakes and rivers are being fouled with algae blooms. Our groundwater is being polluted. And the main culprit is livestock.The 56 billion livestock animals on the planet are making tons and tons of feces and urine every year — three times as much as humans.

And, in addition to fouling our water supplies, it’s also fouling our homes. A University of Arizona study found more residual feces and waste in the average omnivores kitchen than in their toilet bowl. Largely due to meat into the home.

The animals spend their lives in their own feces and urine, and when they’re killed and packaged, they bring their feces and urine with them. Into your home. They also bring pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, cholesterol and saturated fat.

To that end: if we collectively stopped eating animals and animal products tomorrow, studies suggest we’d see a drop in obesity, heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.

“We don’t have a global health epidemic; we have a global livestock epidemic. “

We don’t have a global health epidemic; we have a global livestock epidemic. Toomuch of the western world health care budgets go to curing people of diseases caused by the consumption of animal products.

And I’m not going to toot the vegan horn too much, but vegans have significantly lower rates of obesity, diabetes and some cancers.

When I talk to people about animal agriculture and meat eating, people often say, “But meat is inexpensive.” And it is. But only because it’s so heavily subsidized by our tax dollars. In the United States, we spend billions of dollars every year in direct and indirect subsidies to the meat and dairy industries. Billions of dollars in our tax dollars, subsidizing a product that ruins our environment and decimates our health.

We subsidize the grain that’s fed to livestock. We subsidize the water that’s used in livestock production. We, the taxpayers, subsidize animal agriculture.

And what do we get? We get climate change gases. And we get trillions of pounds of animal waste that fouls our lakes and rivers and reservoirs. We get an end product that causes cancer, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

And, saving the best for last, we also get zoonotic diseases.

“Zoonotic” is a fun and fancy sounding word. It sort of sounds like a very erudite part of a zoo, where the animals read books and live on boats. But zoonotic diseases are not fun or fancy. Some zoonotic diseases you might be familiar with: E.coli, Salmonella, SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola and even some old standards like smallpox and the common cold.

Zoonotic diseases come from animals, and, in many cases, from animal agriculture.

Luckily, thus far, we’ve been able to treat most zoonotic diseases with antibiotics. But here’s the rub: animals on factory farms are so sick, and in such bad shape, that antibiotics are all that’s keeping them from dying before they’re slaughtered. The animals are fed obscene amounts of antibiotics while they’re alive, and these antibiotics are then found in their milk and their eggs and their meat.

When you’re eating an animal, you’re eating the fat and the muscle but you’re also eating all of the antibiotics the animal has been fed during its life.

The double whammy of zoonotic diseases coming from animal agriculture: animals are the source of the zoonotic diseases but they’re also the source of antibiotic resistance. So the zoonotic diseases can kill us, especially as animal agriculture has created superbugs who don’t respond to conventional antibiotics.

That’s the fun world of animal agriculture.

A simple re-cap:

Animal agriculture:
Uses tons of grain that could be fed directly to people
Uses tons of fresh water that could be used to grow healthy food
Creates tons of urine and feces that ruin our lakes, rivers and drinking water
Creates about 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions
Contributes to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer
Causes epidemic zoonotic diseases
Contributes to the creation of antibiotic resistant “super bugs”
And is heavily subsidized by our tax dollars.

As a species, we are faced with complicated and seemingly intractable problems. And then we’re faced with animal agriculture.

So rather than focus on the hard, intractable problems (like curing baldness) let’s simply focus on something easy with phenomenal benefit: ending animal agriculture.

All we have to do is stop subsidizing it and stop buying animal products. Simple. And climate change gases are reduced by about 18 percent.

Famine could end. Fresh water could become clean and more abundant. Deaths from cancer and heart disease and diabetes and obesity could be reduced. And zoonotic diseases could be largely reduced.

It really is that simple.

We’ve done hard things in the past. We’ve ended slavery. We’ve given everyone the right to vote. We’ve passed legislation prohibiting children from working in factories. We’re even moving towards a time when cigarette smoking will be seen as a foul, distant memory.

We can do this. We have to. Our reliance on animal agriculture is literally killing us and ruining our climate and our planet.

I’ll end by quoting Albert Einstein:

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” -Albert Einstein

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/moby/moby-meat_b_5889850.html?1412009893

SANE AND SELFISH REASONS TO NOT EAT PIECES OF ANIMALS

1. IT IS ENERGY WISE

Meat production requires 10 to 20 times more energy per edible tonne than grain production and has as high as a 54:1 protein inefficiency ratio (units of plant protein required to produce a single unit of meat protein) [6]. Each cow raised requires (directly and indirectly) 90 to 180 litres of water a day and passes 40kg of manure per kg of edible animal tissue. A study by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 1kg (2.2 pounds) of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 250 kilometers, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days [4].

Protein rich beans require only fertilization, water and land, with very little maintenance.

Once grown, there’s a long list of energy expensive processes required to turn animals into legally consumable food; from transporting them to the abottoir, slaughtering them, cutting them into pieces, sanitizing and packaging the pieces (usually in plastic) and then delivering the result to shops where they are refrigerated until sale. Refrigeration alone is extremely energy expensive. Suffice to say very few people would be able to eat animals today were it not for this sprawling, around-the-clock, energy infrastructure.

The process required to turn beans, grains and nuts into pantry-apt food is minimal and has an extremely long shelf life, no need for energy expensive refrigeration.

2. GOT KIDS? IT IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTMENT IN THEIR FUTURE

‘Livestock production’ uses more than 30% of the earth’s entire arable land surface, with beef ranches driving 60-70% of Amazon deforestation today[5a][5b]. Conservative forecasts assume that over half of all arable land on earth will be dedicated to the production of cow parts, cow milk, chicken and pig parts by 2050.

Soya has 4 times more calories than red meat so the amount of soy that could be grown using the same amount of land would feed far more people than if used to raise cows. More so, a diet based around animal tissue requires 7 times more land on average than a plant-based diet yet (somewhat ironically) much of the meat eaten world-wide is raised on soya grain. 94% of all soy grown in America, for instance, is fed to livestock rather than people directly. Only 2% of all soy grown in the U.S. is eaten by people with soy based fuels consuming the remaining 4%) [14]. This makes American meat eaters the primary drivers of soy bean monocrops in that country. The trick here is to eat the bean before it gets to the cow. The more cows, pigs and chicken eaten, the more competition there is for wooded land. The more demand for animal parts, the more monocrops there are, significantly threatening the biodiversity upon which we all depend.

Agriculture has negative secondary effects. The Earth is increasingly saturated in animal waste, far more than it can readily process. Animal waste from agriculture accounts for 50-85% of all ammonia found on land and in water, contributing significantly to acid rain and air pollution worldwide [15].

According to The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization, livestock production is at the heart of almost every environmental stress confronting the planet: rain forest destruction, growing deserts, loss of fresh water, air and water pollution, acid rain, floods and soil erosion. [5]

3. THE FISHING INDUSTRY IS DESTROYING OCEAN LIFE

Hard to believe, given that we were all told the ocean is apparently abundant and endless, but it’s true: 40% of the worlds oceans are considered by experts to be detrimentally affected by fishing. According to an FAO estimate, over 70% of the world’s fish species are either exploited to unsustainable limits or depleted.[7]

Species such as the Blue Fin Tuna are now endangered alongside 69 other species of fish in abundance just decades ago [8]. It is safe to say many of the fish species eaten by children today will be facing extinction by the time those children become adults.

The global harvest for fish has more than quadrupled since 1950, from 22 million tonnes to 100 million tonnes over the same period. The environmental cost is already unimaginable, along with a real threat for consumers’ health from the unnatural conditions of inland fish farms. A detailed account of both kinds of production can be found here and here.

If you like the ocean it’s a good idea to stop funding the industries that harm it. It appears too late to hope that regulation and reform will drive a shift to less destructive methods, let alone waiting hundreds of years for coral reefs and underwater ecosystems to heal. You can help slow the decay by not eating fish. If this seems unimaginable then learn to catch fish, one at a time, with a hook and rod. This has a significantly lower environmental impact than any other modern means of catching fish.

4. QUITTING ANIMAL TISSUE IS GOOD FOR YOU AND OTHER PEOPLE

Meat eaters generally consume more than twice as much protein as they need, increasing likelihood of kidney failure, cholesterol, heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, stress. [9]

Legumes, especially soybeans, contain the largest percentage of protein among the vegetable foods and are in the same range as many meats. If legumes are a central part of a person’s diet, there will be plenty of enough protein in the diet with no need for animal-tissue. For example, one cup of cooked soybeans contains approximately 20 grams of protein; that is equivalent to three hot dogs, a quarter-pound hamburger, three 8-ounce cups of milk, three ounces of cheese.

On the other hand, industrially produced meat and fish is famously full of nasty things, from bleaching agents to antibiotics, responsible for allergies, resistance to medicines, fatigue, dehydration and a long list of cancers. Seehere and here.

‘Food animals’ consume 80% of all antibiotics produced in America [10a][10b][10c] and at least 45% in the European Union in order to combat the illnesses they get when fed grains (cows and pigs didn’t evolve to eat corn and beans) and those from intensive farming.

Antiobiotics fed to animals are almost always in the same medical group as that of those fed to humans, and so when bacteria develops a resistance to antiobiotics on a farm it cannot be fought when encountered in people. This is the history of most epidemcis (like E-Coli) threatening modern human life.

Many scientists consider antibiotic-resistant bacteria to be the greatest threat to humans on the planet today.Grass-fed, ‘organic’ animal parts are no guarantee of safety either due to it so very often coming into contact with industrially produced animal parts.[10b]

Antiobiotics from animal parts also end up in the bodies of those that consume them, alongside doses of hormones known to have significantly detrimental impact on people, especially children [11][12]. The hormone Oestradiol 17ß, used widely by major exporters of cow pieces, is considered a complete carcinogen. It exerts both tumour initiating and tumour promoting effects.

The eating of meat affects other people, contributing significantly to food shortages worldwide. In the U.S., animals are fed more than 80 percent of the corn and 95 percent of the oats grown. The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food once estimated (Gold and Porrit) to be equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people, more than the entire human population on Earth. Instead, a vast proportion of the world’s forests have been felled to grow the grains fed to cattle. A report from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change considers agriculture to be the single most prevalent cause of deforestation throughout human history [13], depleting world oxygen supply, threatening and/or extinguishing animal and insect life, tipping surrounding ecosystems and devastating indigenous communities and their cultures.

Consider also the impact on supplies of freshwater. To produce 1kg of feedlot beef requires 7kg of feed grain, which takes around 7000 litres of water throughput to grow. The demand for water to grow food to feed cows is resulting in vast areas of arid, dying land throughout the world as water is pumped out to feedlot farms elsewhere. Data adapted from here.

While the increasing demand for ‘organic’ meat in 1st world countries has a less negative impact on the soil itself, cows still require water and cleared land on which to graze. More so, as organic meat cannot be grown as quickly as hormone engineered meat these animals consume more land and require a larger amount of plant matter over the course of a lifetime.

The Agriculture industry is full of many clever and well researched people, all looking to profit where possible: there would be more grass fed cows if it was as or more efficient than industrial methods. Replacing industrialised meat with grass-fed alternatives would rely on vastly greater rates of deforestation than currently experienced while prohibitively raising the cost of animal parts themselves (see Author’s note, below). ‘Organic meat’ is thus not a drop-in solution at the current rates of meat consumption. It is safe to say meat is no longer an environmentally or socially responsible source of protein at today’s population levels. It was ‘sustainable’ once, but not at all now.

If you are a person that believes it’s not possible to live without eating meat you may consider exploring a more immediate relationship with your choice of diet, with the origin of what you choose to put into your body. Rather than paying someone to kill on your behalf, find a local farmer and arrange to learn to kill the animal you select for eating, preparing the parts for transportation once done; the parts you freeze will last you a very long time.

Julian, one of the authors of this document, grew up on a small farm and attests to the awakening importance of taking direct responsibility for the choice to eat meat; selecting an animal, holding it down as it struggles, and then taking its life with a blade.

This is a perspective those that wish to sell you animal parts (and the large agricultural corporations they work for) would dearly rather you do not have.

A LIST OF INTERESTING CITATIONS TO RUMINATE UPON

“People who are comfortable with eating meat should be equally comfortable with killing animals.”

—The Meat License Proposal

Meat and fossil fuel:

Most of us are aware that our cars, our coal-generated electric power and even our cement factories adversely affect the environment. Until recently, however, the foods we eat were given a pass in the discussion. Yet according to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry. [1]

Environmental degradation:

According to a 2006 report by the Livestock, Environment And Development Initiative, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide, and modern practices of raising animals for food contributes on a “massive scale” to air and water pollution, land degradation, climate change, and loss of biodiversity. The initiative concluded that “the livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” In 2006 FAO estimated that meat industry contributes 18% of all emissions of greenhouse gasses. This figure was revised in 2009 by two World Bank scientists and estimated at 51% minimum.[3]

Meat production and food shortage:

Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States. [4]

94% of all Soy grown in the United States is fed to livestock rather than people directly. [14] 

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations report summary:[5]

• 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock (more than from transportation).

 

• 60-70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon now hosts cattle.

 

• Two-thirds (64 percent) of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems, come from cattle.

 

• The livestock sector accounts for over 8 percent of global human water use, while 64 percent of the world’s population will live in water-stressed areas by 2025.

 

• The world’s largest source of water pollution is believed to be the livestock sector.

 

• In the United States, livestock are responsible for a third of the loads of nitrogen and phosphorus into freshwater resources.

 

• Livestock account for about 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal biomass, and the 30 percent of the earth’s land surface that they now pre-empt was once habitat for wildlife, in an era of unprecedented threats to biodiversity.

 

• These problems will only get worse as meat production is expected to double by 2050.

REFERENCES

1. How meat contributes to Global Warming. Scientific American, 2009

2. Williams, Erin E. and DeMello, Margo. Why Animals Matter. Prometheus Books, 2007, p. 73.

3. The Environmental impact of Meat Production, Wikipedia page

4. New York Times analysis.

5. Livestock’s Long Shadow, UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, 2006.
5a.Deforestation in the Amazon

6. U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestockNews.cornell.edu. 1997-08-07. Retrieved 2010-05-01.

7. Overfishing: a threat to marine biodiversity

8. Guardian report on Compass ban of fish in restaurants

9. Meat and Health, UN Food and Agricultural Organisation.

10a. Farm Animals Get 80 Percent of Antibiotics Sold in U.S.
10b. Politics of the Plate: Drug Bust, Barry Estabrook, 2009
10c. Whether you buy grass-fed or ‘natural’ meat safety isn’t guaranteed

11. Meat hygiene 10th edition, Von J. F. Gracey, D. S. Collins, Robert J. Huey, Harcourt Brace and Company, 1999.

12. Barnard ND, Nicholson A, Howard JL. The medical costs attributable to meat consumption. Prev Med. 1995;24:646-655.

13. UNFCCC (2007). “Investment and financial flows to address climate change”. unfccc.int. UNFCCC. p. 81.

14. GMO Inside Blog

15. Ammonia Emissions and Animal Agriculture, Virginia Tech.

N/A. A favourite meat-free recipes blog. Here’s another and another.

This page was written by Marta Peirano and Julian Oliver.

UPDATED: 16.02.2014

Source: http://julianoliver.com/sane/

Ironically, Climate Change Marchers Line Up to Buy Meat, Fish & Dairy at Parade

News & Opinion

Wearing t-shirts with slogans like “Climate Justice Starts Here,” hundreds, if not thousands, of Climate March participants in NYC lined up at food trucks at the street fair after the parade to buy meat, fish and dairy products, demonstrating either a lack of awareness or disregard for what the United Nations says is, by far, the number one contributor of climate change and the planet’s biggest polluter, animal agriculture.

How can the nation’s leading enviromental groups expect the general public to make eco-friendly choices if their own members engage in the most environmentally destructive activity — and if they themselves don’t promote a plant-based diet? Can we really expect world leaders at this week’s United Nations’ Climate Summit to take drastic measures to reverse climate change if “environmentalists” can’t take the most basic one?

At Climate Change marches around the world, plant-based/vegan participants displayed compelling posters and distributed information about the impact of animal agriculture on the environment, and their efforts will assuredly effect some change. However, as evidenced in the groundbreaking documentary film Cowspiracy, animal agriculture must be eliminated altogether in order to reverse climate change and save the planet.

Source: http://theirturn.net/meat-at-climate-march/

Meat and cheese may be as bad for you as smoking

“Crucially, the researchers found that plant-based proteins, such as those from beans, did not seem to have the same mortality effects as animal proteins. Rates of cancer and death also did not seem to be affected by controlling for carbohydrate or fat consumption, suggesting that animal protein is the main culprit.”

 

That chicken wing you’re eating could be as deadly as a cigarette. In a new study that tracked a large sample of adults for nearly two decades, researchers have found that eating a diet rich in animal proteins during middle age makes you four times more likely to die of cancer than someone with a low-protein diet — a mortality risk factor comparable to smoking.

“There’s a misconception that because we all eat, understanding nutrition is simple. But the question is not whether a certain diet allows you to do well for three days, but can it help you survive to be 100?” said corresponding author Valter Longo, the Edna M. Jones Professor of Biogerontology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and director of the USC Longevity Institute.

Not only is excessive protein consumption linked to a dramatic rise in cancer mortality, but middle-aged people who eat lots of proteins from animal sources — including meat, milk and cheese — are also more susceptible to early death in general, reveals the study to be published March 4 in Cell Metabolism. Protein-lovers were 74 percent more likely to die of any cause within the study period than their more low-protein counterparts. They were also several times more likely to die of DIABETES.

But how much protein we should eat has long been a controversial topic — muddled by the popularity of protein-heavy DIETS such as Paleo and Atkins. Before this study, researchers had never shown a definitive correlation between high protein consumption and mortality risk.

Rather than look at adulthood as one monolithic phase of life, as other researchers have done, the latest study considers how biology changes as we age, and how decisions in middle life may play out across the human lifespan.

In other words, what’s good for you at one age may be damaging at another. Protein controls the growth hormone IGF-I, which helps our bodies grow but has been linked to cancer susceptibility. Levels of IGF-I drop off dramatically after age 65, leading to potential frailty and muscle loss. The study shows that while high protein intake during middle age is very harmful, it is protective for older adults: those over 65 who ate a moderate- or HIGH-PROTEIN diet were less susceptible to disease.

The latest paper draws from Longo’s past research on IGF-I, including on an Ecuadorian cohort that seemed to have little cancer or DIABETES susceptibility because of a genetic mutation that lowered levels of IGF-I; the members of the cohort were all less than five-feet tall.

“The research shows that a low-protein diet in middle age is useful for preventing cancer and overall mortality, through a process that involves regulating IGF-I and possibly insulin levels,” said co-author Eileen Crimmins, the AARP Chair in Gerontology at USC. “However, we also propose that at older ages, it may be important to avoid a low-protein diet to allow the maintenance of healthy weight and protection from frailty.”

Crucially, the researchers found that plant-based proteins, such as those from beans, did not seem to have the same mortality effects as animal proteins. Rates of cancer and death also did not seem to be affected by controlling for carbohydrate or fat consumption, suggesting that animal protein is the main culprit.

“The majority of Americans are eating about twice as much proteins as they should, and it seems that the best change would be to lower the daily intake of all proteins but especially animal-derived proteins,” Longo said. “But don’t get extreme in cutting out protein; you can go from protected to malnourished very quickly.”

Longo’s findings support recommendations from several leading health agencies to consume about 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight every day in middle age. For example, a 130-pound person should eat about 45-50 grams of protein a day, with preference for those derived from plants such as legumes, Longo explains.

The researchers define a “HIGH-PROTEIN” diet as deriving at least 20 percent of CALORIES from protein, including both plant-based and animal-based protein. A “moderate” protein diet includes 10-19 percent of calories from protein, and a “low-protein” diet includes less than 10 percent protein.

Even moderate amounts of protein had detrimental effects during middle age, the researchers found. Across all 6,318 adults over the age of 50 in the study, average protein intake was about 16 percent of total daily calories with about two-thirds from animal protein — corresponding to data about national protein consumption. The study sample was representative across ethnicity, education and health background.

People who ate a moderate amount of protein were still three times more likely to die of cancer than those who ate a low-protein DIET in middle age, the study shows. Overall, even the small change of decreasing protein intake from moderate levels to low levels reduced likelihood of early death by 21 percent.

For a randomly selected smaller portion of the sample – 2,253 people – levels of the growth hormone IGF-I were recorded directly. The results show that for every 10 ng/ml increase in IGF-I, those on a HIGH-PROTEIN diet were 9 percent more likely to die from cancer than those on a low-protein diet, in line with past research associating IGF-I levels to cancer risk.

The researchers also extended their findings about HIGH-PROTEIN diets and mortality risk, looking at causality in mice and cellular models. In a study of tumor rates and progression among mice, the researchers show lower cancer incidence and 45 percent smaller average tumor size among mice on a low-protein diet than those on a high-protein diet by the end of the two-month experiment.

“Almost everyone is going to have a cancer cell or pre-cancer cell in them at some point. The question is: Does it progress?” Longo said. “Turns out one of the major factors in determining if it does is is protein intake.”

 

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140304125639.htm

With Millions of Tons of Plastic in Oceans, More Scientists Studying Impact

A surprising amount of our garbage ends up in the sea. Can it ever be cleaned up?

Fishermen set out amid floating garbage off the shore of Manila Bay in the Philippines on June 8, 2013.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIK DE CASTRO, REUTERS

Laura Parker

National Geographic

PUBLISHED JUNE 13, 2014

Consider this: The amount of global trash is expected to rise every year for the rest of the century. With no intervention, the growing garbage heap won’t even peak by 2021.

Since most marine debris originates on land, that grim prognosis, say researchers at the University of Georgia, could spell disaster for the oceans, creating an environmental hazard often compared in scope with climate change.

“We estimate we’re going to have millions of tons of plastic going into the ocean with, so far, unknown consequences,” says Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer at the university, who is among a group of scientists pursuing a new phase of research on ocean trash and measuring its impact on the environment and marine life. The University of Georgia group works as part of the University of California at Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

But while climate change is still mired in politics and is a target of naysayers, the trouble in the oceans is an easier issue to address because it is so visible. “The one thing this issue has going for it over climate change is that you can see the garbage,” Jambeck says.

Ocean debris grabbed the international spotlight this spring during the search for the missing Malaysian jet, when multiple satellite images of floating debris repeatedly turned out to be garbage instead of pieces of the Boeing 777. (See “Plane Search Shows World’s Oceans Are Full of Trash.”)

Secretary of State John Kerry hopes to highlight the issue again next week by making marine trash one of the main topics at a two-day oceans conference that begins Monday. Kerry hopes to frame the challenges that lie ahead, including climate change-related ocean acidification and the threat of overfishing.

But the dilemma caused by the growing tonnage of mostly plastic debris is so complex, it has created a new interdisciplinary field of study. Scientists like Jambeck are examining a litany of new issues that range from the toxicity of plastics ingested by marine animals to the politics and economics of solid waste management in developing nations.

New Questions for an Old Problem

Seafarers have known for decades that the oceans are trash dumps, the ultimate sinkholes for all global garbage. So far, 136 species of marine animals have been found entangled in debris. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the first such discovery was made in 1944, when northern fur seals turned up trapped in rubber “collars” that were the remains of Japanese food-drop bags from the Aleutian campaign in World War II.

But scientific research into marine garbage is only a decade or so old. NOAA, for example, launched its Marine Debris Program only in 2006, after Congress passed the Marine Debris Act at the urging of Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii).

The defining moment of ocean debris research, says Jambeck, was when scientists discovered that ocean debris was no longer an assemblage of cloth, wood, and ceramics, but was composed almost entirely of plastic. Most of that is micro-plastic, meaning it has decayed and broken down into microscopic pieces that float in the water column. Richard Thompson, a British scientist scheduled to speak at Kerry’s conference, first highlighted the problem in 2004 in a paper titled “Lost at Sea: Where Is All the Plastic?”

“Once micro-plastics entered the picture and it was being ingested by marine life, it was a whole new ballgame,” Jambeck says. “That’s when the alarms started going off.”

Jambeck and her team’s research, to be published later this year, will provide new estimates of how much garbage is produced globally every year, how much garbage comes from developing countries lacking garbage collection systems, and how much litter is produced by developed countries. All trash has the potential to reach the oceans.

Yet despite the new burst of scientific study, solving the problem in the face of an increasing volume of ocean trash seems an almost insurmountable task.

A boy collects debris on a beach near Durres on Albania’s Adriatic Coast on April 9, 2010.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ARBEN CELI, REUTERS

Options Are Few: Cleanup or Prevention

An alliance of 48 plastic manufacturers from 25 countries—all members of the Global Plastics Associations for Solutions on Marine Litter—has pledged to help prevent marine debris and encourage recycling. Several manufacturers are now marketing products made partly from recycled ocean plastics and abandoned fishing gear.

But the consensus among many scientists, including NOAA’s, is that cleaning up the oceans can potentially cause more harm than good. Cleaning up micro-plastics could also inadvertently sweep up plankton, which provides the basis for the marine food chain and half of the photosynthesis on Earth.

Ocean trash is driven by currents into loosely formed garbage “patches” that Dianna Parker, a NOAA spokesperson, says are more accurately described as “peppery soup” filled with grain-size plastic bits. The word “patch” suggests a defined size and location, when in fact floating debris is constantly moving, shifting with seasonal weather, and changing in shape and size.

Cleaning up even one of these areas seems impossible. Not surprisingly, the largest patch is in the largest ocean—the Pacific, which covers a third of the planet. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as it is known, is often said to be twice the size of Texas. It actually extends, at times, from Japan to San Francisco, and varies in shape and density. According to NOAA, cleaning up less than one percent of the North Pacific would take 68 ships working 10 hours a day for a year.

Beach cleanups help, but are costly and ineffective. The Ocean Conservancy, the international leader in coastal cleanups, has collected some 180 million tons in three decades of work. “We have now created the world’s best database for what actually happens on our beaches,” says Andreas Merkl, the group’s CEO. “We are the largest end-of-the-pipe, ocean-specific trash entity.”

San Francisco spends $6 million a year cleaning up cigarette butts alone, according to NOAA figures in a report called the “The Honolulu Strategy: A Global Framework for Prevention and Management of Marine Debris.” The Honolulu Strategy, developed at a NOAA conference in 2011, notes that a more effective solution is to prevent debris from being swept into the oceans in the first place.

But as long as some countries lack the ability to efficiently collect garbage from its citizens, that garbage will continue to end up in the ocean.

Plastic-Making Technology Spreads

Ted Siegler, a partner at DSM Environmental Services, a waste management firm in Windsor, Vermont, has spent a career helping developing countries set up garbage collection systems.

“In many ways, this is really simple. This is putting trucks on the road and picking up the garbage and bringing it to a proper place,” he says. “But none of that is occurring in almost all of the places that I’ve been working in the last 20 years.”

The complication, Siegler says, is the speed with which plastic manufacturing technology has spread globally.

“I could walk into a guy’s garage in Jordan and he would be blowing film to create plastic bags. Or walk into an industrial shop in Vietnam and a guy would have a brand-new Chinese knockoff of a Frito-Lay packaging machine,” he says.

“There is no end in sight to how much plastic we are going to be producing and how much we are going to be using, and that’s the scary part. If it’s important now, it’s going to be much more important ten years from now.”

 

Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/140613-ocean-trash-garbage-patch-plastic-science-kerry-marine-debris/?utm_source=NatGeocom&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=inside_20140619&utm_campaign=Content

 

Wool Steps Up Greenwashing Campaign

Posted June 18th 2014 at 3:41 pm by joshuakatcher

The wool industry has put a lot of money – and a royal patron – behind new efforts to convince people that wool is sustainable.  But let’s get one thing out of the way, right away, ok? Telling people wool is green by building a PR campaign around burying it and celebrating its biodegradability is like telling people that beef is green by burying it and celebrating its biodegradability.

Let’s put on our greewashing goggles and take a closer look at this. The glaring problem is that it’s not the sheep’s hair per se that’s the environmental and ethical disaster. Instead, it’s the inextricable raising-of-the-livestock part. But take those goggles off and just shhhh because the wool industry doesn’t want to talk about that.

A campaign like this is so dangerous because it perpetuates a few myths that are sacred to the bottom-lines of the sheep and other livestock industries. Here are the top three myths:

MYTH #1: IT’S JUST HAIR.
Sheep don’t just spring-up from the ether with a thick coat of wool to shear off. They must be bred. Raised. Reared. Fed. Watered. Grazed or confined. Modified. Tracked. Measured. Processed. Shipped. Slaughtered.  The amount of resources it takes to produce livestock isn’t something to brush off. In fact, livestock are the single greatest cause of the worst environmental problems. Worse than the transportation sector. With around 1 billion sheep worldwide, consider the mind-boggling impacts on land, water, air and energy. The United Nation FAO certainly does.

MYTH #2: WOOL IS NATURAL AND BETTER THAN SYNTHETICS.
Don’t bet the farm on it. The thing about synthetics is that they are always becoming more efficient, more refined, and more scalable. For example, the company that makes lycra has developed a method of using fermented vegetation to produce one of the main ingredients. Researches in Japan have developed a bio-based polyester made from waste molasses. We have only scratched the surface of the potential of bioplastics.  Scalability is the issue when it comes to mass-production of textiles. Any time animals are put into a production model and scaled-up to meet massive demands, it is practically a law of business that corners are cut. The mantra of maximum profit at minimal cost has dire ramifications on both people and animals. The veterinary, social and psychological needs of animals continue to both humble us and evade inclusion in our business models that prefer to cast them a “units of production”. In addition, a lot of sheep are put in “sheep dip“, a bath of toxic chemicals (organophosphate pesticides (OPs)) to prevent infestations – and people are getting sick from it.

MYTH #2: THE WOOL INDUSTRY IS NOT A BUCOLIC FANTASY
Picture a wide open space. Lush and green. A few sheep speckle the landscape beyond a farmhouse – mother sheep with lambs, a few sheep lazing in the grass. A concerned shepherd watches on. Images like these are used all the time to represent the wool industry. But like all animal agriculture, modern techniques and increasing demands have changed our naive ideas about where wool comes from and also about how sheep “retire“. Instead picture this: sheep farms that are millions of acres large in China India and Australia. Mulesing, where strips of flesh are cut away from the behind of sheep without anesthesia. Castration. Live export on huge ships (see image below) with no food or water or veterinary care to the Middle East once the sheep is “spent”. Upon arrival they have their throats slit while still conscious (according to Halal and/or Kosher law). And the most depraved practice? Astrakhan (also know as Karakul) where either the fetus is cut out of the mother, or young infant sheep are skinned for one of the most desired luxury textiles in the world.

Written by joshuakatcher

Joshua Katcher started The Discerning Brute in 2008 as a resource for men who want to make intelligent decisions concerning their lifestyles. With a focus on “fashion, food & etiquette for the ethically handsome man”, The Discerning Brute produces expert, essential content and boldly takes a stand. Brave GentleMan, the integrated, eCommerce brother-site of The Discerning Brute was launched in 2011 and features “principled attire” and “smart supplies” handpicked for informed indulgence.

– See more at: http://www.thediscerningbrute.com/2014/06/18/wool-steps-up-greenwashing-campaign/#sthash.YyKHkSJf.dpuf

 

Source: http://www.thediscerningbrute.com/2014/06/18/wool-steps-up-greenwashing-campaign/

80 billion garments are produced worldwide,…..

…..the equivalent of over 11 garments a year for every person on the planet.

How toxic are your threads? If you’re a fan of cheap, disposable fashion, the answer isn’t one you’re going to like. A new investigation commissioned by Greenpeace found residues of hormone-disrupting and cancer-causing chemicals in clothing made by 20 leading high-street brands, includingArmani, Benetton, Calvin Klein, Diesel, Esprit, Gap, Levi Strauss, Victoria’s Secret, and Zara. As the world’s largest apparel retailer, Zara was among the worst offenders. “Zara alone churns out 850 million clothing items a year,” says Li Yifang, a toxics campaigner at Greenpeace East Asia. “You can imagine the size of the toxic footprint it has left on this planet, particularly in developing countries like China where many of its products are made.”

 

TOXIC THREADS

In April, Greenpeace purchased 141 items of clothing, including jeans, trousers, T-shirts, dresses, and underwear made from both natural and synthetic materials, from authorized retailers in 29 countries and regions. Tests at Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and at independent accredited labs worldwide found that all the brands had at least several items containing hazardous chemicals, including some classified as “toxic” or “very toxic” to aquatic life.

All the brands tested by Greenpeace had at least several items containing hazardous chemicals.

 

Roughly two-thirds of the samples contained nonylphenol ethoxylate (NPE), a textile surfactant that degrades to the more environmentally persistent nonylphenol (NP) when released into the environment. NP is a hormone-disruptor known to accumulate in fish and other aquatic organisms. Named a “priority hazardous substance” under the EU Water Framework Directive, NP has also recently been detected in human tissue.

But the chemical traces weren’t just the result of the manufacturing process. In the case of of clothes with high levels of phthalates, a group of chemicals used to make plastics like polyvinyl chloride more pliable, they were incorporated deliberately within the plastisol print on the fabric.

Two items, both from Zara, contained cancer-causing amines from the use of AZO dyes.

 

All 31 of the samples of plastisol-printed fabric tested positive for phthalates, which the United States has banned from many garments and children’s products because of their links to reproductive abnormalities (including reduced sperm counts and testicular atrophy) and certain types of cancer. Two items, both from Zara, contained cancer-causing amines from the use of AZO dyes.

“The testing results reveal how much toxic chemicals these brands are dumping in China and other developing nations where products are made and regulations are loose,” Li says. “As the world’s biggest fashion retailers, the likes of Zara have no choice but to change their practices, not only for its consumers but also for the communities affected by its irresponsible suppliers.”

 

CHANGE OF PACE

Around 80 billion garments are produced worldwide, the equivalent of just over 11 garments a year for every person on the planet, according to Greenpeace. The growing volumes of clothing being made, sold, and disposed of magnifies the human and environmental costs of our clothes at every stage of their life cycle, which means that even minute quantities of toxins can cumulatively amount to the widespread dispersal of damaging chemicals across the globe, the group says.

80 billion garments are produced worldwide, the equivalent of over 11 garments a year for every person on the planet.

 

“The worst part is, as fashion gets faster and more globalized, more and more consumers worldwide are becoming fashion’s victims while contributing to the industry’s pollution,” Li adds. “But it doesn’t have to be so. We’ve already witnessed commitments from sportswear giants such as Adidas, Nike, and the Chinese brand Li-Ning, to eliminating the use of all hazardous chemicals in the entirety of their supply chains.”

The three brands are among a group of manufacturers and retailers, which Greenpeace refers to as “engaged,” that have agreed to phase out all toxic chemicals by 2020. Others that have pledged to do the same are C&A, H&M, Puma and, most recently, Marks & Spencer.

Detox “greenwashers,” defined as brands that have declared a zero-discharge intention but have not made credible individual commitments or action plans in their own right, include G-Star Raw and Levi’s, while “detox laggards,” or brands with chemical-management policies and programs that have yet to make a credible commitment to zero discharge, count Zara, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfier,Mango, and Gap among their numbers. The group also referred to Esprit,
Metersbonwe, and Victoria’s Secret as “discharge villains” for their lackluster or nonexistent policies and programs for chemicals management.

Text and Image Source: http://www.ecouterre.com/greenpeace-exposes-toxic-chemicals-in-zara-other-fast-fashion-brands/

The Toxic Price Of Leather

Leather is not green, even if the industry tries to promote it as such. It is a byproduct of the already cruel meat industry and has huge human and environmental impacts.

On the banks of the Ganges River lies the city of Kanpur. The city is now notorious for having some of the country’s worst water pollution which has been created by the leather tannery industry. An array of health problems now afflict locals who are suffering as a result of the bioaccumulation of dangerous toxins over the past decades.

Check out this video:

http://digg.com/video/the-toxic-price-of-leather

Forget Shorter Showers!

Eating Less Meat Is World’s Best Chance For Timely Climate Change, Say Experts

Shifting the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is important, certainly. But the world’s best chance for achieving timely, disaster-averting climate change may actually be a vegetarian dieteating less meat, according to a recent report in World Watch Magazine. (While I’d happily nudge the world toward a vegetarian diet, the report authors are more measured and simply suggest diets containing less meat.)

“The entire goal of today’s international climate objectives can be achieved by replacing just one-fourth of today’s least eco-friendly food products with better alternatives,” co-author Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental advisor wrote in an April 18 blog post on the report.

A widely cited 2006 report estimated that 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry. However, analysis performed by Goodland, with co-writer Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’sInternational Finance Corporation, found that figure to now more accurately be 51%.

Consequently, state the pair, replacing livestock products with meat alternatives would “have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations — and thus on the rate the climate is warming — than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”

The pair describe several areas related to anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gases that have been overlooked or underestimated. For example, livestock breathing. They explain:

 

[L]ivestock (like automobiles) are a human invention and convenience, not part of pre-human times, and a molecule of CO2 exhaled by livestock is no more natural than one from an auto tailpipe. Moreover, while over time an equilibrium of CO2 may exist between the amount respired by animals and the amount photosynthesized by plants, that equilibrium has never been static. Today, tens of billions more livestock are exhaling CO2 than in preindustrial days, while Earth’s photosynthetic capacity (its capacity to keep carbon out of the atmosphere by absorbing it in plant mass) has declined sharply as forest has been cleared. (Meanwhile, of course, we add more carbon to the air by burning fossil fuels, further overwhelming the carbon-absorption system.)

The human population is expected to grow by 35% between 2006 and 2050, while livestock numbers are expected to double during the same period.

“This would make the amount of livestock-related emissions even more unacceptable than today’s perilous levels,” states the report. “It also means that an effective strategy must involved replacing livestock products with better alternatives, rather than substituting one meat product with another that has a somewhat lower carbon footprint.”

Food companies, Goodland and Anhang believe, have at least three incentives to respond to current risks in their industry. The first is that companies already suffer from disruptive climate events — floods, hurricanes, etc. — and so it’s in their best interests to not worsen the situation.

Second, they expect the demand for oil to rise to point of collapsing “many parts of today’s economy.” One way in which this will be particularly troublesome for livestock producers will be that crops grown for feed will be refocused on biofuel sources.

A third incentive is to offer “alternatives to livestock products that taste similar but are easier to cook, less expensive and healthier, and so are better than livestock products.”

Sales of just soy “analogs,” or alternatives to livestock products — such as ice cream, milk and cheese — totaled $1.9 billion in 2007. That same year, sales of U.S. meat and poultry products totaled $100 billion — which they optimistically suggest means there’s much room for growth.

“Worldwide, the market for meat and dairy analogs is potentially almost as big as the market for livestock products,” they write.

Still further motivation, they note: “Meat and dairy analog projects will not only slow climate change but also help ease the global food crisis, as it takes a much smaller quantity of crops to produce any given number of calories in the form of an analog than a livestock product.”

Plus, meat alternatives  would help to alleviate the global water crisis, since livestock production uses a tremendous amount of water; it could have health and nutritional benefits; and, given that meat alternatives are more labor intensive, they would create both more jobs and more skilled jobs — while workers in the livestock industry could be retrained for jobs in meat-alternative industries.

“The case for change is no longer only a public policy or an ethical case, but is now also a business case,” write Goodland and Anhang. “We believe it is the best available business case among all industries to reverse climate change quickly.”

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/michellemaisto/2012/04/28/eating-less-meat-is-worlds-best-chance-for-timely-climate-change-say-experts/