Industrial Animal Agriculture is 'Eating Our Future'

BOSTON, Nov. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As Americans prepare to celebrate the annual harvest festival that is Thanksgiving, the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) today released "Eating our Future: The environmental impact of industrial animal agriculture." The report details how current agricultural practices in the U.S. and elsewhere contribute to the environmental, economic and social crises faced by developed and developing countries alike, and makes a call for shifting to humane and sustainable models of production.

In 2006, Livestock's Long Shadow, a report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) noted that, at current rates of increase, meat and milk production will more than double by 2050. Eating our Future examines the impact of this growth, and highlights the urgent need to challenge and restrain the expansion of that production and reverse it as soon as possible.

"Current trends in animal production are literally unsustainable. The hidden cost of factory farms is far greater than the planet can afford," says Dr. Michael Appleby, author of the report. "Apart from the needless suffering imposed on billions of factory farmed animals, industrial animal agriculture also makes a major contribution to climate change, to the scarcity of resources and instability of markets, and to other global problems such as poverty and disease. Because of the increasing numbers we keep, the resources we use for them and their impact on the environment, farm animals are eating our future."

In his foreword to Eating our Future, Dr. R. K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suggests two ways to arrest the trend of increasing meat consumption, "Firstly to create adequate awareness among the public on the benefits of lower meat consumption and secondly to place a price on carbon, which would then be added to the cost of meat and thereby create a market response in the form of lower consumption at higher prices."

With this report, WSPA is calling on intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations, national governments and food supply industries (agricultural and retail) to take several actions, including developing policies for a sustainable food supply and including animal welfare in all future discussions on agriculture and climate change.

But average citizens have an important role to play as well. "On Thanksgiving, when Americans express gratitude for having an abundance of food to eat, we need to appreciate the impact of what we are eating, and how it's been produced, on animals, other peoples and the planet itself," says Dena Jones, Program Manager for the WSPA. "If all Americans cut meat out of their diet for just a single day, it would save over 200,000 tons of food and nearly 2 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions. That amount of food could feed all of the estimated 2 million displaced people in need of food in theDemocratic Republic of Congo for at least 6 months, and the carbon emissions saved would be more than enough to cancel out the emissions from flying all of that food to theCongo."

The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) is the world's largest alliance of animal welfare organizations. We partner with member societies located in more than 150 countries, develop animal welfare campaigns, projects and education initiatives, and provide relief to animals affected by disasters.

SOURCE World Society for the Protection of Animals

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