Livestock's Long Shadow

multiple extra energy intensive polluting factories.

So the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, again, they produced a more than 400 page report called Livestock's Long Shadow.

They said whatever environmental issue you're looking at from the smallest and most local to the largest and most global, This incredible inefficiency of cycling crops through animals is one of the top three causes.

So number one for deforestation, biodiversity loss, water pollution, water use, and also a huge source of climate emissions.

So and it does seem to be true that as people have more money, they eat more meat.

And what do the numbers look like over the next 20 years?

Yeah, I mean, I mentioned the UNFAO report, Livestock's Long Shadow, about the environmental harms of industrial animal agriculture and one of the top three causes of literally everything from the smallest and most local to largest and most global.

The thing about that is it's also like the John Ziegler story.

The first time I ate beef was when I came to this country studying in university.

And within that first year of university, there was a report from the UN, Livestock's Long Shadow, that talked about the sheer impact livestock has on the planet.

And this was 2006, 20 years ago.

Within a year, I stopped eating beef and I ran a campaign to try and get a meat-free day in the university.

I think there's, um, one very clear, uh, event that, that started it, and that was the release of a report that was published by the United Nations FAO, Food and Agriculture Organization, back in 2006.

That report was called Livestock's Long Shadow, and this was the first time that, uh, an international organization really put, um, the emissions from animal agriculture on center stage.

Um, because they said not just, uh, 18% of all greenhouse gases come from livestock, but they also said that livestock's contribution to climate outweighed those from transportation.

Um, now that was a big pill to swallow.