Morrissey from The Smiths sang meat is murder, but the latest generation of vegetarians and vegans are just as likely to quote their environmental concerns when choosing to follow this type of diet and lifestyle.
But is going vegan enough to tangibly shrink our individual carbon footprint or is it simply a misguided move to provide a balm for our environmental conscience?
According to climate change experts, the evidence shows switching to a vegan diet has the most potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The most recent report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published earlier this month, again highlighted a shift towards plant-based diets as a major opportunity to limit greenhouse gas emissions, while a paper published in Science in 2018 revealed that while meat and dairy provide just 18 per cent of calories consumed, they use 83 per cent of global farmland and are responsible for 60 per cent of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The report’s lead researcher, Prof Joseph Poore of Oxford University, said a vegan diet “is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth . . . It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car.”
The number crunchers agree. “Going vegan has the potential to support climate action and our decarbonisation goals,” says Stephen Prendiville, head of sustainability with EY Ireland.
“In general, a vegan diet will have a demonstrably lower carbon footprint, than a typical omnivore western diet, which has a heavy skew towards the consumption of animal-based proteins.”
Prendiville points out that as the quality of life of people in Africa, India and China – accounting for more than four billion people out of the 7.8 billion global population – continues to increase over time, the potential for increased demand for the “western” diet is anticipated to push our global farm and agricultural production systems into an unsustainable tail-spin, with dramatic impacts on the environment, biodiversity, forestry and more.
“Which is why the move towards veganism is as much about having a sustainable global food system, as it is about carbon reduction and climate action. And we can all play our part, either by taking on partial or full vegan diets, participating in veganuary etc,” he says.
“If we solve our food systems to lower our carbon footprints as much as possible, we will have made a significant impact on our global carbon reduction goals to achieve the Paris Agreement – with some estimates factoring this at close to 50 per cent of our overall goals if coupled with food waste reduction.”
Elaine Butler, who runs the non-profit sustainable living website livinglightlyinireland.com
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Livinglightlyinireland. com agrees. "If instead of saying we must all go vegan, if we ask will reducing our meat and dairy intake be part of the solution, then the answer to that is 'absolutely'. If the world moved to a vegetarian diet, we'd save up to 60 per cent of carbon emissions, and if we went vegan that increases to 70 per cent," says Butler.
Indeed, it is critical that “going vegan” isn’t presumed to always be a sustainable choice, Prendiville adds. He says that many vegan products have significant food miles, being imported here from far away shores.
“Equally, many have significant water footprints and due to irrigation practices and approaches in other countries, could be harming environments through soil degradation and desertification,” he says. Food experts also warn that much of what is sold as vegan products are highly processed. Some say instead of demonising “real” food such as meat and dairy products and eschewing them completely, people should focus on where their food comes from and choose quality products produced in an ethical and sustainable way.
Butler points to other aspects of food sustainability that we can take into account: food waste, air miles, organic farming, seasonal eating, and child labour, among others. But she notes that transport and packaging only account for a small fraction of the carbon footprint of a food item – roughly 11 per cent and four per cent, respectively.
“In general, plant-based foods are generally lower in emissions than meat and dairy and when it comes to beef that difference is substantial,” she says.
Switching to a plant-based diet overnight is not always feasible or realistic. But even making the conscious decision to eat less meat and dairy on a weekly basis can make a difference.
“What is important, is that as consumers, we continue to challenge ourselves to make incrementally better and more sustainable choices in everything we do – from what we eat, to whether we should be driving as much as we are, to whether we should be buying as much stuff as we are.” says Prendiville .