Red meat, is it bad for the environment?

 Red meat, is it bad for the environment?

    Summary

     Given the current environmental situation in the world, many people have been seeking easy and simple ways to reduce their carbon footprint and help improve the environment, even if it's only a little at a time. Red meat is one of the leading causes of the release of green house emissions into our atmosphere. Beef being the biggest contributor out of all the red meats,  the red meat industry is also one of the leading causes of deforestation around the world. All together the process of getting red meat in stores makes up about 70% of the worlds deforestation. Cows produce an enormous amount of gas, and they take a very long time to grow and become of age before they can be harvested. So that therefore meaning more land, more food, and because they are alive for so long they produce an insane amount of gas which contributes to greenhouse gases. The farming of red meat today takes up about 70% of the worlds water supply. The waste of red meat and all it's packaging and meat that goes to waste, the amount of waste would be equivalent to about 75 million cows. Not to mention all the travel as well, meat is taken and distributed all over the world and that takes so much fuel for airplanes and cars. To try and reduce the high demand for red meat various company's have created veggie burgers and the infamous impossible burger as a meat substitute. The impossible burger was created to lower the high demand for red meat, and beef, it's deigned to taste almost exactly like real beef. Of course making this product still takes up and contributes to greenhouse gases, but it doesn't even come close to how much harvesting actual beef does. As this is a leading cause on the affects of climate change, scientists have tried to come up with ways to reduce how much gas cows produce. We can try out hardest to get the world population to try ans stop eating meat, however it is completely unrealistic to think that everyone will even consider stop eating meat. So, people have started looking into the cows, changing their diet and are trying to reduce their gases. For example, scientists have found that feeding cows seaweed reduces the amount of methane they reduce significantly. That, many people believe, is definitely a step in the right direction to solving this problem.

My opinion 

    The summer of 2019 the summer that I found out how bad red meat was for the environment. Ever since then, I have tried to look into how much I can reduce my own carbon footprint. Since doing my research, I have been vegetarian going on four years. I never really enjoyed meat and it wasn't that big of a change for me. And it was good motivation, doing it for the sole purpose of helping the environment and reducing my carbon footprint. I think this is one of the easiest ways to reduce your carbon footprint, of course not everyone has access or is privileged enough to afford and survive on a vegetarian diet, as well as many cultures and religions include you eating meat on special occasions. Still eating it for health reasons or simply because you just enjoy meat, and I totally respect that, there are many ways to reduce your carbon footprint aside from not eating meat. However, I do think that people should really look into it and how to reduce it, it's so simple and will only take a few extra minutes of your day to do something good for the environment. So many people aren't taking our environmental crisis seriously, our world is at a extreme risk and we are in so much danger, the entire human race as we know it is at risk. Our resources are running out, our atmosphere is completely shot you can't even live there because the air quality is too bad. This is a very serious issue and I urge everyone, do some research and look into how you can reduce your carbon footprint before it's too late. 

Name of article 

How bad is eating (red) meat for our health and the environment?

Date of article 

April 17th, 2022

Page number 

Page 1 

Author of article 

eufic  

Link 

https://www.eufic.org/en/healthy-living/article/how-bad-is-eating-red-meat-for-our-health-and-the-environment