The international environmental organization, Greenpeace, is calling for a worldwide decrease in meat and dairy consumption. According to a new report released today by the organization; if we are to avoid dangerous levels of climate change, the global population must cut its meat and dairy intake by fifty percent by 2050.
Greenpeace, which operates in forty countries, is calling upon world governments to end all policies that support the industrial production of meat and dairy. Alternatively, the organization is asking that governments now turn their attention to assisting farmers in switching to more ecological methods of growing crops, as well as raising only an amount of livestock that the planet can realistically sustain. In addition, Greenpeace has urged governments to make plant-based options more widely available.
“Something is rotten in our food system,” said Bunny McDiarmid, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, in a statement. “Governments continue to support massive meat and dairy operations, leading to more and more meat consumption while putting our health, our children’s health, and the health of our planet at risk. Instead, they should be supporting the increasing numbers of farmers shifting towards ecological production of healthy foods, and helping people access healthy plant-based foods.”
“The need to reduce demand for livestock products is now a scientifically mainstream view,” added Pete Smith, Former Convening Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He continued, “only a significant decrease in meat and milk consumption will allow us to deliver a good system fit for the future – for the benefit of humans and the planet as a whole. Producing the same mix of foods as we consume now, even if we were to do it more sustainably, cannot deliver the reduction in environmental impacts we need to protect the planet for our children and their children.”
Initially founded back in 1971, Greenpeace started off small but has since grown into an international organization with 2.8 million supporters around the world. Their impact since they began has been phenomenal, with their first ever campaign against nuclear testing leading to The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
In the words of Greenpeace, “what’s needed now is a new map to steer by – nothing less than a radically new way of understanding and living in this world we call home.”
Video credit: Greenpeace International
