One pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons of water to produce, and one pound of pork needs 576 gallons. One pound of soy takes 216 gallons, and corn requires 108 gallons.
The Climate A List recognizes the world’s most sustainable companies
every year. Each of the companies on the A List–and it’s worth noting, not
everyone passed with flying colors–are committed to environmental
stewardship.
According to the Carbon Disclosure Project, which puts out the Climate A
List, companies representing more than 50% of the global market cap are
developing constructive approaches to climate change, water security, and
deforestation. But what about meat?
Meat is one of the largest and most commonly ignored polluters on earth. If
we’re talking about corporate sustainability, we have to talk about animal
agriculture. Companies choose to serve meat to their employees, and it’s
destroying the environment.
The purpose of CDP’s Climate A List is twofold. First, the group wants more
companies to be transparent about how their global business is serving (or
failing) the environment. CDP scores businesses from A to D-. They promise
that each score adjusts to the needs of the market and the mounting urgency
of the climate crisis. Companies currently reporting to CDP now represent
over 50% of the global market capitalization.
Second, CDP is focused on created global leaders in sustainability by
measuring impact in three major categories: climate change, water security,
and deforestation. This includes the company’s ability to effectively
communicate progress and best practices with stakeholders and other
companies.
WeWork led the way, banning meat from their offices last year. Should
animals be off the menu?
So far, reports like the Climate A List still exclude meat from their
assessment. Soon, though, most companies won’t have a choice, because if
animal agriculture belongs somewhere, it’s on the list of industries that
are not sustainable.
Should animals be off the menu?
In 2012, former Citibank executive Philip Wollen gave an emboldened speech
about a visit he made to one of his client’s slaughterhouses titled, “Should
Animals Be Off the Menu?”
Given the damage animal agriculture does to the climate, it’s an interesting
question, particularly when put in the context of corporate sustainability.
Should companies sponsor the destruction of the planet amidst the tacit
assumption that they are okay with the animals suffering to put meat on
their plates?
There’s no easy answer to this question, but Wollen says this, in part,
about how companies can reflect a more compassionate worldview by choosing
to take me off the menu.
“The world has changed. Ten years ago, Twitter was bird sound, www was a
stuck keyboard, a Cloud was in the sky, 4G was a parking place, Google was a
baby burb, Skype was a typo, and Al Kider was my plumber. Victor Hugo said,
‘There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.’”
Here’s how CDP’s scoring breaks down
The CDP report is part record card and part tool for engagement. It’s
meant to help stakeholders to identify and engage with companies that do not
take action towards a more sustainable future.
The Climate A List
“Being a leading global food company means being responsible stewards of
natural resources,” chief sustainability officer of General Mills Jerry
Lynch told Manufacturing.net. “If we want to be around for another 150
years, we must reduce our environmental impact from field to fork.”
General Mills made it onto the 2019 Climate A List. This past year, more
than 650 investors with over $87 trillion in assets requested companies like
General Mills to disclose data about their environmental impacts.
In the meantime, General Mills invested $17 million in Urban Remedy, a
California-based plant-based meal kit startup, and $40 million in vegan
yogurt and cheese company Kite Hill. Because there’s truly no better to way
to say “I care about the environment” than plant-based food.
“This begins by being aware of environmental risks and managing them with
incredible care and consideration,” said Lynch.
While companies like General Mills seem to have their priorities in line,
not all do. Much of the report is dedicated to the problems food and
agriculture companies face in achieving measuring environmental stewardship.
After all, agriculture, including the impacts of water and land use and
deforestation, is responsible for producing a quarter of the greenhouse
gases on earth.
Climate change and the problem with eating meat
At an all-time high, the global livestock population just hit 28 billion
animals. The livestock animal population has decreased in size over the past
20 years. Herd sizes will continue to grow if food and agriculture companies
don’t start focussing on plant-based solutions.
Contrary to popular belief, the movement away from animal proteins towards
plant proteins will increase the global protein supply.
Substituting beans for beef on a national scale could meet up to 75% of
America’s greenhouse gas reduction target. Oh, and that’s with absolutely no
loss of protein to the food system, according to university scientists from
around the world.
Obstacles. Convincing the average consumer to give up beef–or even eat
less of it–heralds another world of problems. Countries are currently
drafting climate mitigation plans, called Nationally Determined
Contributions, that will go into effect in 2020. But they only represent
part of the solution.
Yes, animal agriculture needs to be a part of national climate mitigation
policy. But for societal-level changes to take hold, it needs to be written
into the charters of large corporations as well.
Water security and factory farming
Livestock agriculture, particularly cattle farming, is extremely water
intensive. Before you can raise animals, you have to grow their food. At
scale, livestock production requires much more water than the water
requirements of the plants themselves. Cutting out meat is one less mouth to
feed—if you will.
One pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons of water to produce, and one pound
of pork needs 576 gallons. One pound of soy takes 216 gallons, and corn
requires 108 gallons. Each of these products is essential to the industrial
food system at the movement. But that can (and will have to) change.
In places like Arizona, Oregon, and Washington, industrial agricultural
operations are leaving residents without enough water to drink.
The average American’s diet takes 1,320 gallons of water a day to produce.
Removing animal products from the average American’s diet entirely would
reduce its water requirements by 74%.
Most water on factory farms is not used to hydrate animals
Farm animals produce a lot of wastewater. The flushing systems used to wash
feces from dairy farm floors require 150 gallons of water per cow every day.
Between cleaning up after the animals and processing them during slaughter,
factory farms use a majority of their water. Hydrating the animals is
surprisingly a very small part of the water usage on factory farms.
Wastewater from factory farms is so polluted with antibiotics, hormones, and
bacteria that it cannot return to the water system. Still, wastewater from
factory farms is at risk of returning to the local water supply. Usually, it
is held in massive manure lagoons up to several football fields long. But
the lagoons are not spill-proof and they’re certainly not hurricane proof,
as we learned earlier this year.
During Hurricane Florence, millions of gallons of wastewater from factory
farms flooded the North Carolina countryside, at risk of contaminating the
groundwater.
Heavily polluted with manure and chemical fertilizers, rivers and lakes turn
into literal cesspools (or “dead zones”) where nothing can live when spills
like this happen. Most often, though, farmers contaminate the local water
supply by a practice called spraying. Farmers spray excess wastewater on
fields to keep the height of their lagoons at acceptable levels. This water
can—and does—make its way into the local water supply, creating more
headaches and more wastewater from factory farms.
Deforestation and animal feed
This year, deforestation in the Amazon reached a decade-long high, in large
part because of an increased demand for soy to feed factory-farmed cattle.
Rainforests in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela are suffering similar
habitat destruction.
In order to grow enough food for animals, house them, and let them graze,
animal agriculture represented 65% of global land use since 1960.
Livestock farming occupies about 80% of total agricultural land, and about
one-third of global arable land is used to grow feed. In short, livestock
requires a lot of land. Industrial farming operations need heaps of corn and
soy to feed nearly 10 billion animals every year–just in the U.S. Globally,
that number comes out to 56 billion animals raised on factory farms every
year.
More often than not, corporate interests are able to seize control of
forested areas and clear them to create more farmland.
Plus, cows need space to graze. As a result, livestock farming takes up 41%
of all land in the U.S. That’s a herd of about 100 million animals with more
than 1.5 million square miles dedicated to raising them for food.
Bottom line. Echoing the words of Victor Hugo, “There is nothing more
powerful than an idea whose time has come.” For meat eaters, the time is
now.
Number of animals killed in the world by the fishing, meat, dairy and egg industries, since you opened this webpage.
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