Luke Pascal/ Contributing Writer
Living in sunny south Florida, we enjoy consuming copious amounts of meat day-in and day-out. How could anyone be blamed when delicious beef empanadas, succulent croquetas de jamón and mouth-watering chicharrones can be found on practically every street corner?
Meat is a staple of almost every meal, but with this great consumption comes great repercussions for the environment, and one way to combat this environmental problem is to adopt something along the lines of “meatless Mondays.”
If you’re Hispanic, you may find this displeasing to learn, but total greenhouse gas emissions from livestock equate to 7.1 Gigatonnes, or 14.5 percent of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, as reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization.
The FAO goes on to list cattle as the animal species who contributes the most greenhouse gas emissions, followed by pigs and chickens. The Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C. noted that beef production is much more resource-intensive, and that beef production alone uses about three-fifths of global farmland, but yields less than five percent of the world’s protein.
Beef production is also by far the most water-intensive of all meats. To compare, beef production requires 15,000 liters of water per kilogram, while rice requires 3,400 liters per kilogram, and rice is grown under water.
If you still aren’t totally convinced by the environmental impact of meat production, then here is one last piece of evidence. A study published by the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that one calorie of beef needs 40 calories from fossil fuels whereas one calorie from grains can be obtained from 2.2 calories of fossil fuels.
If you aren’t quite ready to give up your favorite meat-filled meals, then I suggest voting with your wallet by purchasing more sustainable meat options like pork and chicken — although pork is high in saturated fats, so I wouldn’t be advocating for more pork consumption.
We can also drop meat consumption all-together one day out of each week. We could even give it a catchy phrase with alliteration, like meatless Mondays. With all the health buffs and fitness gurus on social media, that would make for a great hashtag on your next Instagram post.
Plus, with 52 fewer days of meat eating, think of the money you’ll be saving. Meat is generally the largest grocery expense, and taking the cheaper, and generally healthier, option may fatten your wallet, instead of your belly.
Imagine you’re at a restaurant and instead of purchasing that juicy cheeseburger, you order a chicken sandwich. Every time you decide against ordering that burger, one less burger is sold. The restaurant is a business and it has a vested interest in making money, not throwing it away.
That loss of profit in burger sales will influence the restaurant owner to purchase less beef in the future. With less beef being bought by the restaurant, less beef is being sold by commercial producers. Producers also run a business, and with less beef being bought, less money is rolling in. It’s simply supply and demand. When there’s less of a demand for beef, the supply will reduce to meet the demand and level off.
The more that people are conscious of their purchasing decisions and how those decisions impact the environment, the more things will change. Maybe that one burger won’t change much, but when hundreds of thousands of people are buying fewer burgers, the message will be loud and clear, and producers will have to accommodate the consumers. New producers will establish meat-free options, and existing producers will be forced to make more sustainable products. It’s a domino effect.
Come next week, place your vote to help the planet and go vegetarian for a day. It’s not as hard as you may think, it only takes the courage and the will to make a small sacrifice.
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The opinions presented within this page do not represent the views of Panther Press Editorial Board. These views are separate from editorials and reflect individual perspectives of contributing writers and/or members of the University community.
Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash.
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