Halo, Earth-loving viewers, and welcome to Enlightening Entertainment! Today, in honor of World Environment Day 2010, we’ll present excerpts from research articles on animal agriculture, the leading cause of climate change as well as other serious environmental problems.

The following excerpt from the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics discusses the health and environmental impact of today’s meat-related food production system. Though published in 2004, it still paints an accurate picture of the present.

Animal Agriculture

“The current industrial food production system causes environmental effects that ultimately lead to public health problems and, therefore, warrant increased attention from public health professionals. Irreplaceable fossil fuel aquifers are being drawn down for irrigation of feed crops, pesticides and fertilizers used to grow animal feed contaminate water and soil and ocean fisheries are being depleted to produce feed for factory farmed poultry, pork and fish.

Animal feed additives, such as antibiotics and heavy metals including arsenic, end up in manure that is spread on fields, and manure from lagoon spills, leaks, and excess land applications contaminate waterways. Since hogs produce up to four times as much solid waste as an average person, a CAFO of 5,000 hogs is equivalent to a city of 20,000.”

Biodiversity

The 2010 theme of World Environment Day is “Many Species, One Planet, One Future,” which coincides with the United Nations’ 2010 International Year of Biodiversity. In the 2006 report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), livestock was identified as a major cause of biodiversity loss.

“We are in an era of unprecedented threats to biodiversity. Livestock now account for about 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal biomass, and the 30 percent of the Earth’s land surface that they now pre-empt was once habitat for wildlife.

Indeed, the livestock sector may well be the leading player in the reduction of biodiversity, since it is the major driver of deforestation, as well as one of the leading drivers of land degradation, pollution, climate change, overfishing, sedimentation of coastal areas and facilitation of invasions by alien species. In addition, resource conflicts with pastoralists threaten species of wild predators and also protected areas close to pastures.

Indeed, the livestock sector may well be the leading player in the reduction of biodiversity.

Deforestation

South America’s Amazon rainforest is home to one of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. The rainforest regulates rainfall, ensures adequate water supplies for growing crops, and is a vital storehouse for carbon. But with deforestation, vast quantities of carbon are released into the atmosphere, thus worsening climate change throughout the planet. In an article published in December 2009, president of the Earth Policy Institute Lester R. Brown shows how global demand for meat is at the root of this problem:

Although the deforestation is occurring within Brazil, it is the worldwide growth in demand for meat, milk, and eggs that is driving it. Put simply, saving the Amazon rainforest now depends on curbing the growth in demand for soybeans by stabilizing population worldwide as soon as possible.

And for the world’s affluent population, it means moving down the food chain, eating less meat and thus lessening the growth in demand for soybeans. With food, as with energy, achieving an acceptable balance between supply and demand now means curbing growth in demand rather than just expanding supply.”

Public Health

Following a year’s investigation by 55 scientists in nine countries, the 2009 report “Public Health Benefits of Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse-gas Emissions” was published in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet.

The report found that a 30% reduction in the number of livestock animals had the benefit of reaching 50% greenhouse gas reduction goals by 2030 and saving 18,000 lives in the UK per year from the country's #1 killer, heart disease.

“We considered potential strategies for the agricultural sector to meet the target recommended by the UK Committee on Climate Change to reduce UK emissions from the concentrations recorded in 1990 by 80% by 2050, which would require a 50% reduction by 2030.

With use of the UK as a case study, we identified that a combination of agricultural technological improvements and a 30% reduction in livestock production would be needed to meet this target... Coordinated intersectoral action is needed across agricultural, nutritional, public health, and climate change communities worldwide to provide affordable, healthy, low-emission diets for all societies.”

When we return, we’ll discuss studies that evaluated more benefits of a societal shift toward a meat-free food production system. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to today’s program honoring World Environment Day on June 5.

New Opportunities

In the November/ December 2009 issue of World Watch Magazine, a report by Dr. Robert Goodland, former lead environmental advisor to the World Bank, and World Bank research officer Jeff Anhang concluded that livestock raising is responsible for at least 51 percent of global warming.

“It is now possible to understand that the dramatic expansion of the livestock sector in recent decades may imperil humanity, and that there may be no way to manage the climate risk of either the food industry or the world at large other than by replacing livestock products with better alternatives.” Apart from mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, the distinguished authors also offered compelling business incentives to embrace plant-based proteins.

“By replacing livestock products with analogs, consumers can take a single powerful action collectively to mitigate most greenhouse gases worldwide. Labeling analogs with certified claims of the amount of greenhouse gases averted can give them a significant edge. Analogs are less expensive, less wasteful, easier to cook, and healthier than livestock products.

Action to replace livestock products… can also reverse the ongoing world food and water crises. …It has been predicted from within both the livestock and financial sectors that peak oil could bring about the collapse of the livestock sector within a few years. To be ahead of the competition in that scenario is another reason for leaders in the food industry to begin replacing livestock products with better alternatives immediately.

Analog projects would be more labor intensive than livestock projects, so would create both more jobs and more skilled jobs. They would also avert the harmful labor practices found in the livestock sector (but not in analog production), including slave labor in some areas such as the Amazon forest region.

New Perspectives

In a doctoral dissertation praised by academia and discussed with much interest by the media and the public, economist Markus Vinnari studied the future prospects for meat eating and vegetarianism in Western society. Part of his study explains an alternative view on the environment that would make a plant-based diet the constructive choice.

“This platform includes normative claims about humans and their relationship with the environment. These eight points are the following:

1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves (synonyms: intrinsic value, inherent worth). These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes. This principle states that not only anthropocentric interests are relevant.

Hence when making decisions the end result of their effects on other animals and nature should be evaluated. This is because there is good evidence available of the environmental consequences of meat eating and strong arguments in favor of giving intrinsic values to production animals. Adhering to this principle would lead to vegetarianism.

2. The richness and diversity of life-forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves. …

3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs. This principle states that humans should limit their influence on natural systems and that humans should eat foods that are located on a lower level in the food chain as their influence grows and as they consume products from higher levels in the food chain.

As there is more and more evidence, for example, about climate change, it is obvious that humankind is taking risks by continuing its excessive overuse of natural resources and that this may have calamitous consequences. The food production sector has been dominated by growth and efficiency goals for the last decades and farm sizes and production amounts have grown at ever growing rates.

Some notions exist that this could be slowly changing and that examples of such change would include the growing interest in organic foods. As there are possibilities that humankind and all other life will be faced with catastrophes in the form of climate change caused by environmental degradation and as the number of animals slaughtered in the agricultural sector are staggering, action needs to be taken to avoid catastrophic consequences. The use of more efficient forms of food production, i.e. not meat, would help avoid such environmental degradation.”

On June 2, a new United Nations- sponsored report, released to coincide with World Environment Day, stirred immediate attention among mainstream media. It stated that a global shift away from animal products is necessary to avoid the worst of climate change. Journalist Alister Doyle for Reuters was one of the first to report on this study by the United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, to be presented to world governments.

OSLO, June 2 (Reuters) – An overhaul of world farming and more vegetarianism should be top priorities to protect the environment, along with curbs on fossil fuel use, a U.N.-backed study said on Wednesday. "Agricultural production accounts for a staggering 70 percent of the global freshwater consumption, 38 percent of the total land use.”

said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme. The report said consumers could help by cutting down on meat consumption and use of fossil fuels in heating or travel. "Animal products are important because more than half of the world's crops are used to feed animals, not people," it said. "A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."

We thank all the dedicated scientists, researchers and journalists involved in studying and communicating the environmental benefits of the meat-free way so we may take the wisest course of action.

May the world’s leaders, media, food producers and consumers work together to save our planet.

Thank you for your presence on today’s program in observance of World Environment Day. Please now join us for Words of Wisdom, up next after Noteworthy News, here on Supreme Master Television. May Heaven bless us with abundant love and courage.

The articles from today’s program can be read in full free-of-charge, at (click on Resources) or in the following websites:

Ms. Ghazaleh Lotfi and Dr. Ramin Zafari are the devoted “parents” of the Forough e Mohabbat Charity Institute, a loving home for disadvantaged child.

One of my biggest dreams is to form a “Forough e Mohabbat village,” where children can work together, live together; build their own families, and generally live together without any intrusion.

They were honored with the Shining World Compassion Award along with a US$10,000 contribution from Supreme Master Ching Hai. Master Ching Hai, we are grateful; since today, with the help of your kind donation, Forough e Mohabbat Children Institute has officially commenced its operation.

We have one sentence to repay your loving attention: Ms. Ching Hai, we love you.

Join us Saturday, June 12, on Supreme Master Television.