The five most-asked questions about veganism and the environment

Following on from my last couple of posts about the difficulties of engaging with people on social media and some of the opposition I’d come across, I decided it might be a good idea to have the answers to some of the questions most often posed to vegans at my fingertips. Plus, it would save me looking up the links every time. In fact, I can just post a link to this article in any reply, although I’m no expert  😊

Question one: what will happen to all the animals if the world went vegan?

I’ve been asked this question numerous times and I’ve noticed that many carnists use it to justify the continuance of animal agriculture. They envisage a world overrun with cows, sheep and pigs, and they even think that they would miss seeing them ‘happily’ grazing out in the fields. Of course, this is forgetting that many animals raised for food never get to see the light of day nor feel the grass under their feet. Someone even suggested to me that it was preferable to continue farming animals because at least they got to live, even if their lives were short. (You do wonder if there is any point in engaging with someone that stupid). So, the best (expert; evidenced) answer I found to this question is a brilliant YouTube video from Earthling Ed. Essentially, the meat industry is a matter of supply and demand. As demand for meat goes down (we all hope), supply will also go down. Farmers will diversify or change what they produce to meet the new demands of vegans. This whole process will be a gradual one, and hence as time goes on animals will simply not be bred to be killed and eaten. Eventually, any remaining animals could live in sanctuaries.

Question two: What will happen to all the different breeds of animals, will they become extinct?

The answer here is possibly but unlikely, as some examples would be likely to live on in sanctuaries. However, this raises another question. Would that be a bad thing? What many people forget is that the farmed animals we are used to seeing nowadays are nothing like their ancestors. They are unlikely to be able to survive in the wild. None of them are natural breeds; they have all been selectively bred by humans to have specific characteristics. For example, a chicken in the wild would only produce ten eggs a year and would, subject to predators, live around eight years. Laying hens are bred to produce an egg every day and will be culled when production goes down. It’s the same story for cows, some of which are bred to have huge udders for massive milk production, when in their natural state they would only have one calf a year, at most. Ancient breeds, such as Przewalskihorses, are maintained in natural environments like heathland to preserve the breed and the environment, so why not free former farm animal breeds?

Question three: What will happen to all the people who work in the livestock industry who will lose their jobs?

Since before the industrial revolution, the evolution of technology has brought about the demise of various trades. The village blacksmith? He became the local garage with the advent of the motor car. Like any trade that has been overtaken by progress or ethics (slavery?), some workers will have to adapt and retrain. But will they really lose their jobs? Farming will be needed more than ever, but it will be a different type of farming: vegetables, arable and other things we cannot yet foresee. Some farmers are already moving out of meat production and into vegan foods. And land that is unsuitable for these will return to its natural state or be planted with trees – the return of biodiversity and forests is crucial and will need to be managed, hence creating jobs, albeit different ones.

Question four: Will we need more land to grow all the vegetables to feed people and will this lead to more deforestation?

This might seem like a logical conclusion, but in fact nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority of arable land is used to grow crops to feed to the animals to feed to humans. In fact, animal agriculture produces 17% of human calories but takes up 77% of the farmed land. If the world became vegan then less land would be needed for human food production and less water, too. This would be good news for the planet and climate change. Deforestation would stop and be reversed, with more tree planting and forests.

Question five: Won’t all the vegans produce more methane than livestock currently do?

This has got to be my favourite question!  The short answer is no. This was actually studied as part of the EPIC-Oxford study (by ‘so-called’ experts, I’m afraid). Their conclusion was that vegans produce the least methane of all dietary types tested. I’ll quote their abstract directly:

“The production of animal-based foods is associated with higher greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than plant-based foods. The objective of this study was to estimate the difference in dietary GHG emissions between self-selected meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK. Subjects were participants in the EPIC-Oxford cohort study. The diets of 2,041 vegans, 15,751 vegetarians, 8,123 fish-eaters and 29,589 meat-eaters aged 20–79 were assessed using a validated food frequency questionnaire. Comparable GHG emissions parameters were developed for the underlying food codes using a dataset of GHG emissions for 94 food commodities in the UK, with a weighting for the global warming potential of each component gas. The average GHG emissions associated with a standard 2,000 kcal diet were estimated for all subjects. ANOVA was used to estimate average dietary GHG emissions by diet group adjusted for sex and age. The age-and-sex-adjusted mean (95 % confidence interval) GHG emissions in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per day (kgCO2e/day) were 7.19 (7.16, 7.22) for high meat-eaters ( > = 100 g/d), 5.63 (5.61, 5.65) for medium meat-eaters (50-99 g/d), 4.67 (4.65, 4.70) for low meat-eaters ( < 50 g/d), 3.91 (3.88, 3.94) for fish-eaters, 3.81 (3.79, 3.83) for vegetarians and 2.89 (2.83, 2.94) for vegans. In conclusion, dietary GHG emissions in self-selected meat-eaters are approximately twice as high as those in vegans. It is likely that reductions in meat consumption would lead to reductions in dietary GHG emissions.” (Scarborough et al., 2014)