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BY JULIO P. YAP JR.
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Monday, March 12, 2018
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BASED on a new study, healthier, plant-based foods should be made more available to consumers, at the same time loosening the grip of industrial animal agriculture on our food systems by helping farmers shift towards ecological farming of healthy produce.
The study also revealed that greenhouse gas emissions from our food systems, if left unchecked, will represent more than half of the total global emissions associated with human activities.
The report made by Greenpeace also says that global meat and dairy production and consumption must be cut in half by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change and keep the Paris Agreement on track.
If left unchecked, agriculture is projected to produce 52 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades, 70 percent of which will come from meat and dairy.
In response to the rising impacts of animal agriculture on public health, the environment, and the climate, Greenpeace is launching a new global campaign calling for a major shift in the way we eat and the way we farm.
Greenpeace is calling for a 50 percent reduction of meat and dairy, and a significant increase of plant-based food in both production and consumption by 2050.
The report also finds that increased production and consumption of meat is behind a latent global health crisis.
High red meat consumption has been linked to cancer, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, while millions of lives could be saved each year if people had access to a diet rich in plant-based foods.
Industrial animal agriculture is also associated with antimicrobial resistance – which the World Health Organization declared a “global health emergency” – and is a significant source of foodborne pathogens.
The report also explores other environmental impacts of animal agriculture’s rapid expansion in the last several decades.
Since 1970, the Earth has lost half of its wildlife but tripled its livestock population.
Greenpeace calls on governments to end policies that support industrial meat and dairy production, and instead help farmers shift towards ecological methods of growing crops and raising an amount of livestock that the planet can sustain.
Greenpeace also urges governments to make healthy, plant-based foods more available, and calls on people around the world to join the movement for less meat and dairy and a healthier planet.
In the Philippines, the Food and Nutrition Research Institute noted the decline in the fruits and vegetable intake and the increase in meat and eggs consumption of Filipinos.
Combined per capita consumption of fruits and vegetables of Filipinos is 155 grams, against the 400 grams per day recommendation of the World Food Health Organization.
For a country highly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, this shift in eating habit contributes to increasing industrial livestock production which in turn leads to increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission.
Livestock is one of the major sources of GHG emission in the Philippines’ agriculture sector, second only to rice.
In the 1994 GHG inventory, total emission from domestic livestock accounted for 32 percent of the country’s total GHG emission. (jaypeeyap@ymail.com/PN)
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