LIVESTOCK farming is destroying the Earth. Pick any of the most threatening environmental problems, and you will find farmed animals at the heart of it.

In 1994 there was a mountain of science available even then, showing that the animals used to produce meat, dairy and leather were responsible for a devastating loss of forests, and the unrelenting spread of existing deserts, and the degradation of fertile land into lifeless dust.

The facts were clear. Farmed animals are also largely responsible for the over use of fresh water, for the pollution of surface, ground and sea water, for the devastating loss of species, and for the bulk of acid rain.

Livestock are also major players in the most pressing of all catastrophes – climate change.

The concerns that were started in 1994 have grown much more acute now, as meat, fish, and dairy consumption across the world has increased.

Much of this evidence was explored in popular, but fully referenced books. It was not buried in obscure archives, but readily available to all.

Governments and their battery of advisers choose to ignore this research almost entirely, and the outcome is a global crisis that threatens us all.

The science implicating animal products in the West’s health crisis, is overwhelming and was brought together in a scientific review by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1990. It was unequivocal in its findings with strong urges that there should be a fundamental change in the west’s agricultural policies – the marketing of meat and dairy products. This authoritative report ended firmly in favour of plant foods. However, this stark scientific report from the ultimate Health Organisation was simply ignored.

Source of information: Diet of Disaster by Tony Wardle.

“Ultimately, if left unchecked, environmental degradation may threaten not only economic growth and stability, but the very survival of humans on the planet,” United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. November 2006.

DIANA YEOMAN

Hilltop Road, Ferndown