The animal rights movement has been saying it for years: meat eating hurts animals, is bad for your health and destroys our environment. SAFE has continued to highlight that meat eating is the leading cause of deforestation, wastes huge volumes of water and produces enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, causing the planet to warm. Now international environmental lobby organisation Greenpeace is also speaking out on the issue in a recently released report. "It is gratifying to learn that a leading organisation such as Greenpeace is finally addressing the world's meat eating habits," says SAFE campaign director Hans Kriek. "Slogans by the animal rights movement such as ‘Think you can be a meat eating environmentalist? Think again!' were viewed with marked scepticism by many people involved in environmental activism but this is changing fast. In fact, many have now come to the conclusion that meat eating is one of the most important issues facing our planet today." SAFE welcomes the latest report by Greenpeace International that concludes that more of the world's population needs to become vegetarian in order to lower the impact of livestock on the environment. "The challenge for environmental groups now is to adopt a vegetarian policy, something that has encountered resistance in the past," says Hans. "Activism is all about leading by example so it is vital for the environmental movement, including political groups like the New Zealand Green Party, to adopt vegetarianism as a cornerstone policy." Urgent action is needed to stop the ever-increasing demand for cheap meat. "If nothing is done, meat eating is expected to increase by 50 per cent in the next few decades. Clearly the environmental movement has no time to waste."
10 February 2008
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