Should I eat meat? 2/2 How to feed the planet.

Michael Mosley presents the second of two programmes about the health issues around eating meat. Mosley is an enthusiastic meat eater; but is meat good for us? In the first programme Mosley put himself on a high meat diet and discovered that eating meat to excess was not good for him. The programme looks at the impact of our increased meat consumption on the environment. The livestock industry is vast: 300 million cattle. The United Nations has analysed the use of land by agriculture and livestock production over time which is increasing annually. There are other issues relating to the industrialisation of farming which Mosley explores. The environmental impact is greater for free range cows than intensely reared animals which is due to the methane they produce as a by-product of their digestive process. The invention and success of the beefburger in the US in the 1950s meant that cattle production grew. Mosley visits the Animal Sciences Department at the University of Nevada to see Dr Simona Fernanda who has a steer with a cannula in its stomach where he can see the digestive system. Mosley visits an alternative to traditional farming, a CAFU (a concentrated animal feeding unit). Dr Mike Engler who runs the Wrangler feed yard explains the rationale behind this kind of farming which is statistically more envinromentally green due to the speed he can get the animals ready for slaughter. The artificial feed made from by-products in other industries creates less methane. Mosley is alarmed by the routine addition of an antibiotic banned in Europe (due to antibiotic resistance). Worldwide livestock production has had a devastating effect on the environment. The combined impacts have been analysed by the United Nations. 14.5% of greenhouse gases can be blamed on modern farming. Philip Lymbery, Chief Executive of Compassion in World Farming, disagrees with industrial agriculture as it is very resource hungry. Mosely then looks at what is the most eco-friendly meat; comparing four meats, chicken turns out to the be the greenest. Nigel Joyce is a chicken farmer and gives Mosley a tour of his sheds. Dr Tara Garnett, Food Climate Research Network, University of Oxford, discusses the effects of life-cyle analysis and the surprise that intensively raised animals are more environmentally efficient. In fact the burden of feeding our livestock is in direct conflict with feeding ourselves. Mosley goes to Shetland and discovers an environmental farm which produces muscles. An environmentalist supports traditional farming on a smaller scale and talks about the historical symbiotic relationship between animals and man. The foot and mouth outbreak in the United Kingdom was caused by waste food fed illegally to pigs (if not properly treated, it can spread disease). Sustainability in the future is based upon reduced consumption and better animal feed resource allocation.