28 October 2006

Give up meat to cut emissions

Sir: The Government should actively encourage people to give up meat eating in favour of a plant based vegetarian diet. A staggering 55 billion animals are raised for meat every year which in effect means 55 billion living beings that have to be fed and watered. This is in addition to the seven and a half billion human population which will rise to over 9 billion by 2050

Our planet is simply not big enough to sustain these numbers. The result is destruction of rain forests, spreading deserts and massive methane gas emissions leading to further global warming. To sustain a meat based diet we effectively need two planets- which we don’t have. It was Albert Einstein who said: ”Nothing will benefit human wealth and increase chances of survival of life on Earth as much as evolution to a vegetarian diet”.

NITIN MEHTA
CROYDON