Meat in question
The most eminent scientific committees in the world, such as the FAO, the WHO or the IPCC (Inter-governmental panel on climate change) have declared intensive animal breeding and meat production as the main causes of global warming. All of them are encouraging us to reduce our meat consumption, or even adopt a vegetarian diet. Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the British government’s sustainable development commission, has indicated excessive meat consumption as one of the most serious threats to the long term survival of humanity…

The dramatic consequences of meat production
Animal breeding has environmental, human and animal consequences. It is a highly polluting activity. Animal breeding produces more greenhouse gases than all transport. But it is also the highest source of local water pollution by effluents… Meat production also consumes vast quantities of water: between 13 000 and 100 000 litres of water are needed to produce one kilo of beef! This is because cattle are fed with cereals, in particular corn,  which also require vast quantities of water to produce. These same cereals are also one of the main causes of deforestation, especially in Brazil where it is mostly because of cattle feed that the forests are disappearing a little more each day. Cattle around the world alone consume a quantity of food equivalent to the calorie requirements of 8.7 billion humans, which is more than the entire population of the planet! By reducing our meat consumption, we will save entire populations from famine…

A documented report
A One Voice report, Farming, meat: disaster, published in October 2008 details the sanitary and environmental consequences of farming and meat production. It also describes the deplorable living conditions of the billion animals slaughtered every week for their meat. Supported by many scientific references, this report provides an impartial and worrying analysis of the situation, highlighting the urgent need to change the way we consume. Because thanks to our obsession with meat, humanity is nibbling at the very planet we live on little by little…

Animals want to live, just like we do
Of course, the animal breeding industry is also the animal suffering industry. One World, One Conscience condemns slavery in all its forms, whether human or animal. Meat production is an activity where the fundamental right to life cannot by its very nature be respected. Because animals want to live too! The animal is reduced to a mere product and its pain is only taken into account in that it has an effect on its profitability. These practices are extremely violent, from chicks burned alive to sows unable to move. While there is no question of treating animals like humans, we must not treat them like objects either. They have an intrinsic value, just like humans do. This is the “equal respect principle”.

A 50% reduction in meat consumption in the West by 2020 would enable us to stop 3.6 million children suffering from malnutrition in developing countries. (International Food Policy Research Institute)

Meat production contributes to global warming through: the conversion of forestry into farmland, fuel consumption by agricultural machinery, the manufacture and transport of fertilisers, the production of greenhouse gases by animals, etc.