So, let's talk green: Smiling animals, smiling planet

Dad, I want to eat some meat, but I don’t want meat to eat! A strange fervent plea from my daughter, a young adult! My son and my daughter are animal lovers and quite health conscious. They know that the goodness we get from vegetables is very good for the body, but they love their meat, fish, chicken, like many young adults their age. But their young minds are conflicted between their love for good tasting food, and their deep awareness of the damage they do when they consume animal foods.

The planet is battling climate change as we speak. Excessive emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (Co2), methane etc., has given rise to global warming, resulting in extreme weather events.

While electricity generation results in the bulk of the Co2 emissions, efforts are on to reduce this impact by moving to renewable energy options like solar and wind. Methane which is a far deadlier greenhouse gas than Co2, is the problem when it comes to animal farming for food. Besides methane emissions, animal farming results in hosts of other damaging repercussions.

PETA on its website, details some mind boggling facts about animal farming. Meat production take a lot of water - 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while it takes just 25 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of wheat. Raising animals for food also tears down a whole bunch of rain forest, specifically, 55 square feet of rain forest for every single meal with meat, around 14,400 acres every day.

In 2004–05, 2.9 million acres of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil were destroyed in order to grow crops to feed animals on factory farms. A 2008 study concluded that a meat-eater’s diet is responsible for more than seven times as much greenhouse-gas emissions as a vegan’s diet is. It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein.

So what5.35 pm is the solution? Become a vegetarian or a vegan? Perhaps, if that works for you. But what happens to my two children, who want to eat meat, but do not want meat to eat? Is there a solution?

Yes, solutions are beginning to emerge slowly but surely. Enter lab grown meats. If we can grow a human organ in a lab, then surely we can grow meat to eat.

This is now becoming a reality. A couple of years ago, three lucky diners nibbled a $325,000 burger. The meat was grown in a lab, evidence that it is physically possible to produce meat through cell culture. By collecting cells from healthy animals and culturing them in a sterile environment, we can grow animal muscle, bypass slaughter, inhumane treatment, and take a major step toward reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Similarly, New Wave foods in the US is doing interesting work in the field of plant based sea food. Soon you can dream of shrimp and Tuna all grown in a lab, and not harvested from the seas. Currently 53% of fish stocks are fully exploited. The majority of the top ten fisheries, which are about 30% of all wild fishing, are fully exploited or overexploited. If these fisheries collapse there’s a good chance the entire ocean ecosystem will collapse, which will absolutely have huge effects on us on the land. Lab grown fish will solve all of these problems, and provide clean fish.

So if you have to have your dose of meat or fish, look out for the meats grown in a lab, which are good to humans and great for the planet, as it does none of the harm that conventional animal farming does. I know that my kids will be happy. Importantly the surviving animals and fish will be smiling. Certainly the planet will be smiling!

The writer is an author, speaker, trainer, consultant, an entrepreneur and an expert in applied sustainability. Visit: www.CBRamkumar.com