As part of our dedication to environmental justice as UUs, we pay attention to the impact of our involvement in the food system. Ethical eating recognizes the moral consequences of our food choices. The ways our societies raise, buy, and consume our food has direct effects on the earth, plants and animals, and humans who work to make our food available.
Since the twin phenomena of Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore, most Americans have a basic literacy on the issue of climate change. It’s getting worse, we know, and greenhouse gases—emitted when we burn fossil fuels—are driving it.
Less accepted, it seems, is the role food—specifically our consumption of meat—is playing in this matter. The typical American diet now weighs in at more than 3,700 calories per day, reports the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and is dominated by meat and animal products.
As a result, what we put in our mouths now ranks up there with our driving habits and our use of coal-fired electricity in terms of how it affects climate change.
Simply put, raising beef, pigs, sheep, chicken, and eggs is very, very energy intensive. More than half of all the grains grown in America actually go to feed animals, not people, says the World Resources Institute. That means a huge fraction of the petroleum-based herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers applied to grains, plus staggering percentages of all agricultural land and water use, are put in the service of livestock.
Stop eating animals and you use dramatically less fossil fuels, as much as 250 gallons less oil per year for vegans, says Cornell University’s David Pimentel, and 160 gallons less for egg-and-cheese-eating vegetarians.
Join us for a Saturday Healthy Eating Workshop in early November. Learn how to eat ethically and enjoy the food and benefits of doing so. We will follow up with a Heathy Eating Sunday evening dinner. More details to follow!
— Jan Partin, Green Sanctuary