Agricultural expansion on a massive scale in Latin America has directly paralelled the West’s greed for meat. A new report follows the food chain and assesses the damage.
Our excessive appetite for meat is taking a heavy toll on the planet, but as Simon Fairlie explains, the arguments used to depict omnivores as environmental super-villains are far too simplistic.
Globally over 60 billion animals are farmed for food every year. The 2006 Report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, predicted that global meat consumption will more than double by 2050 (from 2001).
