Westarctica's 2019 Global Campaign was centered around reducing consumption of meat. We're not asking all our citizens to cut it out completely, but we believe that being more conscious about your food, where it comes from, and the effect it's having on the environment is important.
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In the Royal Household, the Grand Duke entirely eliminated beef from his diet in July 2015. Fortunately, the food industry has created several excellent substitutes for beef, which are now available in restaurants across the country.
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The Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger and are two delicious beef replacements that can be found in Fatburger, Burger King, Del Taco, Veggie Grill, The Counter, and Umami Burger (among others!).
As part of our Global Campaign, Westarctica partnered with Meat Free Week to help encourage our citizens to take a more active role in food responsibility.
Meat Free from 17 - 23 June!
To learn more or directly participate in Meat Free Week, please click below to visit their website.
How Does Meat Consumption Impact the Environment?
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The 2006 report Livestock's Long Shadow, released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, states that "the livestock sector is a major stressor on many ecosystems and on the planet as a whole. Globally it is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases (GHG) and one of the leading causal factors in the loss of biodiversity, while in developed and emerging countries it is perhaps the leading source of water pollution." Removing all US agricultural animals would reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 2.6%.
A 2017 study published in the journal Carbon Balance and Management found animal agriculture's global methane emissions are 11% higher than previous estimates based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Some fraction of these effects is assignable to non-meat components of the livestock sector such as the wool, egg and dairy industries, and to the livestock used for tillage. Livestock have been estimated to provide power for tillage of as much as half of the world's cropland. Meat is also considered one of the prime factors contributing to the current sixth mass extinction. A July 2018 study in Science asserts that meat consumption will increase as the result of human population growth and rising individual incomes, which will increase carbon emissions and further reduce biodiversity.