Meat Free Mondays!

Two time US presidential candidate and current Democratic Member of the House of Representatives, Ohio, Dennis Kucinich, who is a vegan himself, showed his full support. He recognized VEGAN EARTH DAY in a statement, delivered from the floor of the United States Congress, and documented permanently in the Congressional Record, declaring June 21, 2009, as Americas first official Vegan Earth Day, making the United States the first country in the world to formally recognize the importance of adopting an animal free diet to sustain and preserve our earth. To further indicate his support, Mr. Kucinich sent his congratulation remarks via video, in which he declared that adopting a vegan (animal free) diet was one of the best decisions he has made in his life.

Former US President Bill Clinton recently confirmed that he is indeed eating a mainly vegan diet. He says he is doing this for health reasons to help heal his body mainly his heart. He has also lost 24lbs from this diet change.What made him go vegan? According to this interview, Clinton has read many books on the topic, including books by T. Colin Campbell, Caldwell Esselstyn and Dr. Dean Ornish. They have all done much research on the healing effects of a plant based diet.

Congtatulations Chanté!

Chanté wins a 7 night stay for two at the 5 star, Big 5 Nambiti Plains Eco Lodge. The lodge specialises in healthy organic fine dining cuisine, with superb vegetarian options.

Chanté was so pleased, and had this to say: 
“Since pledging my support to Meat Free Mondays about a year ago, serving vegetarian meals to my family once a week has become second nature. I was concerned that my six year old son would not take kindly to the adaption, but I soon learnt that Fry’s Products really make it easy to present a ‘faux meaty meal’ for youngsters. In fact, we’ve grown so fond of our favourite Fry’s Vegetarian Chicken-Style Nuggets, Original Burgers and Braai Flavoured Country Herb Sausages, that meat free days are often not limited to Mondays only.

Being an eco-conscious individual, the greatest reward of supporting this initiative, is knowing that I’m contributing toward a greater cause simply by making a minor adjustment that isn’t even a sacrifice.

Thank you to Fry’s and MFM for promoting this worthy initiave and for rewarding my family with this fantastic prize.” Chanté

Compare the Carbon Footprint of a Vegan Burger to a Beef Burger

Carbon Footprint of Food:
Stopping Climate Change with Diet Change?
Overview and Summary

Introduction
This summary presents an overview of WPF’s latest report evaluating the Carbon Footprint of plant- versus animal-based protein sources of nutrition. The findings are compelling as they demonstrate the exceptional and significant GHG reductions a worldwide shift from plant- to animal-based proteins would entail. The full report (with references) and corresponding presentation will be available for download on the World Preservation Foundation website in March 2011. Summary here follows:

The quest for sustainable consumption
One of the most effective ways to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions – along with the recent series of weather-related disasters spurred by climate change – is to adopt sustainable lifestyles via heightened consumer awareness. Policies aimed at sustainable living and consumption patterns are increasingly focusing on this challenge, with the insights gained through the carbon footprint of various food products in particular gaining greater awareness and emphasis of address.

The efficacy of the Carbon Footprint (CF) metric
Carbon Footprint (CF), which quantifies the global warming impacts of products from a life cycle perspective, has gained prominence as a holistic approach, where environmental or ecological protection promotes the idea of carbon emission accounting from the very beginning of a product’s life, rather than a simplistic (and narrow) perspective of the control of emission towards the end. CF methodology has developed from (and involves) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), an ISO-standardized environmental accounting tool applied in research and industry for systematically monitoring the inventory of materials, resources and energy inputs and emission outputs to air, water and land associated with each stage of a given product life cycle.

Methodology of evaluating plant-based and livestock production systems’ CF

For the five plant-based agricultural systems (potatoes, corn, tomatoes, rice, soybean and peas –of which meat analogs are also composed), the total CF is calculated according to:

1. Fertilizer input is allocated to the final output of 1 kg crop/cereal/vegetable product
2. Emissions of N2O due to fertilizers usage at farms, based on (1)
3. Energy requirements and associated emissions for farming operations are allocated to the final output of 1 kg crop/cereal/vegetable product
4. Farming operations in (3) include cultivation, harvesting, milling, cooling and packaging. It assumed that no freezing is necessary
5. Nitrogen-based fertilizer inputs, which make up 70% of fertilizer usage in agriculture.

For the beef, pork and chicken production systems, the total CF is calculated according to:

1. Feed input is allocated according to the final output of 1 kg meat product
2. Energy requirements for the total feed required for each animal is adjusted to (1)
3. Energy requirements and associated emissions for farming operations are allocated according to the final output of 1 kg meat product
4. GHG from livestock are based on 1 kg (bone-free and ready to cook) meat output
5. Energy requirements for all slaughterhouse and meat processing activities, and their associated GHGs, are allocated according to the final output of 1 kg meat

Sample Results & Summary

Total Carbon Footprint of various food types according to GWP100

Example of GHG savings (prevented) due to global switch from meat to plant-based meat analogs

Overall, the CF for all meals derived from meat analogs or plants are less carbon intensive, compared to meat-based meals. Goodland and Anhang (2009) projected that meat and dairy analogs will not only help to slow climate change but will also ease the global food crisis. This is because meat analogs (comprising various crop-proteins; the full details of the analog constituents are presented in the full report) require a much smaller quantity of resources to produce any given number of calories. The bar chart shows that GHG emissions from meat analogs options are comparatively minimal, with the graphic illustrating how a simple switch from a selected meat-based meal to meat analog meal saves a total of over 26 billion tons of CO2-eq. Such GHG savings actually come from diverting tremendous amounts of resource, land, and energy use away from livestock within the meat food production chain, together with subsequent nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) emissions prevention.

REF: www.WorldPreservationFoundation.org

Click here to hear about Meat Free Monday.

Please note the audio clip is 6min 13sec in duration.

Kahn and Neil of The Parlotones and Damon Beard of ECR

Kahn and Neil of The Parlotones and Tammy Fry of Fry Group

On Tuesday, 6 April 2010 Compassion in World Farming managed to secure a first for Africa, with Cape Town’s Health Portfolio Committee agreeing to officially endorse one meat-free day a week. This endorsement came shortly after the town of Ghent in Belguim made headline news in support of the cause. Government in Ghent have recognized the importance of promoting vegetarianism as a solution to addressing climate change and have declared one day a week “veggie” only day. And so many other cities have joined this campaign including Sao Paulo in Brazil, Bremen in Germany, Baltimore City, San Francisco and Croatia – and the list continues to grow.