One of my friend is vegan due to religious , he never persuades me to become vegan until one day, he showed me a video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QqOsgQu54
This video indicates how production of meat will impact our climate and environment. Right after watching this video, i was shocked and decided to have vegetarian diet twice to three times per week. However, i was back to non-vegan diet eventually. I believe everyone will think about whether they should change their diet to save the world or not after watching the video, but this thought is transitory.
The diet is one of our innate lifestyles we have had since we were born, so is that possible for changing those meat-eaters’ lifestyle maybe to LOHAS and naturalites’ vegetarian diet ? It is so hard to change their diet in few years, even in 10 years, nevertheless, we should tackle this question through different perspectives. I come up with two ideas inspired from the class and my own experiences.
First, the emission of green house gases from livestocks influence significantly on our environment. Therefore, decreasing the number of cows, chickens and pigs could be the best way to decrease the emission. Then, if looking at the economic side, especially law of supply and demand, decreasing number of products could make the price of the product increase. As a result, those premium meat products from farms which have limited number of livestocks could attract conventional meat-eaters’ attention by labelling guarantee marks, indeed, with higher price.
Last but not least, some growth hormones and chemical ingredients which may pollute the land and ocean are used to raise livestocks. In order to decrease the impact of those chemical compounds on our environment, government should corporate with NGO to regulate the use amount of those chemical compounds per year. Like A&W does, they claim their chicken and beef used in their burgers are raised without using any antibiotics, hormone and steroid. i think they should not only state their products are natural and healthy, they can also underline their impact on environment through using less chemical ingredients.
In the end, i believe there are more ways to change how we treat and raise our livestocks instead of changing our diet to protect our environment, perhaps those are what MacDonald are looking for about their sustainable beef.
A&W Guarantee: Beef, Chicken and eggs: http://awguarantee.ca/en/
Beef Sustainability, About McDonalds:
http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/sustainability/signature_programs/beef-sustainability.html