Bringing home the beef: Meat production and consumption, Part 1 of 2 – The human factor

Butchered Lamb (©Flickr/Burkazoid)
Butchered Lamb (©Flickr/Burkazoid)

Everyone now knows the facts. And the facts keep coming: mass production and consumption of meat and dairy products cannot be sustained. Meat is not a viable global source of nutrition or income, given the size of our planet and the size of the human population. It’s that simple.

In study after scientific study, respected researchers inform us of the environmental impact of meat production: the exorbitant use of water and land resources, pollution of the air by greenhouse gases, like methane exhaled by cattle, nitrate contamination of our soil from effluent waste, deforestation from Brazil to Indonesia for the purpose of growing fodder for cattle or creating land for grazing and the loss of biodiversity. The list goes on.

All these facts are common knowledge in the 21st century, but the information has been around for a long time. It was there back in the mid-1990’s, when this award-winning programme was made. The producer, in fact, became a vegetarian in the process of making the broadcast.

Producer: Marijke van der Meer

Broadcast: 1995

Winner of a New York Radio Festivals Award