MPACT OF A NON LIFE
The aftermath of livestock revolution
Impact of a non life
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Table of content 4
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Introduction
Intensive farming
The esponential growth of meat consumption.
The intensive system and its characteristics.
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Environmental issues
Getting technical
Credits
The consequences of livestock farming on the environment.
Datas regarding the animal industry.
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Introduction
The global demand for meat is only going up The production of meat has doubled in the 30 years from 1988 to 2018 and increased four-fold since the mid 1960s. And production is expected to continue to grow. By 2050, global meat consumption is projected to reach between 460 million and a staggering 570 million tons. 570 million tons would mean a consumption of meat twice as high as in 2008. Consequently global meat production has increased rapidly over the past 50 years. The impact of this “livestock revolution� is likely to have significant consequences for human health, the environment and the global economy. The consumption of meat varies widely between countries. The top meat-eating country is (kilos per person per year) the US: 124 kilos. On the other end of the spectrum, a number of African countries consume less that 20 kilos of meat per person a year. Eating so much resource intensive meat is a problem. There is a limit to how long we can continue our current diet in western countries. With unchanged eating habits, the world population could be too big to feed itself by 2050 when we will reach a global population of almost 10 billion people.
Washing carcasses. Bankok, Thailand, 2019
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Introduction
If everyone shared the meat-heavy diet of the average american, the world could feed just 2.5 billion people.
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Intensive farming
The agriculture industry considers farmed animals as livestock animals, enabling animals to be considered as stocks of resources rather than as the thinking, feeling individuals they truly are.
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Intensive farming
The intensive system Food is big business. Multinational corporations oversee vast production facilities, churning out incredible amounts of food for an ever-growing population, and amassing tremendous profits all the while. Demand for cheaper food, in greater volumes, and with lower production costs are among the confluence of factors that have fuelled the rise of a system of intensive agriculture that dominates much of the world today. Most commercial agriculture is intensive in one or more ways. It also involves increased use of fertilizers, plant growth regulators, and pesticides and mechanised agriculture, controlled by increased and more detailed analysis of growing conditions, including weather, soil, water, weeds, and pests. Intensive farms are widespread in developed nations and increasingly prevalent worldwide. Most of the meat, dairy products, eggs, fruits, and vegetables available in supermarkets are produced by such farms.
Pigs inside an industrial livestock farm. Italy, 2012 Courtesy Francesco Pistilli Impact of a non life
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Intensive farming
Livestock farming
A farmed animal’s life is characterized by domination and control by human beings, from birth to death.
The term livestock refers to those individual animals who have no choice but to endure life on farms. Intensive livestock farming takes place within Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, also known as factory farms, and unfortunately, these are places of great tragedy. Species such as cows, pigs, chickens, and sheep are the usual targets for intensive operations, where they are bred, born, and forced to live drastically shortened lifespans in crowded, highly constrained, and often filthy environments, with many species kept indoors their entire lives. Antibiotics are generally administered to animals throughout their lives in order to stave off diseases to which their chronically-suppressed immune systems would otherwise succumb. A farmed animal’s life is characterized by domination and control by human beings, from birth to death. Female farmed animals are forcibly inseminated with sperm collected non-consensually from fathers, and babies are brought into the world with
the sole purpose of exploitation and consumption. This abstraction serves to lessen moral consideration towards farmed animals and aligns with their legal consideration as property. In virtually every way imaginable, factory farming causes harm to animals by denying them what they require to live fulfilling lives. They are denied space to run, walk, or sometimes even turn around. They are denied the ability to make any meaningful choices about their lives, including with whom to spend their time, whether to become pregnant or to spend time with their children. They are denied the sun, the grass, and the stars since many factory farms keep animals in barren indoor barns for the duration of their lives. They are denied clean environments, often forced to stand and lie down in their own excrement. They are denied the long, full lives they are capable of experiencing in the wild since lifespans are cut artificially short to maximize profits. Essentially, all factory-farmed animals are children by the time they are killed.
Turkeys inside an industrial farm in Canada, 2018 Impact of a non life
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The types of animals that are factory farmed will vary depending on numerous factors including, but not limited to, regions, countries, religions, and cultures. It can also depend on the market that the farm will serve. Factory farmed animals don’t only supply the global food chain but other industries as well. Some factory farms raise and slaughter animals for the fur industry. So the types of farmed animals can vary dramatically. Chickens are arguably the most exploited species on the planet, accounting for 88% of farmed land animals. In the wild, chickens can live upwards of ten years, but broiler chickens – those who are raised for meat – are kept alive for roughly 47 days. This extremely shortened life span may be something of mercy since they are housed within large, generally windowless sheds in crowded flocks of 20,000 or more. Through selective breeding, these birds grow unnaturally fast and large, causing debilitating chronic illnesses. In egg-production factory farms, male chicks are considered useless to the industry and so are often ground up alive. Laying hens then face two years of birthing eggs with unnatural frequency thanks in part to selective breeding. They can be stuffed into battery cages, which are wire cages measuring roughly the surface area of a piece of lined paper.
Layer hens in a factory farm in Spain, 2017
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Intensive farming
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Tens of thousands of young chickens in a multi-level industrial farm. Taiwan, 2019
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Introduction
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Introduction
Fishing and aquaculture
Our oceans are in near collapse. The UN reported that three-quarters of the world’s fisheries are over exploited, or significantly depleted due to overfishing. When people look at fishing, sometimes they’re only looking at the fact that the animals who are actually consumed by humans, so not necessarily looking at all the animals who are caught in the drift nets and are killed by the industry. About over 28 billion animals were pulled out of the ocean last year and they’re not ever given a chance to recover. The way fishing is done today to feed the demand for 90 million tons of fish is primarily through massive fish nets. For every pound of fish caught there is up to five pounds of untargeted species trapped, such as dolphins, whales, sea turtles and sharks, known as “bi-kill.” In order to please the high demand of fish, aquaculture grew substantially in the past years. Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the farming of fish, crustaceans, mollusks, aquatic plants, algae, and other organisms. Aquaculture involves cultivating freshwater and saltwater populations under controlled conditions, and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the harvesting of wild fish. Mariculture commonly known as marine farming refers to aquaculture practiced in marine environments and in underwater habitats. Farming implies some form of intervention in the rearing process to enhance production, such as regular stocking, feeding, protection from predators,
etc. Farming also implies individual or corporate ownership of the stock being cultivated.”Particular kinds of aquaculture include fish farming, shrimp farming, oyster farming, mariculture, algaculture, and the cultivation of ornamental fish. Particular methods include aquaponics and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, both of which integrate fish farming and aquatic plant farming. Global fish production peaked at about 171 million tonnes in 2016, with aquaculture representing 47 percent of the total and 53 percent if non-food uses (including reduction to fishmeal and fish oil) are excluded. With capture fishery production relatively static since the late 1980s, aquaculture has been responsible for the continuing growth in the supply of fish for human consumption. Global aquaculture production (including aquatic plants) in 2016 was 110.2 million tonnes, with the first-sale value estimated at US$243.5 billion. The contribution of aquaculture to the global production of capture fisheries and aquaculture combined has risen continuously, reaching 46.8 percent in 2016, up from 25.7 percent in 2000. With 5.8 percent annual growth rate during the period 2001–2016, aquaculture continues to grow faster than other major food production sectors. The Food and Agriculture Organization describes aquaculture as one of the industries most directly affected by climate change and its impacts.
Workers dismember fish at a processing plant in Greece, 2018. Impact of a non life
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Intensive farming
Some forms of aquaculture, such as seaweed farming, have the opportunity to be part of climate change mitigation, while other forms of aquaculture have negative impacts on the environment, such as through nutrient pollution or disease transfer to wild populations. Particularly within fish aquaculture operations that are located in bays or estuaries in the ocean, risks of environmental pollution, and the spread of disease such as sea lice to wild populations is a serious concern. The negative environmental impacts aquaculture has had are nuanced. Nutrient buildup happens when there is a high density of fish in one area. Fish produce waste, and their waste has the potential to build up in the surrounding area. This can deplete the water of oxygen, creating algal blooms and dead zones. Farmers’ usage of antibiotics to prevent disease created concern about the effect of the drugs on the ecosystem around. Aereal view of aquaculture installations.
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Intensive farming
The deck of a trawler fishing vessel after their nets have been pulled aboard with fish from the French Mediterranean Sea. animals who are not the fishing target are always numerous. French Mediterranean Sea, 2018
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Workers aboard a trawler reel in nets loaded with target fish and bi-kill after a few hours of fishing in the French Mediterranean Sea.
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Introduction
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Environmental issues
Not only livestock play a major role in global warming, it is also the leading cause of resource consumption and environmental degradation destroying the planet today.
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Environmental issues
One of the most troubling environmental disadvantages to industrial agriculture is its contributions to climate change. Globally, agriculture is one of the largest drivers of anthropogenic climate change, accounting for around twelve percent of total emissions, and nearly a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial crop production hampers the ability of soil to act as a carbon sequester, ultimately turning it into a carbon emitter. Back in 2009, Worldwatch reported that livestock causes 51% of greenhouse gas emissions, and transportation is around 13%. Methane production from cows and other livestock’s flatulence is a major contributor, but mostly is due to deforestation and the waste they produce, which is 130 times more than the entire human population.
is having on our climate. But animal agriculture produces 65% of the world’s nitrous oxide, a gas with a global warming potential 296 times bigger than CO2 per pound. Beyond climatic concerns, intensive agriculture produces vast amounts of pollution. Some of the largest dairy farms in the United States can have more than 15,000 cows, producing more waste than can be used as fertilizer on surrounding fields, meaning that much of it collects in open waste lagoons. These pose serious pollution risks to ground and surface water, considering that a farm with only 200 cows can produce as much nitrogen as a community of up to 10,000 people. Runoff from such farms can cause algae blooms, which can devastate freshwater, brackish, and saltwater ecosystems.
livestock produces more greenhouse gases than the emission of the entire transportation sector. Methane gas from livestock is 86 times more destructive than carbon dioxide from vehicles. The transportation and energy sectors are understandably given a lot of attention because of the terrible impact carbon dioxide
Energy-related CO2 emissions are expected to increase 20% by the year 2040. Yet emissions from agriculture are predicted to increase 80% bi 2050. This devastating figure is mostly due to a projected global increase in meat and dairy consumption.
Activist Elsie Herring, holding a handkerchief over her mouth to filter out manure being sprayed on the field next door. North Carolina, USA, 2018
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Environmental issues
Deforestation and water usage due to farming
91% of rainforests in the amazon area has been destroyed due to raising livestock.
Free living animals, 10.000 years ago, made up 99% of the biomass. And human beings, only made up 1% of the biomass. Today instead we human beings and the animals that we own as property make up 98% of the biomass and wild, free living animals make up only 2%. We’ve basically stolen the world from free- living animals to use for ourselves, our cows and pigs and chickens and factory- farmed fish, and the oceans have been as well devastated. Concerned researchers of the loss of species agree that the primary cause of loss of species on our Earth that we’re witnessing is due to overgrazing and habitat loss from livestock production on land and by overfishing in our oceans. The rainforest is being cut down at the rate of an acre per second and the driving force behind all of this is animal agriculture.
That is essentially an entire football field cleared every single second, and it is estimated that every single day, close to 100 plant, animal and insect species are lost due to rainforest distruction. Cutting down the forests to graze animals and to grow soybeans to feed to the cows and pigs and chickens and factory-farmed fishes. 91% of rainforests in the amazon area has been destroyed due to raising livestock. Other plantations such as palm oil are causing tremendous deforestation. It is estimated that palm oil is responsible for 26 million acres being cleared. Though, compared to livestock and their feed crops, they were responsible for 136 million acres of rainforest lost to date.
Recent burned and deforested area within Jamanxim National Forest. Amazon Rainforest - ParĂĄ / Brazil
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Environmental issues
These kind of plantations used to feed livestock are also concerning because of the enormous amount of water used to irrigate them. Water usage is a major concern for many people. The average person uses 5600 liters per person per day. About half of that is related to the consumption of meat and dairy products. The supply chain of an animal product starts with feed crop cultivation and ends with the consumer. In each step of the chain, there is a direct water footprint, which refers to the water consumption in that step, but also an indirect water footprint, which refers to the water consumption in the previous steps. By far, the largest contribution to the total water footprint of all final animal products comes from the first step: growing the feed, because the animals are eating very water intensive grains, and so, all the water embedded in the grain that the animal drinks is considered part of the virtual water footprint of that product. This step is the most far removed from the consumer, which explains why consumers generally have little notion about the fact that animal products require a lot of land and water.
So much attention is given to lowering our home water use, yet domestic water use is only the 5% of what is consumed versus 55% for animal agriculture.
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Meat is a very inefficient food source
Some people would say that the problem isn’t animal agriculture but actually human overpopulation. In 1812 there were one billion people on the planet, in 1912 there were 1.5 billion. Then, just 100 years later, our population exploded to seven billion humans. This number is rightly giver a great deal of attention but an even more important figure when determining world population is the world 70 billion farm animals humans raise. The human population drinks 5.2 billion gallons of water every day and eats 21 billion pounds of food. But just the world’s 1.5 billion cows alone drink 45 billion gallons of water every day and eat 135 billion pounds of food. It’s a human-eating-animals population issue. We have roughly a billion people starving every single day while worldwide, 50% of the grain and legumes
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Environmental issues
that we’re growing, we’re feeding to animals. So, they are eating huge amounts of grain and legumes. 82% of the world’s starving children live in countries where food is fed to animals in the livestock systems that are then killed by more well-off individuals in developed countries such as the US, UK, and in Europe. The fact of it is that we could feed every human being on the planet today an adequate diet if we did no more than take the feed that we are feeding to animals and actually turn it into food for humans. You can produce, on average, 15 times more protein from plant-based sources than from meat on any given area of land. One hectare of rice or potato cropland can feed between 19 and 22 people in one year. For beef or lamb one hectare can feed only 1 or 2 people. At the same time, the world’s cropland area is shrinking. By 2050, we may have less than 0.1 hectares per person on the planet.
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Cows hanging by hind legs at a slaughterhouse. Turkey, 2018.
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Environmental issues
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Brazil, August 27/2020.
A cow stands amongst an area that was burnt in a fire at a ranch in the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland, in Pocone, Mato Grosso state, Brazil.
Because meat production is so demanding in terms of resources, it also affects biodiversity and contributes to the extinction of species. A report from the WWF finds that 60% of global biodiversity loss is caused by meat-based diets.
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Introduction
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Introduction
Getting technical
Globally, we consume around 350 million tons of meat a year.
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What about numbers?
136 million acres of rainforest lost to date due to raising livestock or plantation of crops to feed animals. 11 billion liters of water that just the world’s 1.5 billion cows alone drink every day. 61 billion kilos of food eaten every day by the world’s 1.5 billion cows alone. 628 liters of water required to produce one liter of cow milk. 15000 liters of water used to produce 1kg of beef. 72 billion number of animals slaughtered for human meat consumption annually. 90% reduction in western beef consumption needed to mitigate climate change.
Turkey inside an industrial farm in Canada, 2020
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Getting technical
Just think of that...
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Credits
Free University of Bozen − Bolzano
Layout Grid:
Faculty of Design and Art
12 Column Grid
Bachelor in Design and Art − Major in Design
Module proportion:
WUP 20/21 │1st - semester foundation course
1 : 1.333 CPL│Character per line - Body:
Project modul:
55 characters including includig spaces
Editorial Design Format: Design by:
192 x 256 mm
Anna Tapetto Magazine│The impact of a non life
Fonts│Font Sizes & Leading: Body text
Supervision:
LibWertinus Serif
Project leader: Prof. Antonino Benincasa
10/13
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Caption Text Franklin Gothic Demi
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7/8.5
Bozen - Bolzano, January 2021 Digital Printing
Title Text Franklin Gothic Demi
Photography:
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Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals for The Guardian (4-12-42)
Subtitle Text
Marcio Isensee, Shutterstock (6)
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Franklin Gothic Demi
Francesco Pistilli (1-10) Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals (15-16-28-35)
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Jo-Anne McArthur / Animal Equality (15)
Franklin Gothic Demi
Selene Magnolia / We Animals (18-22-24)
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Tom Hegen aquaculture series (20-21) Anton Mislawsky, Shutterstock (30) Àlex Moreno Fuster (32) Victor Moryama (33) Amanda Perobelli (36-38) Jo-Anne McArthur / Djurrattsalliansen (42)
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Credits
The production of meat has doubled in the 30 years from 1988 to 2018 and increased four-fold since the mid 1960s. And production is expected to continue to grow. But there is a limit to how long we can continue our current diet in western countries. With unchanged eating habits, the world population could be too big to feed itself by 2050 when we will reach a global population of almost 10 billion people.