submission on the national food plan green paper

SUBMISSION ON THE NATIONAL FOOD PLAN GREEN PAPER
Shannon Merika
Independent Researcher
Yandina Queensland
21 September 2012
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This submission is authorised to be placed on the national food plan website. It addresses the
following parameters of the National Food Plan Green Paper:
1. Maintain and improve the natural resource base underpinning food production in
Australia
2. Contribute to global food security
3. Reduce barriers to a safe and nutritious food supply that responds to the evolving
preferences and needs of all Australians and supports population health
4. Identify and mitigate potential risks to Australia's food security
Summary
Feeding expanding populations on our damaged planet can no longer be done the way it used
to be. The challenge now is to produce food for expandingpopulations using the same amount
of land and water without causing further destruction to our planet: i.e. sustainable
intensification. This challenge cannot be met as long as the Australian government continues
to support food production policies that, because of the changed conditions of our planet, are
no longer viable.
Steak, veal, lamb, ham, bacon, pork, cheese, milk, cream and other animal-based foods have
become major drivers of deforestation, erosion, plant and animal extinction, air and water
pollution, wasted resources, human illness and climate change. (Goodland & Anhang, 2009)
The United Nations Food & Agricultural Organisation understands that: “The livestock
sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious
environmental problems, on every scale from local to global.” (UNFAO, 2006)Because of
this, national food policies that support animal food industries will be unsuccessful in
supporting the above four parameters.
Supporting the efforts of Australian animal food industries to assert themselves in Asian
markets to take advantage of rising affluence there will further support increasing damage to
our planet.Animal food industries need to be decoupled from economic growth because
environmental impacts rise roughly 80% with a doubling of income.
Marine foods are major drivers of oceanic versions of deforestation, erosion, plant and animal
extinction, wasted resources, and often, human illness.
Reducing the size of animal food industries and encouraging producers to move into
sustainable organic plant-based food production will immediately ease these problems and
provide long-term benefits to the Australian economy and the health of our people. In order
to sustain our growing populations through the uncertainties of climate change and
environmental degradation, the human diet, and government policies that presently offer full
support to animal food industries need to undergo fundamental changes.
Sweden is beating Australia to the draw in this. Guidelines titled 'Environmentally-smart
Food Choices'developed by the Swedish National Food Administration and their
Environmental Protection Agency recommend citizens reduce their meat consumption as a
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way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (EurActiv.com, 2009)The guidelines statethat
“Meat – beef, lamb, pork and chicken – is the food group that has the greatest impact on the
environment".
A way forward: recommendations to heal our natural environment and implement
sustainable intensification of food production in Australia
1.
By not replacing slaughtered livestock, the billions of tree seeds in Australia’s
millions of hectares of grazing lands (seeds in soil are often viable for over 50 years)
will regenerate naturally. This will automatically reforest our country within about
eight years.
2.
Encourage animal food producers to transition to plant food production or newly
developing sustainability industries. Redirect subsidies and tax benefits away from
animal food production to plant-based food production.
3.
Greatly reducing the national herds of cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens will
automatically help clean our rivers of animal excretions and eroded soil, thereby
providing higher quality water for crops and people.
4.
Encourage more people to understand the health risks of animal foods, and the health
benefits of plant foods.
5.
To help feed more people (especially those under economic stress) green areas in
council zones (such as parks, footpath edges, and suburban streets) could be planted
with fruit or nut trees. Parsley and other herbs could be used as border plants. A
mulberry tree in a public park in Newmarket, Brisbane, helps bring the local people
together in a friendly way when they meet at the tree to eat some of its fruit. This
indicates a social benefit.
6.
To reduce the toxic pollution of our environment, encourage organic, chemical free
plant food growing.
7.
Provide incentives to fishermen to transition from fishing to the tourism-based
industries of the future.
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CONTENTS
SUMMARY
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1. MAINTAIN AND IMPROVE THE NATURAL RESOURCE BASE UNDERPINNING FOOD PRODUCTION
IN AUSTRALIA
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DEFORESTATION
LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY
SOIL DEGRADATION
THE COMING WATER SHORTAGE
GREENHOUSE GASES
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
LAND CONSUMPTION
CHEMICAL POLLUTION
WASTE DISPOSAL
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6
8
8
12
14
16
17
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2. CONTRIBUTE TO GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY
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3. REDUCE BARRIERS TO A SAFE AND NUTRITIOUS FOOD SUPPLY THAT RESPONDS TO THE
EVOLVING PREFERENCES AND NEEDS OF ALL AUSTRALIANS AND SUPPORTS POPULATION HEALTH
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HUMAN NUTRITION
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4. RISKS TO AUSTRALIA'S FOOD SECURITY
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FOOD POISONING
THERE IS NO BIOLOGICAL NECESSITY FOR HUMANS TO CONSUME MEAT.
THEN THERE’S THE FISH
FISH ARE UNDER IMMENSE SURVIVAL PRESSURES FROM THE FOLLOWING:
CONCLUSION
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26
29
32
34
RECOMMENDATIONS:
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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38
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Chapter 1. Maintain and improve the natural resource base
underpinning food production in Australia
Deforestation
If you drive down the Midlands Highway from Devonport to Hobart in Tasmania you’ll see
several hill tops almost completely bare of vegetation (showing the dirt plainly) because the
trees have been chopped down to make pasture, and the sheep and cattle have eaten too many
of the remaining plants. If you fly from Melbourne to Brisbane and keep looking out the
window of the plane you’ll be astonished at how much of the land below has hardly any trees
left.
Australia has a total landmass of almost eight million square kilometres. In 1998, the beef
cattle industry occupied over two million square kilometres of it. (Aust. Govt, 2002) In 1999
sheep occupied 856, 940 square kilometres. That’s almost three million square kilometres of
Australia where the trees were either cleared or where saplings are stomped on or eaten as
soon as they pop their first leaves above ground.
Fully 91% of tree clearing in Queensland was to grow pasture for livestock. (Bisshop, 2010)
Less than 2% of trees cleared were used for timber.
(Bisshop, 2010)
Every country on Earth has chopped down huge amounts of forests to make way for meat and
dairy animals. In fact about 30% of the Earth’s entire land surface is used either for pasture or
for growing livestock feed. That’s countless billions of trees gone: and they took their oxygen
with them.
Without trees CO2 finds its way to the ocean, but the oceans have already absorbed so much
CO2 they’re becoming acidic. Carbon dioxide turns into carbonic acid in sea water and
impacts fish and other sea creatures that grow shells because shells are dissolved by the
carbonic acid.
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Using 30% of all the land on our planet to produce animal products has reduced the gene pool
of Earth. Forests are our main source of back-up genes in an emergency. Pastures would be
little help here, they’ve just got grass, some weeds, a few scattered trees, cattle or sheep, and
that’s it. Land used for fodder crops has the fodder crop, a few weeds, lots of agrochemicals,
and that’s it.
Reducing Earth’s gene pool is not food security.
After clearing out trees, some farmers clear the bushes as well, so they can have perfect fields
of just grass. However deep rooted native bushes absorb nutrients and water that lie below
ground. When they’re replaced by grass this water in the ground is not used and over time it
accumulates and comes closer to the surface. Soil salts dissolved in the water rise to the
surface and create salinity problems. Most dryland salinity on the Southern Tablelands of
New South Wales is associated with intensive grazing. If the livestock on the Southern
Tablelands were not replaced after being slaughtered, the bushes and seeds still in the soil
would be able to grow.
Loss of Biodiversity
Australia’s shy and very charming little Gilbert’s potoroo is teetering on the brink of
extinction. Of all five types of potoroos, one species is extinct, and three are threatened. Of
all ten types of bettongs four are extinct, three are threatened.
In Australia there was one type of desert rat kangaroo, which is now extinct. The numbers of
hare wallabies has seriously declined with three of the eight kinds of them extinct and the
remaining five all threatened or near threatened. Fifteen per cent of all the wallabies and
kangaroos that used to live here are now extinct or threatened. Two of the three species of
nailtail wallaby are extinct or close to extinction. Of the 22 listed rock-wallabies, three are
endangered, seven are vulnerable, and four are near threatened. The banded hare-wallaby is
the sole surviving member of a once-much larger family of browsing kangaroos that has
become extinct, and it is threatened. Setonix, or the quokka, is also threatened.
Apart from sheep, cattle, rabbits, crows, magpies, swallows, starlings, snakes, cane toads,
rats, mice and insects, there’s not much life on pastures. Most native animals need trees,
native grasses and thick bushes or scrub.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources reported, in its
2006 Red List, that Australia is a world leader in extinction rates. Some of our animals you’ll
never see because there’s no more left include:
Eastern Bettong
Burrowing Bettong
Brush-tailed Bettong
Western Koala
Desert Rat-kangaroo
Pig-footed Bandicoot
Western Barred Bandicoot
Desert Bandicoot
White-footed Rabbit-rat
Central Hare-wallaby
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Rufous Hare-wallaby
Eastern Hare-wallaby
Banded Hare-wallaby
Tammar Wallaby
Toolache Wallaby
Crescent Nail-tail Wallaby
Lesser Stick-nest Rat
Lesser Bilby
Short-tailed Hopping-mouse
Long-tailed Hopping-mouse
Big-eared Hopping-mouse
Darling Downs Hopping-mouse
Gould's Mouse
Broad-faced Potoroo
Queensland Snakenecked Turtle
Several species of frog
And even more species of birds
A lot of our remaining animals are either threatened or critically endangered. A small sample
of the critically endangered include:Mammals:
Northern Hairy-nosed Wombat
Gilbert's Potoroo
Christmas Island Pipistrelle (a wee little bat not much bigger than your thumbnail)
Birds:
Spotted Quail-thrush
Yellow Chat
Orange-bellied Parrot
Round Island Petrel
Herald Petrel
The full list goes on and on.
On World Environment Day in 1998, the Queensland Conservation Council released a report
that revealed that in Queensland 68,000 long nosed bandicoots, 22,400 sugar gliders, 17,000
brushtail possums and 7,500 greater gliders are killed every year by land clearing, and
millions more plants and animals die. (OZArk, 2012) Most land clearing is to create pasture.
1,168,808,454 million acres of Australia are used for agriculture, of this –
1,062,553,140 million acres are used for livestock grazing (120 million sheep, 24 million
beef cattle, 3 million dairy cattle – animal numbers vary according to the source.)
That 1,062,553,140 million acres is 56% of Australia.
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The white areas are used to grow meat & dairy products.
Australian Natural Resources Atlas1996/97.(Australian Government)
Soil Degradation
Cattle and sheep are heavy. A cow can weigh over 630 kilos and a sheep 136 kilos.
Their weight and hard hooves compactthe soil. Instead of sinking below ground,water gushes
over the surface, eroding it.
The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) knows that cattle and sheep cause
wide-scale land degradation through compaction and erosion. They’ve estimated that 20 per
cent of the world's grazing lands have been significantly degraded since 1945, with the pace
of destruction increasing.
The world heritage listed Great Barrier Reef stretches over 2,000 kilometres off the side of
the Queensland coast. About 4,500,000 beef cattle graze that same coast. (GBRMPA) Over
80 % of sediments and nutrients washed down to the Reef come from their pastures, and the
Reef critters don’t like this stuff raining down on them at all. (CSIRO, 2011)
The Coming Water Shortage
In Australia, 90% of the wetlands in the Murray Darling Basin have disappeared. (Sarah
Moles, 2008). The Macquarie marshes and the Macquarie River in northwestern New South
Wales are drying. In south-east Australia most streams now have about 44% less flow, and in
some areas with drier, warmer soil and reduced autumn rain, streamflows are 86% less than
they used to be. (Bachelard, 2010)
People in China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma) and South America get
most of their water from glaciers; but the glaciers are shrivelling up and going away. On the
Qinghai-Tibet plateau 196 square kms of glacier ice is not there anymore. That’s a loss of
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989 million cubic metres of water – enough to fill Beijing’s largest reservoir. Yuzhu Peak
glacier is 1,500 meters shorter than it used to be. Glaciers in the Tanggula Mountain Pass are
shrivelling 265 metres a year. In fact, about 90% of all Himalayan glaciers are getting smaller
and smaller. China’s Ministry of Land and Resources is pretty paranoid about this because
they know what it means. A big thirst is coming. (Guanqun, 2009)
In August 2010 twenty-five million people were short of drinking water in China’s Yunnan
and Guizhou provinces. (Trend, 2010) Four of China’s major rivers, the Yangtze, the Yellow,
the Mekong (which also feeds Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Viet Nam) and the Salween
are drying up. In India the mighty Ganges and Indus rivers are running low. Pakistan relies on
the Indus too. Water isn’t only for drinking and growing food. There was a 90% reduction in
hydroelectric power generation in China in August 2010 too.
You know something’s going on when a glacier that’s been around for 18,000 years is taking
its last gasp, with 99% of it already gone. That’s the story with the Chacaltaya glacier in
Bolivia. Seventy % of the world's tropical glaciers are in the high Andes Cordillera of Peru,
Bolivia, and Ecuador. The vanishing glaciers there threaten the water supply of 30 million
people. (ENS, 2008)
As the human population doubled then tripled, more and more water was required to sustain
this expanding population. We live in a world of finite resources. River water shortage is
going global. In Europe the once beautiful (and once blue) Danube is running low. ‘We have
a low-water situation which can be called exceptional,’ said Gerhard Kudebauch, head of
river maintenance at Via Donau, the national river management service. (Stewart, 2011) It’s
the same for America’s Rio Grande. A similar story can be told for the Great Lakes in
Canada, the Nile in Africa, the Danube in Europe and the Aral Sea in central Europe.
The Great Lakes on the American-Canadian border are getting shallower. On Lake St. Claire
boat docks that used to be 20 feet long have been extended to over 100 feet long in order to
reach the water. In Tasmania, even Huonville, right beside the Huon River has signs
advertising water restrictions.
In Africa the Niger and the Nile are drying out, as are Lake Victoria, Lake Chad, Lake Natron
and Lake Manyara. About 20 million people depend on Lake Chad for survival. It used to be
the sixth largest lake on Earth – but it’s shrunk from 25,000 square kilometers to 2,000 square
kilometers. The River Jordan, which feeds Israel, Syria and Jordan, is drying up.
(ChinatownConnection.com, 2007)
Do you think we should start being a little careful
about how we use water?
An average 400 kg cow has about 24 litres of blood. Slaughtering and butchering this cow
uses about 1,500 litres of water. (DPI, 2007) The meat industry pollutes any water it comes in
contact with and can recycle very little of it.(MLA, 2007) If it takes 1,500 litres of water to
kill and process one cow and about 26,054,000 of them are killed each year in Australia,
that’s 38,559,920,000 (thirty-eight billion, five hundred and fifty-nine million, nine hundred
and twenty thousand) litres a year.
A typical meat plant can kill 625 cows a day. Some plants can slaughter 250 cows an hour.
This goes on 5-days a week, 250 days a year. (MLA, 2007) The multinational meat
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corporation, JBS Swift, has a processing plant at Dinmore, near Ipswich, Queensland. They
can kill 3,400 cows a day there.
The Queensland government’s publication Eco-Efficiency Manual for Meat Processing,
published by Meat & Livestock Australia Ltd in 2002, says that a single meat processing
plant can use a million litres of water a day. The United Nations (UNEP, 2000) estimates a
range of 5,000 to 20,000 litres of water are used per live weight ton of slaughtered animal in
the United States. (ESRC, 2008) The Australian Livestock Transporters Association figured
out that washing the excrement out of transport trucks takes about six billion litres of water a
year.
The International Water Management Institute says that producing 300 grams (0.3kilo) of
meat uses 21,000 litres of water. The Queensland Water Commission website notes that the
average daily consumption per person in South East Queensland on 22 October 2010 was 150
litres under water restriction usage. That’s 54,750 litres per person for a whole year.
So global water supplies are running low, and much of what’s left has been degraded by
animal agriculture. . In Australia, from the heights of Kosciusko to the Simpson Desert
there’s barely a single creek or river that’s not slimed from manure, urine and pasturefertiliser run-off.
Every grazier wants lush pasture or fodder to fatten his cows on, and if nitrogen fertilizer
makes the crop or grass lush and green, then why not use it? Well, one reason is that crops
don’t absorb all the nitrogen pumped onto them. The leftovers hang around in our soil, find
their way to the nearest creek and help make the green slime that can be seen in our
waterways.
Cattle and sheep are commonly allowed full access to waterways, so they can drink. Cattle
tend to wade knee deep into the shallows, and while drinking often defecate and/or urinate
directly into the water. What cattle and sheep drop onto pasture away from the water often
ends up getting washed down into creeks when it rains. A single sheep can drop up to three
kilos of excrement a day, and there’s an estimated 93 to 120 million sheep in Australia, most
of them near our waterways.
If waterways are the blood vessels of the land
the livestock industry has given Australia septicaemia.
In Australia climate change is predicted to bring long periods of sustained hot weather and
hotter peak temperatures. We can now expect worse droughts, bigger fires, less water, but
still a rapidly multiplying human population. The numbers differ according to the method of
calculation and who is doing the calculating, but they all agree that producing meat uses more
water than producing plant food. David Pimentel and others estimate the following water
usage to produce the following foods:
Soybeans
Potatoes
Wheat
Corn
Rice
Beef
167 litres per kilogram
500.7 litres per kilogram
901 litres per kilogram
1,402 litres per kilogram
1,911 litres per kilogram
100,220 litres per kilogram (Pimentel, 2001)
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Jokkala and others estimate that producinga kilo of beef requires a total of approximately 15,000 litres of water;
a kilo of chicken 3,500–6,000 litres,
and a kilo of corn 450 litres. (Jokkala, 2007)
The International Water Management Institute has found that it takes 550 litres of water to
produce enough flour for one loaf of bread in developing countries, but up to 7,000 litres of
water to produce 100 grams of beef. (World-Watch, 2004)
Here’s some 2005 water use figures from the National Water Commission of the Australian
government. (NWC, 2005) (One gigalitre equals one billion litres.)
Sector
Total Australian H2O
consumption in Gigalitres
Dairy farming
2,276
Pasture
1,928
Grains
1,162
Livestock
1,035
Grapes
717
Fruit
648
Rice
631
Vegetables
455
The livestock industry is among the most damaging industry to the Earth’s increasingly
scarce water resources. In coastal areas its pollutants also contribute to degeneration of coral
reefs. The major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals
from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops. Widespread
overgrazing disturbs water cycles, reducing replenishment of above and below ground water
resources. Livestock are estimated to be the main inland source of phosphorous and nitrogen
contamination of the South China Sea, contributing to biodiversity loss in marine ecosystems.
With the exception of some waterways in the Northern Territory and Tasmania, almost every
waterway in Australia is now filthy. This damage to once beautifully clean waterways has
taken place in the last 50 years.
The Swan River’s filthy
The Murrumbidgee’ filthy
The Darling’s filty
The Macintyre’s filthy
The Lachlan’s filthy
The Yarra’s filthy
The Brisbane River’s filthy
The Namoi’s filthy
The Leichhardt’s filthy
The Macquarie’s filthy
The Burdekin’s filthy
The Mary’s filthy
The Condamine’s filthy
The Tweed’s filthy
The Clarence is filthy
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The Wollomombi’s filthy
Beardy Waters is filthy
The Gwydir’s filthy
The Guyra’ filthy
The Hawkesbury’s filthy
The Mackenzie’s filthy
The Nogoa’s filthy
The Warrego’s filthy
The Mann’s filthy
The Wimmera’s filthy, etc. etc. etc.
Cattle or sheep graze the banks of every single one these waterways. Their urine and faeces
are washed into the river every time it rains. It’s not thelivestock’s fault. They’re not
deliberately breeding themselves so that there’s millions more of them in Australia than there
are people - millions more of them than our rivers can handle.
Greenhouse Gases
Australia has over 200 million meat animals, and about 22 million people. (And the world
has almost seven billion people, but about 50 billion animals are killed each year for them.)
Animal
Milk cattle
Population in
2007
2,793,000
Meat cattle
26, 054,000
Total cattle
28, 846,000
Sheep
92, 728,000
Pigs
2,755,000
Meat
77,400,000
Chickens
Egg
16,200,000
Chickens
Total
217,929,000
animals
Human
22,000,000
population
(ABS, 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2008 , 2008)(DPI, Prime Facts, Water requirements for
sheep & cattle, 2007)
The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimatedthere were 16 million vehicles (of all kinds) on
the roads in 2010. What do you think created the most emissions: 16 million belching exhaust
pipes, or the solid, liquid and gaseous excretions of 200 million animals?
Even back in 2006 the UN had figured out that the livestock industry causes more greenhouse
gas emissions than all the world’s airplanes, trains, cars, trucks, etc., altogether.
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In 2003 the Australian Greenhouse Office said that Australian livestock released 62 million
tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. (MLA, 2008) The World Watch Institute
said,“Our analysis shows that livestock and their by-products actually account for … 51 % of
annual worldwide GHG emissions.” (Anhang, 2009) The meat industry generates 65 % of
human-related nitrous oxide. It also produces 37% of all human-induced methane, and 64 %
of ammonia.
People talk about CO2 as if it’s the big bully in the atmospheric playground that we all have
to be scared of, but colourless, odourless, methane is the brooding kid standing silently in the
corner who can knock CO2 flat on its face any day because (as a planetary warmer) it’s 25
times stronger over a hundred year period. About 35 % of (human caused) global methane
comes from the front and rear ends of the animals used to make human dinners. Just one
grazing dairy cow can burp up to 600 grams of methane per day. (Moate, 2010)
Average Methane Emissions
Average Mean Milk Yield Methane/Milk Ratio
(grams per cow per day)
kg/cow/day
(grams per kilogram)
November
487
24.2
20.2
February
623
17.8
35.4
May
521
14.5
36.8
September
344
28.0
12.9
(DPI, 2007) M.J. Auldist and friends published these figures on the methane-to-milk
ratio obtained from original research on Holstein-Friesian dairy cows in Victoria,
Australia.
Nitrous oxide(laughing gas) is 310 times stronger than carbon dioxide as a heating agent over
a hundred-year period. (US EPA, 2010)Nitrous oxide is made when the nitrogen in animal
excretionsinteracts with oxygen in the air. Once it’s in the atmosphere nitrous oxide can
persist for over a hundred years.
Nitrous oxideis also produced in the huge manure pits and manure storage ponds at feedlots
and processing factories. In fact, livestock make two-thirds of all nitrous oxide emissions.
Though both methane and nitrous oxide are smaller kids than lumbering old carbon dioxide,
don’t let that fool you. They can both pack an almighty punch. (Jokkala, 2007)
Manure pits and ponds also send hydrogen sulfide gas (which smells like rotten eggs) into
our air - especially from pig factories. When these manure pits are stirred during manure
removal, lethal concentrations of this gas can be released. Low levels of hydrogen sulfide can
cause headaches, dizziness, nausea or insomnia. Higher levels kill.
Methane(CH4) in the atmosphere reacts with ozone (O3) to make carbon dioxide and water.
In about 12 years the methane in our air right now will have changed into the less potent
carbon dioxide and into water. Three molecules of methane plus four molecules of ozone will
break down into three molecules of carbon dioxide and six molecules of water.
(3)CH4 + (4)O3 = (3)CO2 + (6)H2O.
We have about 200 times more carbon dioxide in our air right now (2012) than we have
methane. But as a global heater, a ton of methane is responsible for nearly 100 times more
warming over the first five years of its lifetime in the atmosphere than a ton of CO2. (Smith,
2009) And while the carbon dioxide in our air now will persist for a hundred years no matter
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what we do, the methane automatically gets turned into the less warming carbon dioxide and
water in about 12 years. Then we have nitrous oxide. There’s much less of it in the air than
carbon dioxide, but it’s 310 times stronger, and it could persist for over a hundred years. It
seems advisable to start reducing methane and nitrous oxide by transitioning animal food
industries into plant food (or other sustainable) industries. The meat industry is presently
contorting itself in quite odd ways in its attempts to try to reduce the damage it is doing to our
planet. Here’s one example:
MLA and the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries started a
three-year research project to find out if the kangaroo bacteria can be successfully
adapted to cattle and have similar effects in the bovine rumen. Adapting kangaroo
rumen bacteria to cattle has the potential to at least halve cattle methane emissions
and cut Australia’s production of greenhouse gases by up to 6%. (MLA 2008 Annual
Report)
Another example is that the livestock industry is working to estimate how much carbon can
be sequestered in pasture – using figures obtained to support their arguments that they are
sustainable and environmentally friendly. However their own figures show that a forest and
the soil under it sequesters more carbon (as well as produce more oxygen, and less of the
other green house gases than pasture).
Land use – total organic carbon (per cent 0-10 cm)(Lawrence & Bell)
When urine and faeces dry out, ammonia gas is produced, and ammonia is found in acid rain.
This gas floats up into our air, then drifts down again, either as dry particles or riding in
raindrops. Once it lands, bacteria break it into nitrogen and nitric acid, which can kill fish and
plants. In Holland, 70 % of nitrogen-related acid rain is estimated to come from livestock.
Energy Consumption
A man feels hungry one day, so he goes outside to his apple tree, picks a ripe one and starts
chomping happily away. His auntie in the city 600 kilometres away phones up and says she’s
hungry too, so the man picks a pile of apples and trucks them to her in a box. When they
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arrive she takes one out of the box, puts the rest in her fruit bowl on the kitchen sideboard and
starts munching happily away.
On the same day another man also feels hungry, but he wants a bit of steak. He goes outside,
picks a cow out of his herd, slaughters it, then cuts it up with a power tool. He uses a power
tool because an ordinary knife won’t cut through the bones. It’s a messy business, so he turns
on the tap and hoses the blood and intestinal muck away. This leaves a smelly puddle outside
his shed, so he uses his tractor to scoop most of it up and dumps it further away from his
house. To stop the meat going rotten before it can be eaten, he puts most of it in his fridge.
He’s not going to eat it raw, so he turns on the stove to cook it.
His auntie in the city 600 kilometres away phones up and says she’s hungry too, so the man
puts several slices of the cow in a box and sends it to her. The box has to be kept refrigerated
the whole way. When it arrives the auntie picks out a slice, puts the rest in her fridge and
turns on her stove to cook the slice.
Who used the most energy?
The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation came up with the following figures to see which
foods produced the most energy per hectare. (A kilo-calorie (kcal) is the amount of energy
needed to heat one kilo (or litre) of water by one degree Celsius.)
Food
Energy produced
sugar
25 million kcal/hectare
banana 13 million kcal/hectare
potatoes 12 million kcal/hectare
cassava 12 million kcal/hectare
rice
7 million kcal/hectare
grain
5million kcal/hectare
milk
1.8 million kcal/hectare
eggs
0.5 million kcal/hectare
beef
0.4 million kcal/hectare
Animal products produce the least amount of energy.
Though beef produces little energy, it consumes a lot.
Kilowatt hours consumed to produce a kilogram of:
beef
12.8
pork
8.3
beans
0.86
potatoes
0.44
The Nutrition Ecology International Centre estimated the following fossil fuel energy used
for various foods.
kcal of fossil fuel energy
used to produce
1 kcal of energy from
various foods
food
kcal
lamb
57
beef
40
15
eggs
milk /dairy
& swine meat
turkeys
poultry
grain
(NEIC)
39
14
10
4
2.2
The National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan found that producing one
kilo of beef emits as much carbon dioxide as the average European car pumps out every 155
miles, and consumes enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.
Land Consumption
Producing animal foods needs more land then producing plant foods.
Acres needed to produce
20kilos protein/year
beans
0.61
cereal
1.4
potatoes
1.7
dairy cows
2.4 – 7.4
sheep
4.9 – 12.3
chickens
7.4
beef cows
7.4 – 14.8
pigs
12.3
(FAO, 1992)
About 1,000 kilograms of grain must be supplied to livestock in order to produce enough
meat and dairy products to feed a person for a year, but 400 pounds of grain eaten directly
will support a person for a year. Dr. RajendraPachauri noted that:
A farmer can feed up to 30 persons throughout the year on one hectare with
vegetables, fruits, cereals and vegetable fats. If the same area is used for the
production of eggs, milk or meat the number of persons fed varies from five to ten.
(Pachauri, 2008)
The fact that only five per cent of Australia is needed to grow all our vegetables, nuts, herbs
and fruit while 54 per cent is needed to provide livestock products is so very telling. If five
per cent of land presently used as pasture was converted to plant food production Australia
could supply Asia with fresh food.
Whichever way you organize the numbers and whatever parameters you use, it always turns
out that plant foods consume less resources than animal foods and give greater returns.
Animal foods are
an inefficient use
of energy, grains, land and water
and feed fewer people per resource used
16
Chemical Pollution
The list of chemicals used in animal foods is long. Hormonal growth promotants are only one
class. Hormones are also used to stimulate unnaturally frequent pregnancies in livestock.
Nitrates are used to make processed meats look pink, and to kill the deadly Clostridium
botulinum. Even so, Canada restricts the use of nitrates in meat because if you have a lot of it,
it reacts with protein to form cancer-causing nitrosamines. (APF).
Tick killers include:
amitraz
cypermethrinchlorfenvinphos
lumethrin
and zeta cypermethrin.
Lice killers include:
coumaphos
fenvelerate
permethrin
malathion
dioxathian
andamitraz
Pharmaceuticals in meat production:
Cows are great admirers of peace and quiet. Being such fuddy-duddies they like routine and
steady relationships; and knowing everyone around them gives them a comfortable, secure
feeling. When taken from the paddock in huge noisy, filthy, smelly (and sometimes freezing)
trucks along highways and dumped into closely fenced areas of bare dirt thick with the
droppings, microorganisms and bugs of other cows – many of whom they’ve never seen in
their lives before, they feel dreadful; and it’s a known fact that when you feel dreadful, you
get sick easily.
Bovine Respiratory Disease is one result. It’s the most common cause of sickness and death
in Australian feedlots. The symptoms include depression, lethargy, drooping ears, eye
discharge, coughing, and rapid shallow breathing. (MLA, 2006) Because you generally can’t
sell an animal for much of a profit if it’s dead before you kill it, the meat industry in Australia
loses about $60million a year from this illness. Now they’re starting to give preventive
vaccinations such as Bovilis MH to cattle before they’re put into feedlots. Treatment can also
include antimicrobial, anti inflammatory and anti histamine drugs.
Coccidosis is another popular visitor to feedlots, compliments of a protozoan called Eimeria,
As far as this intestinal parasite is concerned, feedlots are parties, and mixing with the hosts is
a breeze when they’re all living together so up close and personal that the entire floor of the
pen is one big happy toilet. Bloody stools and, in bad cases, death, can result. Coccidiosis is
usually treated with sulfonamides. An interesting aspect of some growth promotants , such as
Rumensin, Bovatec and Posistac is that they also help control coccidiosis.
Chooks in factories also get this bug. But drugs are available to treat that too. The two
groups of drugs used are coccidiostats and coccidiocides. They’re used continuously in
what’s fed to chooks to try to keep coccidiosis at bay.
17
One problem with this is that coccidiocides (such as Coxistac) kill the coccidia organisms. As
a result, no immunity develops in the flock. Because they’ve got no immunity, our bar-b-q
chickens have to keep being fed the drug to prevent an outbreak of bloody faeces.
The most common coccidiostats used by the egg industry are DOT (dinitro-o-toluamide)
based drugs, made by Central Chemical Distributors and DOT Premix Coccidiostat, made by
Agribusiness.
Then there’s the clostridium bacteria family. Some of these little critters always live in the
bowels of grass munchers, but only in small numbers. However, when feed is contaminated
by animal faeces it’s not good. Cutting the horns and testicles off young cows can open their
bodies to invasion by these bugs. The usually fatal Enterotoxaemia (pulpy kidney) can result
from infection from clostridium perfringens.
Livestock in feedlots are there for the sole purpose of getting them as fat as possible as fast as
possible. Grass and green growing things are what their bellies really like. Grains are not the
real food for either cattle or sheep. The only reason they’re given grain is because people
discovered that it puts on the weight fast. (Imagine yourself living on pasta. On second
thoughts, better not!)
Acidosis is a major health problem in feedlots when the starch in the grain ferments in the
animal’s stomachs. So naturally there’s another chemical fix for this problem. Lambs can be
drenched in sodium bicarbonate. Sodium bicarbonate and sodium bentonite are also added to
the feed pellets to reduce stomach acidity.
Undigested starch in small intestines is considered very yummy by some clostridium bacteria
and they have a huge party and an even huger orgy, resulting in millions, nay, billions more
of them with astounding rapidity. Unfortunately for the cow, their after-party barfing is
extremely toxic, and can kill the bellowing, convulsing cow within 24 hours. (Cronin, 2005)
With no real treatment for such a rapidly fatal infection, feedlot managers use preventive
vaccines.
How can you vaccinate a whole pile of animals without it being too much effort and taking
too long? Simple. Put the vaccine in aerosol form and spray all of them. They do this with
chickens. Cows tend to get needles. Keeping all the animals alive till they’re slaughtered is a
big job though. As the Victorian Department of Primary Industries knows, in spite of all
efforts to stop it, there’s a major disease outbreak in Australia roughly once every four years.
(PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2006)
Chemicals on Cow Feed: Cows eat a lot; so do the bugs and insects that eat what the cows
eat. Once again chemistry leaps to the rescue. Insecticides, such as organophosphates and
synthetic pyrethroids are used to protect grain in pastures and feeds. One of them is
Phosphine (marked on containers as ‘dangerous poison’). It’s a fumigant used in grain
storage to control mice, rats, weevils and other little crawlies. It comes in pellets that release
lethal gas after reaching the stomachs of their intended victims – or the lungs of human grain
handlers who let their guard drop. There’s also a generous abundance of herbicides to keep
weeds on fodder crops at bay.
There’s one complicated family of compounds that, altogether, are called dioxins. They enter
the environment lots of different ways but once there, they hang around. They accumulate in
18
the food chain and get more concentrated as they travel from plant to animal to human. So
cows eat contaminated pasture or grain, and we eat the cows and end up with dioxin in our
bodies. It’s a known carcinogen. Eating meat, dairy and also fish are the major ways people
pick it up, and a nursing mum will nourish her child with the dioxin in her milk. But that’s
ok; results of a National Dioxin Program indicated levels of dioxins in Australia’s meat are
low.
Other chemical hangers-on include persistent organochlorines such as DDT, dieldrin,
heptachlor and hexachlorobenzene. These agricultural aids have been banned in Australia
since the 1970s, but they’re still in the soils that pastures grow on. Low concentrations of
these charmers have also been sporadically identified in meat. (foodstandards)
The 20th Australian Total Diet Survey (ATDS) 2003 reported that there were no residues of
the penicillin G, streptomycin or oxytetracycline antibiotics detected in any meat and poultry
products, dairy products or eggs that were tested; but the National Residue Survey (NRS) for
2001-2002 analysed meat from cattle, sheep and pigs and found 26 residues above the limits
set in the Code; of these, 18 were of agricultural veterinary chemicals and eight were of
metals.
Of course, the Australian government already knows all this, and presently supports the use
of such chemicals. However consumers are becoming ever more wary of unnatural additives
in what they eat. The mere fact that so many chemicals have to be used in the meat industry
speaks volumes about how fundamentally unsafe this class of foodstuffs really is.
Waste Disposal
In one day single cow can produce as much faeces as forty people. A single pig can produce
up to three kilos of it each day. (Queensland Government Dept. of Employment Economic
Development & Innovation, 2009) In 2007 there were almost 29 million cows (and rising) in
Australia, versus 21million people. Put all Australia’s food animals together and there are
almost 218 million of them. This creates a serious problem of waste disposal.
Here’s one example. Berrybank Piggery, at Windermere, Victoria, lives off 15,000 pigs
which produce 275,000 litres of sewerage effluent on average every day. Naturally enough,
they’ve tried to figure out what to do with it all. Most of it gets spread over the land as liquid
or solid fertilizer, but some is used to generate electricity. ( Ballarat University)
Liquid slurry from livestock has abnormally high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus because
meat animals can only absorb some of what’s in their please-grow-as-fast-as-possible feed.
When animal manure oozes into our waterways, (for example, after being recycled as liquid
or solid fertilizer) the excess nitrogen and phosphorus fouls groundwater and damages
aquatic and wetland ecosystems. Roughly 70-80 % of the nitrogen in what’s fed to cattle,
pigs and laying hens, and 60 % of what’s fed to meat chickens, is excreted in faeces and urine
and ultimately ends up in our water system where it greatly encourages that disgusting slime
that makes our river rocks too slippery to walk on. It completely covers logs in the water, as
well as the exquisite shells of turtles. It encourages growth of toxic algae and reduces oxygen
content of water, sometimes suffocating fish in the process. And this polluted water flows
into our dams for human consumption.
19
The manure storage lagoons at animal factories and feedlots contain a potent brew of over
170 trace compounds, some of which are:Ammonia (NH3) Even in low concentrations, inhaling ammonia or getting it on your skin can
cause burning, fainting, or death.
Amines - organic molecules derived from ammonia. They smell like rotting fish.
Hydrogen sulphide - a highly toxic gas which interferes with cellular respiration just like
carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.
Volatile fatty acids- they’re produced in the digestive processes of livestock.
Mercaptans - a group of sulfur-containing organic chemical substances. They smell like
rotting cabbage.
Aldehydes - a class of highly reactive chemical compounds.
Esters - a class of organic compounds formed from an organic acid and an alcohol.
Just as what goes up must come down, so what goes in must come out. The manure/urine mix
from animal factories also can contain the antibiotics and hormones the animals have been
given, the parasites and parasite eggs they had in their systems, and bugs like
Cryptosporidum, spores of Giardia, and bacteria such as Brucella and Salmonella.
We are ruining the Australian countryside by burdening it with far more livestock than the
soil, native animals, plants and rivers can handle.
National food policies need to address
ways of reducing our national herds.
Chapter 2. Contribute to global food security
Fat Cows and Skinny People
Everybody knows that millions of people on Earth are starving – even though we grow more
grains than are needed to feed everyone, right down to the last, wailing, bone-thin child. Why
aren’t the starving millions feasting on our abundance of grains – one of the cheapest foods
you can buy?
Well, a single cow can consume 15 kilos of grain a day. Add in her pasture fodder and her
consumption could equal 40 kilos a day. An average person consumes about 1.27 kilos of
food a day.
We grow enough grains to feed Earths seven billion people
but with 55 billion food animals in the world
who’s getting them?
Prime City feedlot at Tabbita, near the town of Griffith, NSW is owned by JBS Swift. Prime
City can hold 35,000 cows at a time for pre-slaughter fattening. This feedlot has 12,000 tons
of grain in silos, and another 80,000 tons in bunkers. They need this much because grains
20
make up 65-75% of the rations in beef feedlots. Livestock at all five of this corporation’s
feedlots in Australia are fed about 360,000 tons a year.
In 2008 in Australia there were about a million beef cows trucked into feedlots and fed grains
(mostly wheat, barley and sorghum). In 2006 there were almost two million dairy cows,
chomping their way through three million tons of triticale, oats, maize, sorghum, wheat,
barley or lupins and also canola, cottonseed and sunflower meal. Eighty per cent of all grain
grown along the East Coast of Australia is turned into meat, dairy and eggs at feedlots and
factory farms.
In the conversion of grain protein into meat protein, much is lost.
The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation (an American agricultural research body) says that
2.73 kilos of grain will add .45 kilos of weight to a feedlot cow. It takes about:16.4 kilos of grain or 30 kilos of forage to produce 1 kilo of lamb;
13.3 kilos of grain to produce 1 kilo of beef;
8.3 kilos of grain to produce 1 kilo of eggs;
6.3 kilos of grain to produce 1 kilo of pork;
4.3 kilos of grain to produce 1 kilo of turkey; and
2.6 kilos of grain to produce 1 kilo of chicken.(Francione, 2000).
When there’s one of Australia’s regular droughts, and pastures and meadows wither and fade,
another million tons of grain can be used to keep grazing cattle, sheep and lambs fit for us to
feed on. All the meat chooks, egg chooks, turkeys, ducks and even dear little quail in factory
farms are also fed grains. So are Australia’s pigs (2.6 million in 2007 according to Australian
Bureau of Statistics. In that year the pigs ate 1,514,000 tons.) (APL, 2008) Even farmed
salmon, trout, native fish and prawns have grains served up as their factory dinner.
Bartter Enterprises (of Steggles chickens and turkeys fame), produce about 28,000,000
chickens a year near Griffith. They’re fed over 100,000 tons of grain each year. All up, from
an average national grain crop of 32.6 million tons, livestock in Australia get from 11 to 13
million tons of it.
Because grains are one of the cheapest foods to buy,
Australia’s poorest people would benefit from being provided with advice
on the high nutrient value of grains, and recipes showing delicious ways to use them.
In 2008-2009 the use of wheat for human consumption was forecast to increase by five
million tons and the use of wheat for livestock feed was forecast to rise by 24 million tons. In
Manitoba (Canada) about two million tons of barley, wheat, corn, canola meal, soy meal and
dry peas is fed to pigs each year. (Honey, 2009)
The United Nations Food & Agricultural Organisation’s Food Balance Sheet says that half of
the cereals and 90% of soybeans all over the world are turned into feasts for fatted calves,
lambs, chooks and pigs. FAO estimates that people eat 41 % of the world’s grains and
livestock eat 45 %. (UNFAO, 2003) Just imagine what our starving millions could do with
that 45 %. Even Dr. Carlos Ceres, Director-General of the International Livestock Research
Institute sadly mused that such grains "might instead have fed people." (Goodland, 2009)
21
There’s an estimated two billion tons of grains produced each year on Earth. In America
people eat an amazing 800 kilos of it a year – some of it as bread, pasta and breakfast cereals:
but most of the grain they eat is second hand. First the animals eat it, then the Americans eat
the animals and their eggs and milk. At that level of consumption Earth’s two billion tons of
grain would allow 2.5 billion people to eat every day (till they died of a heart attack anyway).
In Italy they eat about 400 kilos of grain a year, and only a moderate amount of this is second
hand from animals. This level of consumption would let Earth’s grains feed five billion
people. In India they eat about 200 kilos of grain a year, (mostly as grain, with lots of curry)
and this stretches the global supply out so that ten billion people could eat every day.(Brown,
2009)
As with energy consumption, water consumption and land consumption, no matter how the
maths are done, animal foods always take more than they give. It seems obvious that feeding
grains to animals instead of starving people is a factor in creating a world of fat cows and
skinny millions.
Grains store better than meat
without requiring constant refrigeration
so can be set aside as emergency food for distribution during natural disasters.
Chapter 3. Reduce barriers to a safe and nutritious food supply that
responds to the evolving preferences and needs of all Australians and
supports population health
A major barrier to a safe and nutritious food supply for all Australians is the fact that our
rapidly expanding knowledge of optimum nutrition is not being widely disseminated.
Numerous studies are confirming that a diet high in animal foods is neither healthy nor safe.
Australia’s historical dependence on livestock does not need to be clung to any more. In the
past, ignorance of nutrition and lack of a variety of plant foods could excuse a dependence on
eating animals. The situation is different now. Our food policies need to keep up with
nutrition knowledge.
The fact that Australia’s animal food industries are entrenched,
form a large part of the economy and are offered full support from the government
is a barrier to providing safe, nutritious food for all.
Human Nutrition
Nitrates/Nitrites are routinely used to give several kinds of processed meats (like ham,
salami, hot dogs, corned beef, and saveloys) what the meat industry calls ‘a healthy colour’
(pinkish or reddish as opposed to grey-brown).If you look through the ‘Nitrates/Nitrites in
meat products’ section of Canada/Manitoba’s Agricultural Policy Framework you’ll see that
they realize that excess nitrates can react with amino acids in proteins during processing and
form carcinogenic nitrosamines. High levels of nitrates in water lead directly to Blue Baby
Syndrome, with about 3,000 cases of infant mortality recorded over the last 40 years, and
probably many more unreported cases in the tropics.
22
Sara Sarasua (Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health University of North
Carolina) and David A. Savitz (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registries Atlanta,
Georgia) studied correlations between consumption of ham, bacon, hot dogs; hamburgers;
bologna, pastrami, corned beef and salami and the incidence of various cancers in mothers
and their children. They discovered that when the mother ate hot-dogs one or more times a
week, her child was likely to end up with a brain tumour. If children had hamburgers one or
more times a week they were at risk of all types of cancers. If the children did not get enough
vitamins (ie fresh fruit and vegetables) while eating the processed meats then they were at
risk of all cancers including brain tumour. The nitrates were blamed for this. (Savitz, 2005)
The Food Intolerance Network says that nitrates and nitrites have been associated with a
range of intolerance symptoms such as headaches, irritable bowel symptoms, itchy rashes,
asthma, children’s behaviour problems, difficulty falling asleep and frequent night waking,
and the Food Intolerance Network recommends avoiding them. (FIN, 2009)
Another study by Dr. Sheila A. Bingham (Medical Research Council, Dunn, Nutrition Unit,
Cambridge) (Bingham, 1999) says: “Up to 80 % of breast, bowel and prostate cancers are
attributed to dietary practices, and international comparisons show strong positive
associations with meat consumption…. Current Department of Health (1998)
recommendations are that meat consumption should not rise, and that consumers should
consider a reduction in intakes.”
In what’s called the NIH-AARP Diet and Health study (National Institutes of HealthAmerican Association of Retired Persons), researchers followed and analysed the diets of
more than 525,000 participants to see if there was a link between the kind of fat they ate and
pancreatic cancer. They found that eating red meat and dairy products were both significantly
associated with increased pancreatic cancer risk. This same study found no association
between plant-food fat and pancreatic cancer. (PubMed.gov, 2009)
Toxicologists at the Imperial College of London found that a group of carcinogens (2-Amino1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine) which they nicknamed PhIP for short and which
are commonly found in grilled and barbecued meats, especially chicken, made breast cancer
worse by encouraging metastatic spread of the cancer cells. The researchers found that very
small doses of PhIP damaged the DNA, and caused the cells to exhibit extracellular invasive
behavior. The invasiveness of the cells increased with increasing doses of PhIP, ie, with
increasing doses of grilled/barbecued meats. (PCRM, 2010)
Deliang Tang and friends also discovered that grilled meat PhIP has a heavy hand in prostate
cancer too. (Tang, 2010) And in 2007 the World Cancer Research Fund said that all red and
processed meats were strongly linked to colorectal cancer.
Chicken, beef, pork, and fish also have heterocyclic amines (HCAs), and polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAHs). These two cancer-causing agents are formed during chemical
reactions in the meat while you’re cooking it for your loved ones. And the more you cook the
meat, and the hotter you cook it, the more these cell-mutating chemicals love it. Enjoy
cooking meat on the barbecue? The fat drops onto the flames and voila! Instant polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbon-containing flames licking the meat and smearing themselves all over it.
In 1991 researchers at Harvard University began studying the diets of 90,655 premenopausal
women in what came to be called the Nurse’s Health Study II. They also checked breast
23
cancer rates in the same women. In 2002 they published the results of this time-consuming
study. The main finding was this: ‘Intake of animal fat, mainly from red meat and high-fat
dairy foods, during premenopausal years is associated with an increased risk of breast
cancer.’ (Cho E, 2002;95) The brains at Ontario Cancer Institute found the same thing. The
Cancer Project figures that the heterocyclic amines (HCAs) formed when you cook your meat
are distributed to the breast and that humans can activate HCAs metabolically.
Harvard Uni researchers also discovered that individuals eating beef, pork, or lamb daily
have approximately three times the colon cancer risk, compared to people who generally
avoid these products.
The Cancer Prevention Study II went from 1982 to 2001. (PCRM) In this one, 148,610 adults
had medical scientist peering into their dietary habits and their health. They found that the
group with the highest red meat intake had approximately 30 to 40 % higher colon cancer risk
and the group with the highest processed meat had 50 % higher colon cancer risk. In this
study ‘high red meat intake’ was defined as daily consumption of two to three ounces of beef,
lamb or pork – about the amount you’d get in the average hamburger. ‘High processed meat
intake’ was defined as about five ounces a week for men and about three ounces a week for
women – there is about one ounce in a single slice of ham. Processed meat includes hot dogs,
bacon, sausages, salami and the like. Eating chicken triples the risk of ending your life with
colon cancer. The above percentages contrast the risks for meat eaters as compared to
vegetarians.
Of course, cancer is not the only illness linked to an animal food diet. Excess protein is
converted to fat in the body, and the epidemic of obesity in the western world is linked to the
ready availability of all forms of meat in supermarkets. Then there’s heart attacks, strokes and
diabetes. All of which can be healed or have their severity lessened by switching to a plant
based diet.
Cancer, health effects of obesity, heart attacks, strokes, osteoporosis, and diabetes
cost Australia a great deal of money. This cost should be taken into account
when assessing the value to Australia of animal food industries.
Chapter 4. Risks to Australia's food security
Food Poisoning
There are about five and a half million food poisoning cases a year in Australia. The vast
majority (and the most serious) of these incidents are caused by animal products. We now
experience livestock-related diseases such as: Nipah virus, Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), or
Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI or bird flu).As the Victorian Department of
Primary Industries knows, in spite of all efforts to stop it, there’s a major disease outbreak in
Australia roughly once every four years. (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2006)
Common Sources of Foodborne Illness
Raw and undercooked meat and poultry
Unpasteurized milk and dairy products, such
The Pathogens Involved
Campylobacter jejuni
E. coli O157:H7
L. monocytogenes
Salmonella
L. monocytogenes
24
as soft cheeses
Raw and undercooked eggs
Raw and undercooked shellfish
Salmonella
Shigella
Staphylococcus aureus
C. jejuni
Salmonella enteriditis
Vibrio vulnificus
Vibrio parahaemolyticus
C. botulinum
Improperly canned goods; smoked or salted
fish
The National Digestive Diseases Clearinghouse, America
Campylobacter bacteria live in the intestines of healthy birds, and most raw poultry meat has
Campylobacter on it. Salmonella is also a bacterium that is widespread in the intestines of
birds, reptiles and mammals. E. coli 0157:H7 is a bacterial pathogen that lives in cattle.
In February 2011, members of Canada’s CBC’s TV program ‘Marketplace’ purchased over
100 pieces of raw chicken from supermarkets in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal and sent
them to a lab for analysis. Two-thirds of the chicken pieces had E. coli, Salmonella and
Campylobacter bacteria, which is commonplace: but what made the story worth reporting
was that some of these bugs could simply laugh off the attempts of eight different types of
antibiotics to kill them.
In January 2012 two duck production facilities in Victoria, (their names not mentioned in
media reports) had an outbreak of low pathogenic avian influenza. Asia immediately banned
imports, but the Australian media said we had nothing to worry about.
Because filter-feeding shellfish (oysters) strain microbes from the sea over many months,
they are particularly likely to be contaminated if there are any pathogens in the seawater.
Foods that mingle the products of many individual animals, such as bulk milk, pooled raw
eggs, or ground beef, are particularly hazardous because a pathogen present in any one of the
animals may contaminate the whole batch. A single hamburger may contain meat from many
animals. A single restaurant omelette may contain eggs from several chooks. A glass of milk
may contain milk from several cows. A broiler chicken carcass can be exposed to the
drippings and juices of many thousands of other birds that went through the same cold water
tank after slaughter. Microscopic amounts of manure in water or fresh produce can carry a
range of serious human pathogens, with high incidence of illness and death in babies and
children. (WB-A&RDD, 2005)
There are many reasons for the new animal-to-human diseases. Increased use of intensive
meat growing facilities; more people in developing countries starting to be able to afford to
buy meat; an aging population in the West; globalization which can spread pathogens rapidly;
increased use of veterinary medicines on food animals, leading to increased pathogen
resistance; relentless advertising of animal products and government support for animal
industries.
The dominant role of supermarkets in selling animal products, and the strong increase in
factory farming have resulted in an extraordinary drive toward product standardization,
which, (particularly in the chicken and pig industry), is leading to a major narrowing of the
genetic base of these animals, with the consequent reduction in resistance to disease
outbreaks. (WB-A&RDD, 2005)
25
Although plant foods can be contaminated with pathogens from the soil (especially from
manure or chemical additives in the soil, or contaminated water), food plants themselves
seldom cause human illness. Encouraging increased use of plant foods and decreased use of
animal foods will reduce the numbers of food poisoning incidents in Australia, and reduce the
costs of medical treatment and lost worker days.
The "Food Safety Standards - Costs and Benefits" report estimates that foodborne disease
costs Australians more than $2.6 billion every year. In 1996-97, absenteeism due to food
poisoning resulted in productivity losses of over $370 million.
Costs of food poisoning incidents should be calculated
in relation to the value of animal foods.
Are Animal Products Needed for Human Health?
KåreEngström, a dietician connected with the unit for preventative medicine at Karolinska
Institute in Stockholm says, “It is a serious misinterpretation of reality to suggest there are
physiological or health-related reasons that favour animal products; it is, rather, the
opposite.” (Jokkala, 2007)
The American Dietetic Association (the world’s largest body of food and nutrition
professionals) found that well planned vegetarian or vegan diets are healthy, nutritionally
adequate and appropriate for all stages of life, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy,
childhood, and adolescence, as well as for athletes. A vegetarian diet is associated with a
lower risk of death from clogged up blood vessels. Vegetarians also appear to have lower
low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of
hypertension and type 2 diabetes than meat eaters. Furthermore, vegetarians tend not to
become overweight, and get less cancer. Numerous studies have shown that it is vegetables,
not dairy foods, that prevent osteoporosis
There is no biological necessity for humans to consume meat.
Is meat needed for strength and physical endurance? No. All the following people were
strong enough without it.






Vegetarian Carl Lewis won 10 Olympic medals, including 9 golds in a career that
spanned from 1979 to 1996.
Murray Rose, a vegetarian since birth, won six Olympic medals in swimming.
PaavoNurmi was a vegetarian from the age of 12. He is often considered the greatest
track and field athlete of all time. A long-distance runner, he competed in the 1920,
1924 and 1928 Olympics, winning 12 Olympic medals. (Moses, 2009)
Martina Navratilova, a vegetarian, was a Wimbledon tennis champion nine times.
Ruth Heidrich won the Ironwoman championship six times and was an American
track and field Master's champion. She did this on an animal free diet.
Mike Tyson, world heavyweight boxing champion is a vegan.
Is meat needed for brain function? No. All the following scientists, inventors, philosophers,
geniuses and writers were vegetarians: - Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Pythagoras, Leonardo
Da Vinci, Socrates, Darwin, Plato, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison,
26
Confucius, Yehudi Menuhin, H. G. Wells, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Voltaire, Leo
Tolstoy and Thoreau.
Is meat needed for political or business savvy? No. All the following are vegetarian or
vegan: Steve Wynn - American casino resort/real-estate developer
 Mort Zuckerman - American magazine editor, publisher, and real estate billionaire
 Russell Simmons - American entrepreneur, the co-founder of the hip-hop label Def
Jam,
 Bill Clinton – Ex American president
 Bill Ford - Ford Cars Executive Chairman of the Board
 Biz Stone - Twitter co-founder
 Joi Ito - Japanese activist, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist
 John Mackey - Whole Foods Market (WFMI) Chief Executive Officer
 Alec Baldwin – American movie star
 GuluLalvani - Telecom mogul
 Missy Higgins –Australian singer and songwriter.
“Wheat, barley, oats, rice, maize and sorghum are energy-rich feeds of similar nutritive value.
They contain sufficient protein to meet the requirements of adult stock.”So says the New
South Wales Department of Primary Industries. (McKiernan, 2007) If these plants provide
enough protein to satisfy a 650 kilo cow, surely they’d give most Australian’s enough
protein.
Meat Eating – Natural or Not?
In an effort to bring order into the classification of the astonishing variety of life on Earth
scientists began dividing up different creatures into different groups according to what their
body parts looked like. Both Charles Darwin and Swedish scientist, von Linnaeus agreed that
people should be put in the ‘plant eater’ group, not the ‘meat eater’ group. Darwin
ascertained that ancient humans were fundamentally vegetarian, and von Linnaeus said
somewhere that:
“Man’s structure, external and internal,
compared with that of the other animals,
shows that fruit and succulent vegetables
constitute his natural food.”
Basic Comparative Anatomy of Eating
Carnivore
Omnivore
Herbivore
Has strong, curved claws Sharp claws
Flattened nails or blunt
hooves
No pores on skin;
Perspires
Perspires through pores
perspires through tongue through pores
on skin
to cool body
on skin
Sharp, pointed front teeth Short, pointed
Broad, flattened, spade
to tear flesh
front teeth
shaped front teeth
Human
Flattened nails
Perspires through
pores on skin
Broad, flattened,
spade shaped front
teeth
27
No digestive enzyme
(amylase) in the saliva;
food is gulped quickly
down.
Acid saliva
No digestive
enzyme in
saliva
Salivary glands release
enzyme to start
digestion of food while
chewing it. Alkaline
saliva
No flat, back molar teeth
to grind food
Flat, back molar
teeth to grind
food
pH 1 or less
with food in
stomach
Flat, back molar teeth
to grind food
Much strong
hydrochloric acid in
stomach to digest tough
animal muscle, bone, etc.
pH 1 or less with food in
stomach
Stomach is 60% - 70% of Stomach is 60%
total volume of digestive - 70% of total
tract
volume of
digestive tract
Intestinal tract 3 to 6
Intestinal tract 4
times body length so
to 6 times body
rapidly decaying meat
length
can pass out of body
quickly
Colon is simple, short &
smooth
Can open mouth very
wide compared to head
size
Incisor teeth short &
pointed
Canine teeth long, sharp
& curved
Molars sharp, jagged
edged
Don’t chew, swallow
food whole
Digestive enzyme
released from
salivary glands
while food is
chewed. Alkaline
saliva
Flat, back molar
teeth to grind food
Stomach acid 20 times
weaker than meat eaters
pH 4 – 5 with food in
stomach
Stomach acid 20
times weaker than
meat eaters
pH 4 – 5 with food
in stomach
Stomach is less than
30% of total volume of
digestive tract
Stomach is 21% 27% of total volume
of digestive tract
Intestinal tract 10 to 12
times body length
(plant foods decay
slowly so can take their
time to pass through the
body)
Colon is simple, Colon is long, complex
short & smooth & may have sac-like
expansions
Cannot open
Cannot open mouth so
mouth so wide
wide compared to head
compared to
size
head size
Broad, flat,
Broad, flat, spade
spade shaped
shaped
Blunt, short (or Blunt, short (or long for
long for
defense) or none
defense) or
none
Sharp blades
Flattened with cusps
&/or flattened
and complex surfaces
Crushes food or Chew extensively
swallows it
whole
Intestinal tract 10 to
11 times body
length
Colon is long, with
sac-like expansions
Cannot open mouth
so wide compared
to head size
Broad, flat, spade
shaped
Short & blunt
Flattened with
nodular cusps
Chew extensively
Ignoring these differences
is one of the main reasons every city in Australia
has more sick people than our hospitals can handle.
28
Fish
About 140 billion kilos of fish are caught each year from all oceans. Australians eat over 206
million kilos of seafood each year. (Bohm, 2008) Fish can’t reproduce fast enough to keep up
with this and their numbers are declining. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation
estimates that 70% of the world's fisheries are now fully exploited (i.e. fished to the point
where they can only just replenish themselves), overexploited or depleted. The majority of
fish populations have been reduced by 70-95%, (depending on the species), compared to the
level they would be at if there were no fishing at all. In other words, only five per cent of
some fish species are left.
The collapse of the North Atlantic cod population left 40,000 workers jobless overnight. The
ocean off Newfoundland was once so full of cod that explorer John Cabot marvelled in 1497
that they virtually blocked his ship. For more than a century before the mid-1950s northern
cod had yielded an overall annual catch of about 250,000 tons. Fishers from all over the
world fished there, and the catch began falling. In order to catch more fish from dwindling
populations, industrial-strength fishing trawlers (like the Margiris/Able Tasman) were built.
Such trawlers drag up whole schools of fish and anything else in the way, inflicting immense
damage to immature target and non-target fish and the benthic (bottom-dwelling) community.
The trawlers were not only destroying critical habitat, but they also contributed to
destabilizing the ecosystem of the northern cod. By the time Canada's Fisheries Minister John
Crosbie closed the northern cod fishery in July 1992 and threw 40,000 Canadians out of their
$500 million a year industry, decades of over-fishing had wiped out the cod population and
virtually emptied one of the most bountiful areas of the Atlantic.
It was a similar story with Snapper according to the USA Environmental Defense Fund.
Throughout most of the 1960s, growing numbers of fishermen plied the Gulf of Mexico to
bring in record catches of red snapper - the area's most economically important reef fish hauling in up to 14 million pounds a year. By1967 catches started declining. By 1980 the
average catch was reduced to six million pounds and the size of individual fish shrank, even
as fishers worked harder and their incomes fell.
Starting in 1984, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council tried to stem the decline
of red snapper stocks through a series of measures, such as restricting the size of fish allowed
to be caught; instituting closures at certain times of the year; putting a limit on total annual
catches; limiting the number of commercial licenses and the number of fish caught per trip.
Yet despite those efforts, the red snapper fishery has still not rebounded. (EDF, 2006) These
are the same measures the Australian Fisheries Management Authority is taking to try to keep
the Australian fishing industry going.
A key finding in the 1996 State of the Environment Report found that most Australian
fisheries stocks were fully fished with little room for further development. (ABS, 2003)
Catches of a number of fish species has been declining since the late 1980s, and the problem
is that the loss of a few key species has the potential to destroy whole ecosystems. The
European Union was once in Australia’s position as far as its fish populations. In the 1970s,
three quarters of Europe’s fisheries were in a healthy or slightly at risk state, (fully fished,
like Australia now) but today European fisheries are at risk of widespread collapse. (Sample,
2008)
29
The coastal stock of bottom-dwelling fish is a quarter of what it was 25 years ago. Scientists
say the sea’s ecological balance has shifted as species lower on the food chain replace the
ones who used to be above them till we ate them. A 2002 report by the European
Commission found that the most marketable fish species off the coast of Senegal, Africa,
were sliding toward extinction.
Fish on the South African Red List(SASSI, 2010)
Baardman
Banded galjoen
Blacktail
Brindle bass
Bronze bream
Carpenter
Catshark, striped
Dageraad
Galjoen
Garrick
Geelbek
Jacopever
Janbruin
Kingfish
Knifejaw
Kob, Dusky
Kob
Musselcracker, Black
Musselcracker, White
Natal
Pompano
Pompano, Southern
Potato bass
River bream
River snapper
Rockcod, White-edged
Rockcod,
Sawfish
Scotsman
Seventy-four seabream Skates
Soupfin shark
Spotted grunter
Spotted gulley shark
Springer
Steenbras, Red
Steenbras, Red
Steenbras, White
Stumpnose, Cape
Stumpnose, Natal
Stumpnose, Red
Tuna, Albacore
Tuna, Bluefin
30
Other endangered fish include:
Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnusmaccoyii)
Atlantic Bluefin Tuna
Grey mackerel (Scomberomorussemifasciatus)
Snapper (also called Red Bream)
Eastern Blue Groper
Western Blue Groper
Flakeis another name for all kinds of shark. The gummy shark is the one most eaten. The
International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists 77 species of sharks from round
Australia as threatened or near threatened with extinction. It’s easy to see why. Globally,
about 50 to 75 million sharks are caught every year. (Winkle, 2008). Here’s just a few of the
endangered ones:
Gummy shark (Mustelusantarcticus)
School shark, (also called Snapper Shark, or Tope) Galeorhinusgaleus
Elephant fish (Callorhinchusmilii)
Whiskery shark (Furgaleusmacki)
Saw shark (any of several Pristiophorus species)
Various dog sharks (FamilySqualidae)
Wobbegong (Orectolobusmaculatus)
Silver Shark (Balantiocheilosmelanopterus)
Also on the endangered list are the following: (alternative names are bracketed)
Blue Warehou (Trevally, Sea Bream, Silver Trevally, White Trevally, Snotty Trevally)
Broadbill Swordfish
Barramundi (Giant perch)
Skate
Commercial Scallop (Tasmanian Scallop, Southern Scallop)
Eastern Gemfish (Hake, King Couta, Silver Kingfish)
Orange Roughy - Hoplostethusatlanticus (Deep Sea Perch, Sea Perch)
Ocean Trout (Rainbow trout or Sea Trout)
Yellow-tail Kingfish (Kingfish)
Mulloway (Jewfish)
Oreas (Deep Sea Dory, Spotted Dory, Dory) – deep sea, slow growing species which are
particularly vulnerable to overfishing and are caught using destructive deep sea floor
trawl gear.)
Redfish (Nannygai, Red Snapper)
Silver Trevally (Silver Bream, White Trevally)
Rays (Boneless Fillet, Stingray Flaps, White fillet)
Siberian Sturgeon (Acipenserbaeriibaerii)
Alabama Sturgeon (Scaphirhynchussuttkusi)
Chinese Paddlefish (Psephurusgladius)
Alabama Shad (Alosaalabamae)
Clanwilliam Redfin (Barbuscalidus)
Wild Common Carp (Cyprinuscarpio)
Dover sole
Plaice
Atlantic halibut
31
Monkfish
Marlin
Huss
Torres Strait rock lobster
Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry notes that there was a decline
in albacore catch rates along the east coast of Australia from Cape York to Tasmania in 2007.
The 2009 troll albacore catch (2,027 metric tons) was the lowest since 1986, apparently
because of poor catches in New Zealand fisheries.
The Australian Government’s Trends in Fishery Status Reports, 2004 to 2008, has an awful
lot of ????’s under the column marked ‘Overfished’. Then there’s the 2008 Exploitation
Status of Key Species report put out by the New South Wales Department of Primary
Industries. It shows that for the great majority of fish species caught in Australian waters, no
one actually knows how many are left. Their ‘exploitation status’ is defined as ‘uncertain’.
(NSW DPI, 2008)
Fifty years ago only coastal seas to a depth of 50 metres were fished. Today’s fishing grabs
what it can from the entire ocean to depths over 200 metres. Put simply, we are sucking the
oceans dry, with little or no understanding of the dangers of ecosystem collapse, nor what
sustainable fishing means in practice. We just don’t know what’s really going on down there
under the water.
Most studies of the effect of climate change on Earth’s oceans say that it will further reduce
marine populations. But as a result of heavy marketing, since 1991 consumers have been
programmed to buy seafood from supermarkets. The supermarket sector’s share of the fresh
fish trade has doubled (from 16% to 32%). (Australian Government Fisheries Research &
Development Corporation, 2006) Average weekly sales in Melbourne supermarkets jumped
almost 400% to about $3,000 per supermarket. Safeway Supermarket at Eltham in Melbourne
can sell about $13,000 of seafood a week.
How smart is it
to keep encouraging fish for human consumption
while fish populations are crashing?
The mass fish deaths that have been occurring around the world are a sign of things going
seriously wrong in their environment. Globally, fish are under immense survival pressures
from the following:
Destruction of their breeding grounds: Mangroves at Spencer Gulf, Port Pirie, South
Australia are contending with heavy industry and chemical pollution. It’s the same at Port
Curtis in Queensland. In fact it’s the same all over the world. Only 8% of Australia's
mangroves are in protected areas. Two thirds of our planet’s coral reefs (where fish also
breed) are severely damaged.
Ocean pollution: Apart from the regular oil spills, about 80% of the 70,000 different
toxins detected in the seas come from what people are doing on the land. Toxins include:PCB’s (Polychlorinated biphenyls); dioxins, DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane);
PBDE’s (Polybrominateddiphenylethers) from flame retardants used in plastics, foams,
32
fabrics and other materials; methylmercury, and other heavy metals such as mercury (Hg),
cadmium (Cd), arsenic (As), chromium (Cr), thallium (Tl), and lead (Pb).
The following have all been found in fish that people eat: Methylmercury (an organic chemical that forms naturally in sediments. Mining
activity can release it into waterways. It reacts with protein and stays in bodily
tissues);
 Polychlorinated Biphenyls (as found in transformer fluids, lubricants and hydraulic
fluids - stored in body fat);
 Dioxins (produced from a mixture of chemicals, and from incineration of chemicals
containing chlorine - stored in fatty tissue);
 Chlordane (used for termite control - stored in fatty tissue);
 The DDT group (a pesticide, now banned, but still lingering in the environment stored in fatty tissue);
 And dieldrin (organic pesticide, now banned but still hanging around - stored in fatty
tissue). (OEHHA, 2007)
Fertilizer tend to end up in our oceans. In the sea it acts the same way it does on land – it
makes plants grow. One set of marine plants it makes grow are phytoplanktons. Once
fertilised they produce great areas of ‘blooms’ of themselves. Just like land plants, they
absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen during photosynthesis. But they are short lived
little things, and when they die they fall like autumn leaves to the bottom of the sea. Their
bodies then become a feast for bacteria (just like autumn leaves are broken down by bugs in
the soil in your garden.)
But these bacteria use oxygen and release carbon dioxide. And the result of fertiliser run-off
encouraging far too much growth of phytoplankton is that the resulting feasts by the bacteria
on the bottom of the sea uses up too much oxygen. The bottom of the sea ends up with not
enough oxygen to support any life except the bacteria. Whatever was living there and
couldn’t swim away dies. Off shore from the mouths of major rivers around the world are
perfect sites for this to happen, and there are now about 400 dead zones in our oceans.
Bacterial activity in these dead zones releases nitrous oxide and toxic hydrogen sulphide into
our air. The nitrous oxide drifting into the high atmosphere gets bathed in sunlight, and this
causes it to break down into nitrogen dioxide. Nitrogen dioxide is a key player in destroying
the ozone layer. (Science Alert, 2009)
Another contributor to these zones is burning fossil fuels. This releases nitrogen into the air,
which drifts out to sea, drops into the water with rain and fertilizes the phytoplankton. The
largest dead zone to date, (off shore from the Mississippi River delta in America) covers
about 21,000 square kilometres. Some scientists estimate there may be about 152,887 square
kilometres of dead zones all up. Fish that are reluctant to leave their favourite spots where the
oxygen is low end up with low spawning rates and reduced egg counts.
Warming waters:
33
Average ocean temperature in Celsius from 1880 to 2010
(L. David Roper, Professor Emeritus of Physics, Virginia Polytechnic & State University)
Fish, coral reefs, phytoplankton and just about everything else in the ocean (even the
currents) are sensitive to temperature changes. It’s a hard job to sort out the tangled web of
cause and effect, but people who study the waters of Earth have noticed that more and more
fish are becoming smaller (even when mature).
Ocean Acidification
Because CO2 is converted to carbonic acid in seawater, our oceans are now becoming acidic.
Oceanographer Ken Caldeira (from the Carnegie Institution of Washington),estimates that
even hundreds of years into the future our oceans will still be more acidic than they ever have
been in the past 300 million years.
Like you and I, oceans function best when they’re alkaline, and, just like you and I, they
malfunction when they get too acidic. Marinesnails and the microscopic critters who
construct coral reefs are now having difficulty trying to build their hard parts, which are
mostly calcium carbonate – which dissolves in mild acid. Sea snails are an important part of
the food chain. Several marine creatures, including one of the planktons that whales feed on
are being given a hard time by this acidification. Oysters and all marine organisms with shells
might also be having difficulty. Given the decline of fish populations and the state of the
oceans it would seem advisable to allow as many fish as possible an opportunity to survive.
The focus on sustainable fishing
should change from sustaining the fishing industry
to sustaining the fish.
The best way to do this is to stop fishing.
Fish Oil
Between 20 to 100 kg of wild fish are killed for every litre of fish oil manufactured. About 50
billion kilos of fish a year is processed into fish oil. The fish get the nutrients we want from
34
their oil from the algae that they eat. We can get the same health benefits/nutrients or better if
we eat the algae, and let the fish live to reproduce. Also, algae, being lower on the food chain,
contain fewer toxins than fish.
Fish farm managers can see that there are more and more fish farms and less and less wild
fish to supply them. They know how many wild fish are used to make one litre of fish oil. So
now we come to the weird part. They sell their manufactured fish by saying what a wonderful
source of Omega 3 they are. But because they are trying to reduce their reliance on wild fish
to feed their fish, they feed their fish vegetable oils which are rich in Omega 3, to fill their
fish with this nutrient. Then they say that their fish is the best source of Omega 3. People can
also eat vegetable oils to get Omega 3.
Many of the pollutants found in fish are stored in the fatty tissue that fish oils are made from.
Fatty fish (like mackerel, lake trout, herring, sardines, albacore tuna, and salmon) are the ones
recommended for eating to get marine Omega 3. You can get the recommended daily
allowance by eating such fish twice a week. But, Isabelle Sioen (in The Nutritional
Toxicological Conflict Related to Seafood Consumption,) discovered that if you eat fatty fish
three times a week, you are likely to exceed your recommended daily allowances of the
toxins now found in all marine fish.
Flaxseed and flaxseed oil (also called linseed oil) are rich sources of the essential fatty acid
alpha-linolenic acid, which is a biologic precursor to omega-3 fatty acids. (Mayo Clinic,
2010) Chia seeds, hemp seeds, Canola oil, soy beans, soy bean oil, olive oil, rapeseed oil,
pumpkin seeds, walnuts, broccoli, cabbage and kiwi fruit all contain Omega 3 fatty acid.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine reports that vegan women have more
omega3 fatty acids in their blood than fish-eaters, meat-eaters, and vegetarians who eat dairy
products and eggs. In the large European study done, levels in vegan men were not quite as
high as in vegan women. But all the vegans had more Omega 3 in their blood even though
they were not eating fish. They had, ‘zero intake of long-chain omega-3s eicosapentaenoic
acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and substantially lower intake of their plantderived precursor alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).’ The vegans were able to metabolise healthy
amounts of shorter-chain fatty acids into these long-chain fatty acids. The study included
14,422 men and women aged 39 to 78. (PCRM, 2010)
Humanity has no biological need to obtain nutrients from fish.
Conclusion
A National Food Policy that maintains the domination of animal foods in Australian food
production will: inflict further harm on our land and marine environment
 continue to reduce the gene pool of Earth
 continue to assist extinction of native plants and animals
 continue inefficient use of water, land and energy resources
 continue the high rates of food poisoning
 continue the high levels of heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, obesity and diabetes
 continue to support feeding high protein grains/legumes to animals instead of starving
people
 fail to take advantage of rapidly expanding knowledge of optimum human nutrition
35
As such it will also fail to achieve its proposed objectives to:1. Maintain and improve the natural resource base underpinning food production in
Australia
2. Contribute to global food security
3. Reduce barriers to a safe and nutritious food supply that responds to the evolving
preferences and needs of all Australians and supports population health
4. Identify and mitigate potential risks to Australia's food security
Recommendations:
1.
If slaughtered livestock are not replaced, the billions of tree seeds in Australia’s
millions of hectares of grazing lands (seeds in the soil are often viable for over 50
years) will be able to grow instead of being trampled or eaten. This will automatically
reforest our country within about eight years. This reforestation will assist the survival
of our remaining wildlife, absorb CO2 and help stabilize our climate. Reducing the
severity of climate change will assist in food production. Ex-graziers could earn
carbon credits on their automatically grown trees.
2.
Encourage animal food producers to move into plant food production or newly
developing sustainability industries. Subsidies for animal food producers can be
directed toward helping them do this.
3.
Reducing the national herds of cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens will automatically help
clean our rivers of animal excretions and eroded soil, thereby providing higher quality
water for crops and people.
4.
Encourage more people to understand the health risks of animal foods, and the health
benefits of plant foods. The National Food Policy needs to incorporate new
knowledge of optimum human nutrition.
5.
To help feed more people (especially those under economic stress) council green
areas (parks, footpath edges, and suburban streets) could have fruit or nut trees.
Parsley could be used as a border plant.
6.
To reduce the toxic pollution of our environment, encourage organic, chemical free
plant food growing.Encourage supermarkets to run training schemes to assist their
animal product suppliers to start producing alternative products?
Nutri-Tech Solutions Pty Ltd (http://www.nutri-tech.com.au/) is an Australian
company based in Yandina, Queensland and a world leader in organic sustainable
farming technology. They worked with Woolworths in South Africa, and as a result,
this supermarket has told its suppliers that they will only accept produce from farmers
who grow organically and sustainably. Nutri-Tech and Woolworths together ran
36
educational courses to show their suppliers how to farm organically. This sort of thing
could be expanded on. Offering such courses could open a whole new area of
enterprise in Australia.
7.
Help fishermen convert from fishing into tourism, for example scuba diving or
adventure holidays. Fishermen could link up with coastal resorts to gain customers
and so benefit both the resort and themselves. The boats could also be rented out as
expensive holiday homes.
8.
When estimating the value of animal food industries to the national economy, factor
in the costs.
Charles Darwin once said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most
intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
37
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52
National Food Plan Submissions
PO Box 942
Broadway NSW 2007
Shannon Merika
Independent Researcher
18/13 Low Street
Yandina 4561
QLD
26 September 2012
Response to Consultation Questions from the Green Paper
Chapter 1 – A National Food Plan for Australia
Question:
1.1 Do you agree with the possible overall approach outlined in this green paper
to create a more strategic, better integrated and transparent approach to food
policy?
Answer:
“a more strategic, better integrated and transparent approach to food
Policy”, is a great idea. However so long as the Plan includes continued support for animal
food industries it fails on a number of points.
Chapter 3 – Australia’s food policy framework
Question:
3.1 Do you agree with the proposed outcome and objectives outlined in this green paper to
guide the Australian Government’s development of food-related policy and stakeholder
consultation mechanisms?
Answer:
Yes. But these outcomes cannot be met by supporting animal food industries.
3.2 The Australian Government is seeking feedback on a number of alternatives to improve
leadership and stakeholder engagement on food policy issues. These alternatives are set
out in Section 3.4.1.
Question:
Do you have a preference for a particular alternative or a specific suggestion for another
mechanism that would provide better leadership, coordination and stakeholder engagement
on food policy issues in Australia?
Answer:
The preference is for:- “establishing an Australian Food Council, comprising relevant
Australian Government ministers and representatives of agriculture, fisheries and food
businesses together with health, community and consumer representatives to consider longterm strategic challenges and opportunities for Australia’s food system.”
The health representatives would need to include representatives from the alternative health
sector. This is because they often have a far deeper knowledge of diet and nutrition than
mainstream medical practitioners, who receive almost no training in nutrition. The powerful
voice of animal food industries would need to be balanced by including representatives from
vegetarian societies and environmental groups. The Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine has a wealth of knowledge the Australian government could use, so do
Naturopaths.
Chapter 4 – Australia’s food security
Question:
4.1 Do you agree with the analysis that, broadly speaking, Australia is food secure? If not,
why not? Please be specific and provide evidence to justify your position. What additional
data could the government draw on to measure Australia’s food security?
Definition of food security:
“when all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and
nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life
Answer:
Yes, few people in Australia go hungry for long.
And no. Millions of cases of food poisoning a year, obesity, cancer, strokes, heart attacks,
diabetes are all closely associated with animal derived foods.
Physical access to meet dietary needs and preferences: The growing vegetarian and vegan
community in Australia; and the growing health-conscious, aware consumer still has very
little access to the wide range of meat alternatives which are so readily available to our Asian
neighbours. There are vegetarian/vegan versions of steak, ham, chicken, prawn, fish and
pork, but at present it is generally only Asian supermarkets which sell them (at a high price)
in Australia. A whole new sector of the food industry awaits development here.
Economic access: As for our hungry poor - people generally eat the foods they know about.
Every cooking show on TV promotes the consumption of animal foods. Because plant-based
diets are healthier and cheaper, it would be useful to encourage cooking shows to present
plant-based recipes.
For example, a kilo of brown rice (or other grain/legume) is far less expensive than a kilo of
meat, and makes more meals. With some vegetables added, it feeds more people high quality
nutrition for less money. Educating the public on the economic and health benefits of the
plant-based diet would assist Australia’s food security.
Community food gardens in cities and suburbs are a great way to cheaply feed people, and
create a feeling of community. Hobart has plum trees along its suburban footpaths. These
provide free food. Brisbane has some tamarind trees on some of its streets and a mulberry
tree in a Newmarket park. Councils could plant more fruit and nut trees on public spaces, and
set aside space in public parks for vegetable and herb gardens. This has social as well as
financial benefits. The rooftops of city skyscrapers could provide vegetables and herbs for the
workers inside.
Safe food for a healthy life: Most food-borne illness comes from animal foods. Promotion of
plant foods ensures a higher degree of safety in foods. Plant foods also offer a wider range
and higher grade of nutrition than animal foods. For example, the only reason fish have
Omega 3 is that they eat the algae that actually have it – ie fish get their Omega 3 from
plants. We can too.
The Green Paper mentions that one reason Australia is food secure is that 59% of our country
is used for agriculture. However most of that is used for livestock grazing. This use damages
our soil, obliterates native plants and animals, pollutes our water and creates greenhouse
gases – that’s not security. An enhanced national coordination and analysis of land use data,
and data on the effects on the land of that use would show this.
Question:
4.2 The Australian Government is seeking feedback on the option of working with state and
territory governments and the food industry to develop strategies to mitigate risks and
maintain continuity of the food supply in a major emergency.
Answer:
Not qualified to provide input to this topic.
Section 4.5 of Chapter 4 outlines some options.
Question:
Do you support these options?
Answer:
Yes.
Question:
Do you have specific suggestions for other options or strategies?
Answer:
Not qualified to provide input to this topic.
Appendix 2
Consultation questions
National Food Plan green paper 257
Appendix 2 – Consultation questions
Question:
4.3 Do you agree with the analysis of the factors that contribute to individual food security?
Answer:
Yes.
Question:
Do you support the approaches outlined? Do you have specific suggestions for other options
or strategies?
Answer:
See 4.1 answers above.
Chapter 5 – Safe and nutritious food
5.1. The Australian Government has strategies, policies and programs in place to:
 ensure all Australians have access to a safe and nutritious food supply
 support healthy lifestyles
 reformulate foods, improve food labelling and educate consumers
 improve nutritional outcomes for Indigenous Australians
 provide a comprehensive and effective food safety regulatory environment
 build capacity to control known and emerging food safety risks.
This green paper provides details of these initiatives and outlines the Australian
Government’s future policy directions, including the development of a national nutrition
policy.
Question:
Are there additional issues the government should focus on in its future policy directions?
What factors should the government consider in developing new, and reviewing existing,
polices and programs?
Answer:
The national nutrition policy should not be formulated predominantly by the animal food
industries. They already have a major impact on the diet of Australians through their links
with the Dieticians Association of Australia, their advertorials in medical journals, their
massive advertising programs, their huge supermarket presence and their influence on TV
cooking shows.
Naturopaths are trained in the fine details of human nutrition and places like the Southern
School of Naturopathy in Melbourne could be asked to help formulate the national nutrition
policy. So could the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
Chapter 6 – A competitive and productive food industry
6.1 This green paper sets out the government’s proposed approach for supporting
productivity growth and global competitiveness in the food industry, which includes: a
market-based policy approach; ongoing reforms to improve biosecurity and help industry
adapt to climate change and drought; fostering and investing in innovation; building human
capability and a skilled workforce; better regulation along the supply chain; effective
competition laws; and broader infrastructure investments and regulatory reforms.
Question:
Are there gaps or deficiencies in this proposed approach?
Answer:
When the foundations are weak the entire structure is unstable. The foundation of your entire
National Food Plan is to expand animal food industries. This is a fundamental weakness in
everything else you plan.
productivity growth means increasing national herds and meat production
global competitiveness means pushing Australian animal foods into Asian markets
market-based policy approach means using the fact that the animal food industries are
presently the biggest money spinners to keep it that way
improve biosecurity means trying to stem the tide of diseases coming from animal processing
industries
adapt to climate change means almost nothing if animal food industries are maintained
broader infrastructure means new abattoirs at ports closer to Asia and upgraded roads/rails to
transport livestock
6.2 The government is seeking to increase the value of Australia’s food exports from across
the supply chain, including the value-added component.
Question:
a) Do you think that a target of doubling the value of our food exports by 2030 is achievable?
If not, what target would be?
Answer:
Yes.
Question:
b) How could this be achieved in a market-driven economy like Australia? What would
government and business need to do?
Answer:
Keep doing what you are doing.
Question:
c) What would be the costs and benefits of these actions?
Answer:
Costs: If you keep animal food industries dominant in your trade deals, you will foster ill
health in people and livestock, environmental degradation, wast of resources, plant and
animal extinctions, water pollution and GHG production.
Benefits: A few people will make a lot of money.
258 National Food Plan green paper
Appendix 2 – Consultation questions
6.3 The use of new technology in food products is likely to be increasingly important in
Australia and around the world, helping to meet evolving desires and needs of sophisticated
consumers and ensuring an adequate global supply of food for a growing population.
However, some people are concerned about new technology despite substantial regulatory
arrangements to manage any potential risks.
Question:
What should governments, businesses, peak associations and consumers be doing in response
to this trend?
Answer:
Irradiation of foods, genetic manipulation, corporate patenting/ownership of food seeds are
resisted by the general public who know about them.
Businesses are already cashing in on the publics need for clean, natural food.
Peak associations involved in the above manipulations of food could have government
funding directed into creating more natural foods.
Government could listen to and support the public instead of the corporations.
6.4 One option to increase agricultural productivity to help the sector meet future export
growth opportunities and challenges, such as increasing productivity growth in a changing
climate, is to increase rural R&D investments over a number of years. This would be in
addition to continually seeking better ways to increase the overall benefits of this investment.
Question:
a) Is this the best way to help the agricultural sector meet the challenges and opportunities of
the coming decades? Why/why not?
Answer: Based on the way research is presently used, it would seem not. Livestock/fish
under research are being treated as if they were not living beings at all – merely production
units. This form of research degrades the researchers as well as the animals.
Question:
b) What would be the costs and benefits of this approach?
Answer:
Costs: Researchers sink to profound moral depths by their treatment of the subjects of their
research.
Benefits: More money for some people.
Question:
c) How could any additional investment be targeted to achieve the greatest overall benefit to
Australia?
Answer:
Research optimum human nutrition. Advances in this field are being ignored by the
dominance of animal derived products. Plants provide superior nutrition to humans, but you’d
never know this from what is happening in rural R&D today.
Question:
6.5 The Australian Government is interested in identifying and evaluating future regulatory
reform opportunities. How could food industry stakeholders best help to achieve this? What
do you believe are the merits (costs and benefits) of the possible options in section 6.7.4?
Answer:
Not qualified to answer.
6.6 One way for food businesses to add value is through increased quality, such as high
product standards, new traits or nutritional attributes. Governments in Australia generally
adopt little or no role in regulating quality, except where required for public health reasons.
Question:
a) What opportunities are there for businesses to add value through quality attributes?
Answer:
It is becoming easier to change animals genetically in order to fit market specifications (even
when such specifications result from advertising rather than spontaneous consumer demand).
As such there are many opportunities to add unnatural ‘value’ to animal products.
Question:
b) Is there a role for government to encourage this or remove barriers such as regulation?
(please explain/elaborate).
Answer:
Not qualified to answer.
National Food Plan green paper 259
Appendix 2 – Consultation questions
6.7 The Australian Government welcomes further specific feedback about particular
regulations that significantly affect food businesses, by imposing direct and/or indirect costs
and by limiting commercial opportunities.
a) Where possible, information would be appreciated about: the specific regulations of
concern; the nature and size of the impost (time, cost and lost business opportunities);
possible ways to improve the regulation and the likely benefits and beneficiaries; and the
most important benefits of those regulations.
b) Are there any areas in which stakeholders feel improved regulation is needed to help the
market function properly?
6.8 Competition issues are canvassed in the green paper. Generally speaking there is evidence
that competition can benefit consumers in various ways, including placing downward
pressure on prices and encouraging innovation and greater choice.
a) What are considered to be some of the regulatory or structural barriers to competition in
the food industry?
b) How could the operation of the industry’s voluntary Produce and Grocery Industry Code
of Conduct be improved?
c) What would a regulatory approach such as a mandatory code and/or supermarket
ombudsman achieve over and above current arrangements (bearing in mind that any
investigation would need to be based on a complaint)?
d) How might the projected growth of private label products affect competition within the
food industry, either positively or negatively? Who do you consider will be affected and in
what way?
6.9 The government is seeking feedback on the possibility of building the evidence base on
food industry trends and market changes. This could aim to inform private and public sector
decision making, including for infrastructure planning and future food industry needs. This
could help ensure Australia has adequate resources in place to support food sector growth.
Question:
Are you aware of any critical information gaps, particularly about growth opportunities such
as in Asia? How could these gaps be addressed, and if they were, how might this help
planning?
Answer:
The Australian Bureau of Statistics and the National Census could gather information about
how many people were vegetarian or vegan, and on what amount of animal foods they
included in their average diet. This could encourage development of an industry in Australia
to produce more vegetarian ‘meats’. Every kind of meat on the market today has its
vegetarian or vegan counterpart. However almost all such products sold in Australia today are
imported from Asia. Since Asia has millions of vegetarians, there is a large market for
innovations in such products to be made in Australia and sold in Asia and Australia.
260 National Food Plan green paper
Chapter 7 – A strong natural resource base
7.1 Pressure to increase food production in coming years, in response to increased demand
from a growing global population, could place additional stress on Australia’s natural
resource base.
Question:
What further initiatives could the government consider to encourage sustainable farming and
fishing practices that balance economic, social and environmental benefits?
Answer:
Reduce animal food industries, increase plant food industries and research value added
opportunities for plant based products. Stop fishing.
7.2 Australian society places high expectations on the environmental and social responsibility
of Australia’s food industry, although this is not always reflected in purchasing behaviour.
Question:
What is preventing markets from encouraging (via price signals) the food industry’s
responsible management of the production base?
Answer:
Animal food industries sustain full-on marketing and advertising year round, using every
conceivable means to do so. The majority of consumers/ food business owners are taken in by
this advertising. The only information people receive about the vast amounts of damage such
industries do to the production base is from non commercial, non government, volunteer run
community groups. Because of this and because of government support, animal industries
continue to damage/waste the land/water/energy production base – and the market hears very
little about this.
7.3 This green paper outlines a number of initiatives aimed at reducing food waste across the
food supply chain in Australia.
Question:
What specific further waste management measures could the government consider that would
meet the multiple objectives of increasing food security, providing healthier diets, improving
environmental performance and addressing climate effects?
Answer:
Support local farmer’s markets by expanding their numbers, encourage local councils to put
food plants in public spaces. Each new building could have a food growing area incorporated
with it.
Chapter 8 – Food trade and market access
8.1 The Australian Government is seeking to expand its food trade relationships in Asia over
the medium to long term. This will require access to markets and a reduction in trade
barriers for food exports. This objective could be pursued in a number of ways, including
through further free trade agreements, strengthening Australia’s agricultural counsellor
network, as well as pursuing improvements to the multilateral rules-based trading system.
a) What could government and business do to expand food trade opportunities with Asia?
b) What kind of benchmark should Australia aim for? For example, should we seek to double
our food exports to Asia by 2050?
c) How could this be achieved, and what would be the costs and benefits of doing so?
d) Which further countries in the Asian region should Australia seek to pursue
trade agreements with?
Appendix 2 – Consultation questions
National Food Plan green paper 261
8.2 The Australian Government proposes to continue to improve coordination of market
intelligence across government and food export businesses to improve market access,
address technical trade barriers and strategically position the Australian food industry to
exploit potential trade opportunities.
a) What specific mechanisms should the government consider to achieve this outcome?
b) How would you foster greater cooperation and coordination between industry and
government to improve Australian market access for foods?
8.3 The government is developing a white paper on Australia in the Asian Century. It is
anticipated increased productivity and wealth in Asia will result in increased demand for high
value foods.
Question:
What specific initiatives should the government consider to ensure Australian food exporters
participate fully in these emerging opportunities?
Answer:
Meet the needs of the millions of vegetarians in Asia by providing vegetarian meats that they
love so much. Australia could examine the wide range of vegetarian meats readily available
in Asia and come up with new versions of this range of products.
Chapter 9 – Global food security
9.1 It is in Australia’s national interest to promote global food security. The Australian
Government considers Australia can make the most effective contribution to global food
security by focusing on:
 technology and expertise transfers to developing countries
 trade-related development assistance
 advocacy and support for appropriate policies at the global, regional and national
level
 short-term emergency food assistance
 advocacy and support for internationally agreed measures for the sustainable
management of shared marine living resources
Question:
Do you support the Australian Government’s analysis? If not, what are the key gaps? Please
be specific and provide evidence to justify your response.
Answer:
Yes, but…
Australian experts could also inform developing countries of all the problems our animal
food and agrochemical industries are creating, and help them avoid them by concentrating on
assisting them to develop organic plant farming. The same degree of money, time and
research effort that goes into maximizing animal food and agrochemical industries could be
put into maximizing returns from organic plant farming in developing countries.
As for sustainable management of marine foods; the most sustainable approach is to stop
fishing. Vegetarian fish is available.