Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, Senator Kamala Harris, says Americans need to be educated about the impact that meat production has on the planet.
She has said that, although she does enjoy the occasional cheeseburger, the U.S. government needs to create incentives for Americans to make more environmentally-friendly decisions with their food.
“I love cheeseburgers from time to time, I just do,” she said. “But there has to be also what we do in terms of creating incentives that we will eat in a healthy way, that we will encourage moderation, and that we will be educated about the effect of our eating habits on our environment.
“We have to do a much better job with that and the government has to do a much better job with that,” she continued. She added that she would support changing the U.S. dietary guidelines to reduce the recommended intake of red meat specifically.
Meat production has a detrimental impact on the environment. The ongoing Amazonian fires were caused by cattle farmers clearing land for beef production. There has also been a massive loss of life and homes in the California fires that are burning out of control. Animal agriculture emits high levels of greenhouse gases. Last year, the United Nations Environment Programme named tackling meat consumption as the world’s most urgent problem.
“Meat is an extraordinarily expensive thing to produce from an environmental sustainability point of view.”
Harris isn’t the only high profile politician who has addressed the climate crisis and meat consumption. Fellow Democrat Andrew Yang also agrees that meat is destroying the planet. “[Going vegetarian] is good for the environment, it’s good for your health if you eat less meat,” he has said.
“Certainly, meat is an extraordinarily expensive thing to produce from an environmental sustainability point of view,” he added. “So, I think it would be healthy on both an individual and societal level for us to move in that direction.”
Original source: https://www.livekindly.co