6 Reasons Why You Should Reduce Your Meat Consumption

If we want to protect our planet, our health, and the well-being of workers and animals, we need to dramatically reduce our meat consumption.

While the World Animal Protection is not a vegan or vegetarian organisation, we do understand the overwhelmingly positive effect that eating less meat can have for both humans, animals and the environment. Keep reading to find out why.

1. Eating less meat helps to mitigate climate change

Factory farming is one of the leading causes of climate change and deforestation. Factory farms produce more greenhouse gases than all the transportation in the world combined. We can do our part to combat the climate crisis simply by cutting back on the amount of meat we consume. Without doing so, it’ll be nearly impossible to reach the goals set by the Paris Agreement. Even replacing meat with a plant-based protein in one meal per day will make a huge difference.

2. Eating less meat improves your health

Countless studies show multiple health benefits associated with reducing your intake of animal-based proteins and increasing the plant-based proteins in your diet. From reduced cancer rates and heart disease, to an increased overall lifespan, consuming more plant-based foods will improve your own health, and the health and wellbeing of your community.

3. It helps reduce suffering for farmed animals

Of the more than 70 billion animals farmed annually, 50 billion of them spend their lives on factory farms. They are treated more like machines, than living, breathing, sentient animals. These animals endure short, miserable lives and are often confined together in cages, crates or pens which prevents them from engaging in their natural behaviours. Reducing your meat consumption will make a huge difference to the lives of these animals, and free-up resources to help a shift towards farming practices which have a higher level of animal welfare.

4. It protects wildlife

Grazing land and land used to produce feed crops for animals now uses more than one-third of Earth’s landmass. This loss of habitat, means we’re losing critical plant, insect and animal species at alarming rates. By eating less meat you’ll be helping protect endangered wildlife from going the way of the dodo and dinosaurs.

5. It helps fight hunger

There are nearly one billion starving people on the planet. It takes 14.52 kilograms of grain to produce approximately one kilogram of beef. This grain could be used to feed humans, instead of animals. It’s clear as day: reducing your meat consumption will help to alleviate the food poverty associated with factory farming.

6. It’s easy and delicious

Plant-based foods are more delicious and accessible than ever. If you’re on the go, try the Lord of the Fries or the vegan pizza range at Domino’s!

Change starts with you. If we want to protect the planet, our health, workers and animals, we need to dramatically reduce our meat consumption. That means switching to plant-based alternatives. Join the plant protein challenge today!