January 30th, 2007
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Eat less meat!

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Recently working on a documentary for RTHK about meat (over)consumption. The program will be broadcasted on Monday, 29 January at TVB Jade Channel. You can view it online concurrently or afterwards, and welcome to make comments at their forum to raise public concern on the issue! Another post Abandoned Pig tells the story about an abandoned boar in a garbage collection point.

In HK, we eat over 20 million chickens, over 2 million pigs and over 1 million tonnes meat products.

To meet such enomous meat demand, industrial farming is an inevitable solution.

“We used to spend 1 year to raise a pig, now we need only 6 months for a pig to reach 100 kg.” A pig farm operator says some people even use hormones, antibiotics and even steroids to accerate growth.

To further increase productivity, they had “raised pigs in elevated cages, and did not shower them to minimize energy loss.” With less energy loss, pigs will eat less, while meat will grow faster.

Even industrial farm operator are aware of the cons of industrial farming, “Such factory model of production is unfavorable to any animal habitat; animals need space to move around.”

The fate of chicken is as worse.

Chicken farmer said, “In the crowded environment, chicks become more violent. They will hurt others easily if we didn’t burn off their beaks”

3-day old chicks will be underwent such operation. Their heads pressed against a burning red metal, the tip of their beaks vanished instantly with the smoke!

Animal can get sick easier in crowded environment, and diseases spread faster too. The most efficient way to control diseases is using antibiotics. But virus mutate fast too, rendering lots of antibiotics ineffective nowadays,

“I still remember in the 80s, sickness like cold and coughing, respiratory problems or diarrhoea are easily dealt with using just little dosage of antibiotics.
In recent years, not much medicines are still effective. Pig farm operator says.

Organic farmer Hung told us that every 3 kg of animal feeds will only produce 1 kg of meat.

In the 2nd segment, we will take a look at his organic farm, learning how the combination of vegetable and animial farming can create a food chain that make recycling of resources possible.
The gist is to plan our production according to the carrying capacity of land, which required much less consumption if we want more farms to work on that model. The environment of his farm is impressive, so green and comfortable, pig farming could be a green trade!

Globally, 70 % of our farmland are used for raising food animals or producing animal feeds ( UN FAO figures)

“An adult pig will produce 6 kg wastes everyday.” Given the huge amount of food animals, even the simple act of breathing will produce enomous carbon dioxide to elevate global warming.

Globally, 18% of greenhouse gases are relating to animal farming (UN FAO figures).

Are you willing to cut meat consumption knowing their huge ecological footprints? Less meat, more veggie are good for your health too, why not act today?