I think its time I set things straight… I’m a vegetarian (well pescetarian for the most part).
Many people don’t get it (my eastern European family), many people joke about (everyone), some think it’s a fad (my uncle), but I am going to finally explain my lifestyle choice once and for all so that people can stop telling me I’m crazy.
The big question is why I became a vegetarian. It all started when I wrote a blog post about sustainable coffee and in my research I discovered the amount of virtual water that goes into just one cup. During that time I also came across a devastating fact about the virtual water that goes into a burger. First let me clarify what exactly this “virtual water” thing is. According to The Water Footprint Assessment Manual:
Virtual water (also known as embedded or embodied water) refers to the hidden flow of water in food or other commodities when traded from one place to another. The precise volume can be more or less depending on climatic conditions and agricultural practice.
Essentially all the water that is used in the process of making what you’re buying. They call it “virtual” water because you don’t actually consume the water, instead it is consumed within the initial lifecycle of that product or food. Virtual water is divided into three main categories:
Green water: the amount of rainwater that circulates through crops.
Blue water: the volume of surface and ground water required for food production and thus unavailable for other uses.
Grey water: water required to dilute until no longer hazardous contaminants arising from fertilisation and other processes.
The most frightening fact that I have learned in my research is that one pound of beef requires 1,799 gallons of water to produce. And that ladies and gentlemen is the reason I am a vegetarian. Not something most people think about on the daily which is completely understandable. I had no idea myself until I wrote my other blog post.
So you ask; why is producing livestock so water resource intensive? The answer mainly lies in the feed for the livestock, not the livestock itself. There are two main reasons for this, the first is the feed-to-meat ratio, so how much feed is needed for a cow compared to how much meat we actually get from it. For beef, the Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) is 7:1. Let me say that again… 7:1. That’s completely insane. In fact the larger the animal’s body mass, the larger the percentage of inedible mater such as bones and muscles. That’s a lot of water that goes into feeding parts of animals that we’re not even eating. That water is consumed by the feed that is required for the livestock, fertilizers, fuel to power farm machinery, land for farm fields and so forth. Eventually it all adds up. The second reason that livestock is so water resource intensive is the quantity of livestock on our planet. While livestock is estimated to be around 20 billion, there are only 7 billion people. As our population grows, the livestock population grows at a much quicker rate. We’re essentially creating a world where we are in competition with cows for one of our most precious and scarce resources.
One thing to take into consideration is where the livestock is grown. Or anything you eat for that matter. Something grown or raised in a country like Egypt will require three times the water as something grown or raised in Canada due to the extremely hot climate. However, if you were situated in Egypt then the embodied water of a local product, regardless of the high water consumption volume, might actually be less than something produced in Canada that was transported there… it’s tricky, sustainable food is a very situational and geographic thing.
So for this reason, vegetarianism appealed to me. I try to limit my fish and seafood intake to those sustainably farmed or locally caught. How will you know? Typically at restaurants you will see this logo below; it’s the Ocean Wise certification. Ocean Wise is a conservation program that works to prevent over fishing, maintaining sustainably farmed fish and limiting habitat damage. However in general, seafood tends to be on the lower end of the water consumption ladder anyways.
I’ve gotten a thousand and one questions about what it is that I eat then. Well one rule of thumb is to stick to locally grown produce or farmers markets. That way you know that the transportation element is limited and hopefully if it’s from a farmers market, the chemical usage is probably at a minimum. This would limit the chemical filtration process, or the grey water phase I mentioned earlier in the post. I can get further into it in another post, but as always, the closer the better!
Vegetarianism isn’t that bad… I’m almost at a year and it’s one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made.
References:
Meat’s large water footprint: why raising livestock and poultry for meat is so resource-intensive
http://www.wearewater.org/en/wwdlegal
A Response to “Water Footprint Network: International Virtual Water Flows”
Living Sustainably 