Is eating lots of meat bad for the environment?

Question: Is eating lots of meat bad for the environment?
- Keywords:
  environment,
  food
Asked by anon-224267 to Stuart, Scott, Lisa, Jack, Caragh, Alex on 12 Nov 2019.
- Jack Saunders answered on 12 Nov 2019:
  
  As I’m sure you know, meat comes from animals. These animals have to be kept in big farms, and this is what is bad for the environment. Keeping these farms running, and keeping the animals fed and healthy enough to eat is very bad for the environment.
  
  Eating a lot of meat is bad for the environment, if we reduce the amount of meat we eat then we can reduce the amount of animals that are needed and reduce the environmental impact of the meat.
- Caragh Whitehead answered on 14 Nov 2019:
  
  Yes it is damaging to the environment to eat lots of meat. This is because large amount of land is needed to keep the animals on as well as energy to keep the barns warm. They also need to be given food which is grown on more land. Growing this food takes energy as well the addition of things like fertilizer and pesticides which can be harmful to the environment. The animals themselves also produce methane gas which adds to the amount of greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere that affects global warming.
- Alex Batchelor answered on 14 Nov 2019:
  
  Adding to what Caragh said. It takes a lot of land to raise animals which can lead to farmers needing to clear forests to make space to farm their animals. This is happening a lot in places like Brazil where farmers are cutting down the Amazon rain forest so they can raise cows. Forests are one of the best ways to fight climate change because the trees absorb carbon dioxide so it doesn’t end up in the atmosphere. So not only are the farms producing carbon dioxide, they often remove trees that are storing it, which is doubly bad for the environment.

Question: Is eating lots of meat bad for the environment?

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