Note from author

This article first appeared on the Viva la Vegan website on 14th October 2015.

Article

I became vegan in late 2007. The trigger was a two-minute video from Animals Australia, with the title “In defence of mothers“, showing sow stalls used in the pig meat industry. The video opened my eyes to the fact that there was something very wrong in the use of animals as food. I had found it via the website of Vegetarian Victoria (then known as “Vegetarian Network Victoria” or “VNV”), which had appeared in a Google search for vegetarian recipes. I was not vegetarian at the time, but liked to cook vegetarian meals when my turn came to be the family chef.

Vegetarian Victoria turned out to be a great source of information on the relevant issues, including the impacts of the dairy and egg industries, and other forms of animal exploitation.

I suspected that my decision may come as a shock to my family, and felt that a gradual transition may be in order, to be fully implemented by the time of a forthcoming milestone birthday. However, as I read more about the issues, I brought the decision forward, and by then it had changed fundamentally; I was to become vegan.

I knew almost nothing about veganism before that time, but Animals Australia’s video had opened my eyes and caused me to investigate the issues.

From a physical point of view, it was one of the easiest things I have ever done, and I have not missed meat, fish, dairy or egg products for one second in the eight years since. Nutritional information from Vegetarian Victoria assisted at the time, as did its online forum. That was in the pre-Facebook days (it’s hard to imagine now), and rudimentary communication via the forum with other vegans provided great support.

From the VNV site and elsewhere, I also found information on the environmental impacts of animal agriculture. In the same way that I was shocked to realise what we were doing to animals, I was also shocked about the impacts on the planet.

Naively, I felt that the only reason others were not concerned about the issues was that they were unaware of them. That view prompted me to write letters to the newspapers. My first letter on livestock and climate change was published in The Age newspaper (Melbourne) in February, 2008, under the heading, “Feeling scared? Eat less meat”. I’ve included it at the end of this post. I’ve been fortunate to have many letters published since then, dealing with animal rights, climate change (including the impact of animal agriculture), and politics.

Soon after that letter were published, I wrote to Victoria’s minister for the environment. A member of his department responded, informing me that a summit known as “A climate of opportunity” had been held earlier that year, and that they were inviting submissions in response to the relevant paper. I submitted mine on the deadline of 30th June, 2008. That was followed in September, 2009 by a submission on behalf of VNV in relation to the state government’s green paper on the subject, and another in September 2012 in response to the federal government’s National Food Plan Green Paper. I launched my Terrastendo website in late December, 2012, dealing with animal rights, climate change in general, climate change and animal agriculture, and the health impacts of eating animals.

Earlier, in February 2011, I commenced presenting to community groups and others on climate change and the impact of animal agriculture. I often inform the audience at the start of a presentation that I became vegan because of animal cruelty, and that I subsequently learnt of the environmental impacts. I inform them of that background as a form of disclosure, as I would not anyone to assume that I am talking about the environment as a backdoor way of advocating for animals. I argue that animal rights and the environment are, in their own right, sufficient justification for adopting a vegan lifestyle. Health benefits can be added to the list.

Over the years, I have approached various pro-environment groups about the livestock issue, commencing with the Greens political party in 2008 (Bob Brown, Christine Milne and subsequently Adam Bandt), and progressing through to Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Bill McKibben of 350.org, Environment Victoria, the Climate Commission (and its successor the Climate Council), and others. Their lack of interest is a major concern, and I have written about three of them in the linked articles.

Outside the environment movement, I have liaised with Youth Food Movement Australia via Facebook and Twitter. The group “aims to build the skills, knowledge and experience that young people have around food”, but fails to meaningfully inform them of the environmental and cruelty impacts of animal agriculture. Indeed, the group generally praises and interacts closely with the beef industry.

In September, 2015, I attended a presentation by climate change author, Philip Sutton, and asked why he had ignored the issue when one of his key points was the urgent need to draw down atmospheric carbon through deforestation and other means. (Livestock is a critical factor in that regard.) I reminded him that I had asked him the same question at the Breakthrough Summit in April, 2014. I could also have mentioned that I had emailed him in early 2009, and that his two-line response only referred to climate change in general, with no reference to animal agriculture.

At the April, 2014 presentation, Sutton responded by saying he realised the issue was important, but did not know enough about it to comment. At the recent presentation, he said that we were not at a point where people would be willing to change. I respect much of Sutton’s work. However, when witnessing a person who has co-authored a leading book on climate change not meaningfully considering the livestock issue, I have felt a sense of frustration and despair.

The feeling has been similar in relation to prominent scientist and head of the Climate Council, Tim Flannery. When I asked him and fellow (at the time) climate commissioner, Will Steffen, about the issue at a presentation in April, 2013, Steffen (like Sutton) said that he realised it was important, but the commission had insufficient resources to investigate it.

I sent a detailed email the following day, requesting that it be passed on to Steffen. I received a response from a Commission employee, stating that Steffen was overseas and unable to respond personally. She said he had asked her to thank me for the references and that the Climate Commission was considering a new report which would include discussion of agricultural emissions and soil carbon. To my knowledge, no such report was prepared by either the Climate Commission or the Climate Council. The issue is not included in the Council’s latest publication, “Climate Change 2015: Growing Risks, Critical Choices”, which includes a section titled, “Now is the time for strong action on climate change”.

In his latest book, Flannery highlights potential climate change mitigation measures (which he has labelled the “third way”) with long lead times, while ignoring the enormous mitigation potential that already exists in the form of a general move away from animal agriculture in favour of plant-based nutrition. Some or all of the measures he refers to may have merit, but we need to urgently address the climate crisis, and acting on animal agriculture can provide almost immediate benefits that will increase very significantly over time.

Flannery has previously declared himself to be a “proud eater of flesh”, which he subsequently modified by referring to so-called “sustainably produced” flesh. However, livestock production is not sustainable at the levels that would be required to feed the masses. Like Sutton, Flannery’s “Atmosphere of hope” had the opposite effect to what is implied in the title, by filling me with despair.

The despair in relation to Sutton and Flannery has been short-lived, as there is too much to write and say in response to allow the feeling to remain for long.

Something I have enjoyed over the past couple of years is critiquing and challenging material from Australian meat industry participants in the form of so-called “curriculum guides” for primary and secondary students, along with their responses to the 2014 documentary, “Cowspiracy, the sustainability secret”. In my view, their output does little to support their interests, as I have referred to in the linked articles and elsewhere.

Through Melbourne Pig Save, I have also had the opportunity to advocate directly for animals. Our interaction with the community through social media and at peaceful rallies in Bourke Street Mall, Melbourne, highlights people’s concern for animals, their general lack of knowledge over the abhorrent treatment, and the duplicity of governments and corporations in creating and maintaining a world of make-believe and fairy tales.

Those concerns apply equally to the environment, and it is essential that activists fighting for both causes (using Gough Whitlam’s words on another issue) “maintain the rage”. I hope to never become a robot or automaton.

Author

Paul Mahony

Also on Twitter, Slideshare, Sribd, Melbourne Pig Save , A Well-Fed World, New Matilda and Viva la Vegan.

Definition (Oxford dictionary)

Automaton: (Noun) A moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human being.

First letter on livestock and climate change

Feeling scared? Eat less meat (The Age, 22nd Feb, 2008)

Professor Garnaut’s ominous predictions on climate change (The Age, 21/2) must be taken seriously by us all. If we were under threat by another country, we’d do whatever it took to protect our homeland. Kevin Rudd needs to treat the current threat in the same way that Winston Churchill and the citizens of Britain treated the threat to their country and Western Europe in World War II.

An easy step, which no one in Australian politics seems to mention, is to eat less meat. Could it be that they’re afraid of a backlash from the livestock sector? Just look at the findings of UN bodies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in regard to the disastrous effects of the livestock sector on climate change, land degradation, water use and loss of biodiversity. For example, the FAO has said that the livestock sector is “responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions measured in carbon dioxide equivalent. This is a higher share than transport.”

The livestock sector converts vegetable protein to animal protein in an incredibly inefficient manner. It typically takes around 20 kilograms of vegetable protein fed to cattle, to produce one kilogram of animal protein. We’d use an awful lot less land, and produce far less greenhouse gas, if that vegetable protein came straight to us.

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Beautiful twilight landscape in rain forest © Dreamstime.com

Correction 29th April 2017

“At the April, 2014 presentation, Sutton responded by saying he realised the issue was important, but did not know enough about it to comment.”

We recently released a booklet in conjunction with Vegetarian Victoria and Vegan Australia, titled “The Low Emissions Diet: Eating for a safe climate”.

If interested, you can download it here or by clicking this image:

In a nutshell:

• The booklet includes a sample of vegan recipes from The Kind Cook, with charts showing their greenhouse gas emissions.
• The charts show how emissions would increase if you added various ingredients, such as meat and fish.
• We’ve provided some context to emissions from animal-based foods by comparing them to emissions from:
  – plant-based foods
  – high-emissions activities such as aluminium smelting and fossil fuel based power generation
  – motor vehicles
• There are comments on nutrients such as protein, iron, zinc, calcium, vitamin D and vitamin B12.
• There are sections on:
  – greenhouse gases and black carbon
  – land clearing
  – emissions intensity of Australian beef
• There are also comments on the so-called “climatarian” diet, which avoids products from ruminant animals, such as cattle and sheep. Due to the global community’s precarious position on the edge of a climate change precipice, we argue that if the diet is to achieve its intended aims, it must also exclude pig meat, chicken meat, fish, egg and dairy products.

We hope you find it useful.

Author

Paul Mahony

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The Kind Cook, Giant Penne Pasta with Mushroom Sauce, http://thekindcook.com/giant-penne-pasta-w-mushroom-sauce/

The Kind Cook on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/thekindcook/

My recent presentation “Risk Management, Insurance and the Climate Crisis” focussed on the increase in likelihood and consequences of extreme weather events resulting from climate change. Here’s a sample of points from that presentation and elsewhere, including points relevant to specific industry sectors (with some irony existing in respect of certain high-emissions sectors).

General:

Inundation by sea:

• Projections of sea level rise by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) do not take into account critical factors such as ice sheet dynamics on Greenland and Antarctica or the melting of permafrost in Siberia, Canada and elsewhere (releasing massive amounts of methane and carbon dioxide). Taking those and other relevant factors into account, the former long-term head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Dr James Hansen, says that sea level rise of several metres is feasible by 2100 if we continue with “business as usual”, subject to the impact of certain negative feedback mechanisms.
• A 50 centimetre (18 inch) rise in sea level increases the likelihood of a major inundation event by between several hundred and 1,000 times. That means that what was a 1-in-100 year event could occur nearly monthly.

Storm intensity:

• A warming climate results in more water vapour in the atmosphere. Water vapour is a key greenhouse gas in its own right, and also causes more energy in the form of latent heat to be present in the atmosphere to fuel storms.
• The likelihood of a hurricane with the strength of Hurricane Katrina or greater increases 2 – 7 times for every 1 degree celsius increase in global temperature.
• The extent of building damage increases by around 650 percent from just a 25 percent increase in wind speed from 40 – 50 kmh to 50 – 60 kmh. (10 kmh = 6 mph.)

Bushfire (wildfire):

• Climate change can affect bushfire (wildfire) conditions by increasing the probability of extreme fire weather days. As an example, many parts of Australia have seen an increase in extreme fire weather over the last 30 years. The projections for the future indicate a significant increase in dangerous fire weather for southeast Australia.

Non-linear trends:

• Many of the trends in the frequency and intensity of extreme events and in the destructive capacity of those events resulting from climate change are non-linear, meaning that the past history of events is not necessarily a reliable guide to current and future impacts.
• Given the conservative nature of many of the IPCC’s projections (refer above), other credible sources should also be considered. Australia’s former Chief Climate Commissioner, Professor Tim Flannery, has described the IPCC as “painfully conservative” because of the parties involved and the desire to achieve consensus.

Property and Construction:

• In Australia, $159 billion worth of buildings are vulnerable to sea level rise, including 8,000 commercial, 6,000 industrial and 274,000 residential properties. Similar problems exist elsewhere.
• The frequency of hail storms in Sydney, Australia, is predicted to increase by 20 percent by 2050. Australia’s costliest insurance claim arose from a one-hour hail storm in that city in 1999, which caused damage of A$4.3 billion (2011 dollars).

Mining:

• Cyclone Yasi and flooding in 2011 shut down 85 percent of coal mines in the state of Queensland, Australia, costing $2.5 billion. (Australia is the world’s second largest coal exporter, and Queensland is a major source.)

Utilities:

• The US Department of Energy has said that climate change has created an increased risk of shutdowns at coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants due to decreased water availability affecting cooling at thermoelectric power plants.
• They also say there are higher risks to energy infrastructure located along the coasts due to sea level rise, the increasing intensity of storms, higher storm surge and flooding and that power lines, transformers and electricity distribution systems face increasing risks of physical damage from hurricanes, storms and wildfires.
• At the Hazelwood power station in Australia, an open coal mine fire started from bushfire in 2006. The coal fire was 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) long and took weeks to control.

Energy:

• The storm surge from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 caused the closure of nine refineries, resulting in the total shutdown of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico for six months and reducing annual US oil production by more than 20 percent.
• The Gorgon LNG project off Western Australia experienced construction cost blow outs of US$15 billion, partially due to cyclones and other extreme weather events.
• Up to 50 percent of Australia’s oil refineries are on the coast not far above sea level.

Employer Groups and Unions:

• The 2003 European heatwave that was responsible for more than 35,000 deaths was 6 times more likely due to climate change.
• An Australian heatwave in early 2009 resulted in 62 percent more heat-related deaths than normal in the city of Melbourne.
• There is an 80 percent probability that the 2010 Moscow heat wave, responsible for 11,000 deaths, was caused by climate change.
• According to Dr. Liz Hanna of Australian National University’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, part of Australia are reaching the threshold where it was impossible for normal life to continue because of the heat. She said, “If employers ask people to continue to work in temperatures above 37°C, they will be killing them in increasing numbers”.

Federal, State and Local Planning Regulators:

• Possibly inadequate planning controls in relation to flooding, bushfire and other hazards may expose regulators such as local councils and state and federal governments to risk of legal action.
• A report from Australian National University and the Investor Group on Climate Change stated: “There is a growing recognition of how inadequate current regulatory frameworks are to protect company assets and operations from more intense extreme weather events.”
• Barbara Norman of the University of Canberra has stated: “As the science on the coastal impacts of climate change gets stronger, the protections for Australia’s coastal communities are getting weaker. If that continues, everyone will pay. Along the eastern seaboard of Australia, where most of us live, state governments are relaxing their policies and largely leaving it to local councils to decide if homes can be built in low-lying areas.”

Other Issues:

• Various cities are considered to be at extreme risk from climate change, including:
  – Dhaka, Bangladesh;
  – Manila, Philippines;
  – Bangkok, Thailand;
  – Yangon, Myanmar;
  – Jakarta, Indonesia;
  – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and
  – Kolkata (Calcutta), India.
• 31 percent of global economic output will be based in countries facing ‘high’ or ‘extreme’ risks from the impacts of climate change by 2025.
• An advisor to a state government in Australia prepared a comprehensive report for the state’s captive insurer in 2010 (updated in 2011) on impacts of climate change on the insurer’s portfolio, reflecting significant impacts.
• Researchers from Cornell and Rutgers Universities have suggested that the severe loss of Arctic summer sea ice appears to have intensified Arctic air mass invasions toward middle latitudes.
• Records between 2003 and 2008 reflected a 10-fold increase in extreme summer temperatures (hot and cold) relative to the base period of 1951-1980. Extreme temperatures are considered to be more than three standard deviations from the historical mean temperature.

In relation to the final point, the following chart from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies demonstrates the changing patterns for the period 2000-2010:

Conclusion:
I have no doubt that the massive impacts of climate change are being recklessly ignored by key decision makers. Do you concur? I’d welcome your feedback in the comments section below.

Blog Author: Paul Mahony (also on on Twitter, Slideshare and Sribd)

Sources:
April Saylor, US Dept of Energy, “Climate Change: Effects on Our Energy”, 11 July 2013, http://energy.gov/articles/climate-change-effects-our-energy#all

Dr Michael H. Smith, Australian National University/Investor Group on Climate Change: “Assessing Climate Change Risks and Opportunities for Investors: Property and Construction”; “Assessing Climate Change Risks and Opportunities for Investors: Property and Construction”; “Assessing Climate Change Risks and Opportunities for Investors: Oil and Gas”, http://www.igcc.org.au/assessing_risks

James Hansen and Makiko Sato, “Update of Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Loss: Exponential?”, 26 December 2012, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20121226_GreenlandIceSheetUpdate.pdf

Dr Myles Allen and colleagues, Oxford University, cited in “Cuts in emissions are at a premium” by Liam Phelan, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January, 2011, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/cuts-in-emissions-are-at-a-premium-20110124-1a2ul.html

David Spratt, “Parts of Australia reaching threshold where it is impossible for normal life to continue because of the heat, says climate impacts researcher”, Climate Code Red, 17 Nov 2013, http://www.climatecodered.org/2013/11/parts-of-australia-reaching-threshold.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimateCodeRed+%28climate+code+red%29

World Coal Association, Coal Statistics (2012), http://www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/

Maplecroft Climate change and environmental risk atlas: http://maplecroft.com/about/news/ccvi_2013.html; http://maplecroft.com/portfolio/new-analysis/2013/10/30/31-global-economic-output-forecast-face-high-or-extreme-climate-change-risks-2025-maplecroft-risk-atlas/

Environment Victoria, “Victorian government insurance premiums to soar due to climate change”, 7 Jan 2013, http://environmentvictoria.org.au/media/victorian-government-insurance-premiums-soar-due-climate-change

Tom Arup, The Age, “Climate threat to state assets”, 7 Jan 2013, http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-threat-to-state-assets-20130106-2cbfm.html

Jennifer A. Francis, Stephen J. Vavrus, “Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes”, Geophysical Research Letters Volume 39, Issue 6, March 2012, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL051000/abstract cited in Freedman, A., “Arctic Warming is Altering Weather Patterns, Study Shows”, 30 Sep, 2012, http://www.climatecentral.org/news/arctic-warming-is-altering-weather-patterns-study-shows/

Hansen, J., Sato, M. & Ruedy, R. “Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice” (Preliminary Draft), 10 Nov 2011, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20111110_NewClimateDice.pdf

Tullis, P. “Global Warming: An Exclusive Look at James Hansen’s Scary New Math”, Time Science & Space, 10 May, 2012, http://science.time.com/2012/05/10/global-warming-an-exclusive-look-at-james-hansens-scary-new-math/

Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, 2 Aug 2012 “Shifting Distribution of Northern Hemisphere Summer Temperature Anomalies, 1951-2011”, Animation No. 3975, http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?3975 Australian Climate Commission, Apr 2013, “The Critical Decade: Extreme Weather”, http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/136923/20130919-1415/climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/ExtremeWeatherReport_web.pdf

David Spratt,“Global Warming – No more business as usual: This is an emergency!”, Environmental Activists’ Conference 2008: Climate Emergency – No More Business as Usual, 10 October, 2008, reproduced in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, http://links.org.au/node/683

Barbara Norman, “Scrapping sea level protection puts Australian homes at risk”, The Conversation, 11 December, 2013, http://theconversation.com/scrapping-sea-level-protection-puts-australian-homes-at-risk-21271

Image: Car hit by Hail © Robert Ruggiero | Dreamstime.com

I was very pleased to present on the climate crisis at two recent events in Melbourne. The first was the Annual General Meeting of the Mullum Mullum Festival, covering the municipalities of Whitehorse and Manningham, while the second was the Animal Activists Forum, held at Trades Hall.

–

In the second presentation, a member of the audience asked two related questions.

1. Don’t we need manure from animals to fertilise the soil?
2. Don’t animals enable us to extract nutrition from land which is not suitable for cropping?

In response to the first question, I suggested that we could possibly retain animals on farmland without killing them for food, and that the number involved could be a small fraction of the number maintained for the livestock sector.

Because of the sector’s scale, which results primarily from its inherent and gross inefficiency, effluent is produced at an unsustainable level. I have cited examples in previous papers:

• American journalist Jim Motavelli has provided a stark example of the disastrous effects on waterways of intensive farming practices. He has stated: “The much-publicized 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska dumped 12 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement and urine into the water, killing an estimated 10 to 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of coastal shellfishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of a virulent microbe called Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.”
• In December 1997, the U.S Senate Agricultural Committee released a report stating that livestock raised for food, produce 130 times as much excrement as the entire human population of the country, roughly equivalent to five tons per annum for every US citizen. In that year, cattle, pigs, chicken and turkeys produced an estimated 1.36 billion tons of solid waste, 90% of which was from cattle. On that basis, it’s not surprising that spills such as the New River incident occur.

In relation to the second question, we would not need to encroach on lands that are not suitable for cropping if we were not producing livestock. That’s because the inefficiency of livestock as a food source is causing us to use many times the land area that would be required if we relied only on plants as our source of nutrition.  Land that is currently used for animal feedcrops could be converted to crops for human consumption.

A recent paper released by the Institute on the Enviroment at the University of Minnesota suggested that, “The world’s croplands could feed 4 billion more people than they do now just by shifting from producing animal feed and biofuels to producing exclusively food for human consumption”.

The lead author, Emily Cassidy, has been quoted as saying: “We essentially have uncovered an astoundingly abundant supply of food for a hungry world, hidden in plain sight in the farmlands we already cultivate. Depending on the extent to which farmers and consumers are willing to change current practices, existing croplands could feed millions or even billions more people.”

Much agricultural land could also be allowed to regenerate as forest if we were to cease using it for livestock grazing and feedcrop production. As I have stated elsewhere, such an approach is essential if we are to have any hope of overcoming the climate crisis.

In Australia, grazing in the rangelands is severely degrading the soil and releasing massive amounts of carbon.

Conclusion

It can be intuitively appealing to believe that livestock are an essential component of the food production system. However, the only essential aspect of livestock production is that we replace it with the plant-based alternative.

It is also essential that we accept the absolute necessity of addressing the climate crisis, rather than avoiding the issue. In my presentation at the Animal Activist Forum, I ended without showing my usual concluding slide, in which I quote Dr Andrew Glikson of Australian National University. I greatly admire Dr Glikson as someone with outstanding academic credentials, who is willing to say it as it is. Here is the slide:

Note: Click here if you would like to download the presentation.

Blog author: Paul Mahony (also on Twitter, Slideshare and Sribd)

See also: Omissions of Emissions: A Critical Climate Change Issue

Additional slideshow images from the presentation:

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This slideshow requires JavaScript.

References:

Motavelli, J.,“The Case Against Meat”, E Magazine, 3 January 2002, http://www.emagazine.com/archive/142

Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Minority Staff: “Animal Waste Pollution in America: An Emerging National Problem”, Dec.1997, cited in United States General Accounting Office Report to Hon. Tom Harkin, Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry, US Senate, “Animal Agriculture Waste Management Practices”, July, 1999, http://www.gao.gov/archive/1999/rc99205.pdf, as at 2 July, 2008 and Liang, A.P., “Current State of Foodborne Illness”, Conference for Food Safety Education, Florida, 17 Sep, 2002

Doyle, Michael P., “Food Safety Challenges from Farm to Table”, Center for Food Safety, College of Agricultural Sciences (undated) http://www.pitt.edu/~super7/14011-15001/14291.ppt#291,1,Food Safety Challenges from Farm to Table

Emily S Cassidy et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 034015 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015, cited in University of Minnesota News Release, 1 Aug 2013, “Existing Cropland Could Feed 4 Billion More”, http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2013/UR_CONTENT_451697.html

Here’s an outline of my speech from the Melbourne Pig Save rally held on 13th October, 2012: