Cheap meet burns our planet

Since belated cold spells and premature hot weathers came and went back and forth, the rainy season has started just like a wet period. The soggier it gets, the more hysterical we become. Levels of frustration reach their peaks in an unexpected place – our house. Just as we get tired of noise from upstairs in cities, livestock stink in rural areas. As the former is related to structural issues of apartment buildings, the latter results from the structural shortcomings of the livestock industry. It is only natural that factory-like cattle sheds and pigsties smell awful as domesticated animals are packed like sardines. It is all about low meat prices. This chronic odor is still unfamiliar with us, only lowering life quality.

The system to supply cheap meat to the market not only produces inevitable odors but kills the waters due to chemical fertilizers and depletes groundwater. What’s worse, drugs for animal use lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria whereas animal plagues are a ticking bomb to cause zoonotic diseases such as COVID-19. Animals and humans are closely correlated to each other when it comes to health and wellbeing.

Unfortunately, it is not the end of the story. Food security has been threatened since unpredictably extreme weather events started with frequent typhoons, longer rainy days and hot waves. Some may say that we can depend on food imports but things are not good globally. Food shortages are increasing occurrences of conflict and climate refugees are outnumbering those displaced in war. Climate change is not like a mere noise issue between neighbors but like an emergency situation of seeing “a house on fire.” The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released that 17 percent of global greenhouse gases came from the livestock industry. Meat diets are not an issue but eating meat “too much” is the main cause, which factory-style livestock businesses have made happen. We will have to watch our planet being burned down with our hands tied if we fail to recognize “what is sacred.”