Eating less meat can help reduce the risk of a pandemic, in addition to saving the environment, the UN Environment Programme said on Wednesday.
The programme
said this while announcing a new Chatham House report. “At a time when so much
of the world continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s never been more
obvious that the well-being of people and animals, wild and farmed, are
intertwined,” said Philip Lymbery, of Compassion in World Farming, which also
backed the think tank. If ecosystems continue to be destroyed, the population’s
food supply will be at risk, they warned.
A move
towards more plant-based foods are necessary to ensure biodiversity loss will
not accelerate, they add.
In addition,
more land needs to be protected, and agriculture needs to become more
environmentally friendly, they said.
Natural
ecosystems have been increasingly converted into arable land and pasture in
recent decades, leading to the loss of animal habitats.
“The
intensive farming of billions of animals globally seriously damages the
environment, causing loss of biodiversity and producing massive greenhouse gas
emissions that accelerate global warming,” said famed primatologist Jane
Goodall in the UNEP statement.
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