“By the time a person dies they would have consumed an average of 2 000 animals and 100 000 eggs,” said Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop, during a Skype presentation on ‘Veganism for a cool new world’ at the Rhodes General Lecture Theatre.
“By the time a person dies they would have consumed an average of 2 000 animals and 100 000 eggs,” said Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop, during a Skype presentation on ‘Veganism for a cool new world’ at the Rhodes General Lecture Theatre.
Wedderburn-Bisshop, who is the executive director of the World Preservation Foundation, warned that this gluttony will lead to a “decrease in biodiversity, land degradation, soil salinity and deforestation. His presentation formed part of this week's Environmental Week at Rhodes University.
He presented facts and figures that suggest that adopting a vegan diet would have a good long term impact on not just our own health, but also for the well-being of the environment. He said that without livestock to feed, human beings would have 50% more food which would be a start to eradicating poverty.
Wedderburn-Bisshop is a firm believer in veganism not only because of the health benefits of removing all the trans fats from our diets, “but also because of what the meat-eating industry is doing to our planet,” he said. The planet now needs 1.5 years to generate the amount of resources that we currently use in a single year, according to Wedderburn-Bisshop.
He said that human beings are biologically more herbivorous than omnivorous, and following this instinct could curb the resource pillaging that is currently the worldwide trend – a belief that Rhodes University lecturer Dr James Gambiza disagrees with.
In a separate interview with Grocott's Mail, Gambiza, an environmental science lecturer, said that the best thing for the environment would be for people to eat meat in moderation and to not be as greedy as they are. He believes, however, that we have already gone past the stage where we can control our meat intake.
“At the moment the vegetarian diet would be a good start because all the proteins we get from meat we can easily get from plants,” he suggested.
