What is the REAL impact of eating meat?

Would you think twice about eating a burger if you realised that it was created using as much water as leaving your shower running for 2 months? 

Whether or not you believe every statistic used in the film, Cowspiracy is a challenging documentary on animal agriculture.

By rearing animals to provide us with products - from butter to ice cream, cheese to sausages and beefburgers - we commit ourselves to a huge undertaking of resources. In an age where we are told to cycle rather than drive to work, use energy-saving light bulbs and reduce, reuse, recycle, it is shocking to see some of the numbers that Cowspiracy throws at us regarding the meat we eat and the resources that have gone into it @cowspiracy facts:

• Around 15,000 litres of water are required to produce 1 kg of beef.
• The meat and dairy industries combined use nearly 1/3 (29%) of all the fresh water in the world today.
• Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all transportation combined.
• Cows produce huge amounts of methane, a gas that has a much greater impact on global warming than CO2 and whose reduction would have an immediate impact on our environment.

These incredible numbers take into account a number of factors not always considered when we think about the real cost of our meat: 1-2 acres of rainforest are cleared every second, and up to 91% of the land cleared in the Amazon has been used for animal agriculture - either directly or for feed-crops. The pressure of our high-meat diets is directly reducing the size of our rainforests, and so this loss is included in the calculations.

The water required to grow the feed-crops and provide our animals with water (worldwide, cows drink 170 billion litres each day), means that we use a third of our resource for this purpose. By the time a burger ends up in your hands it has had as much water thrown at it as would be expended if you left your shower running endlessly for 2 months.

So what is the upshot of this, according to the film?

Clearly, while we continue to eat meat most days and worship fast-food joints spilling out beef and chicken meals every few seconds across the world, there is only so much that fitting energy-saving light-bulbs and cycling regularly will do. When considered alongside the growing demand for meat-heavy diets in the developing world, there will be a greater need for us to reduce our insatiable appetite in the developed world.

However, the demand of the film for anyone who considers themselves eco-friendly to become vegan is likely to cause some people running to their nearest burger joint. Some of us with the taste for meat find going cold turkey (or not as the case may be) as a terrifying prospect.
My wife and I have tried to make an effort by adopting a very low-meat diet, eating it only once or twice a week. We've also cut our dairy intake down by using milk alternatives (almond and soy), cutting out yoghurt and, with less success, cheese. And, of course, we have been looking at insects as an alternative answer that provides natural protein with a fraction of the energy input.

This is the challenging substance of the film and part of the reason entomophagy (the eating of insects) could prove to be the norm in the future. Cutting down dairy intake and cutting meat out of our diet is not something all of us fancy doing. But, in the long term, can we afford not to?