by Alex Lockwood
A great piece by VLA Associate & Volunteer Alex – highlighting the tragedy of this situation, the real reasons behind it and the imperative for change.
Rising consumption of meat and dairy has a huge impact on global warming – yet the desire to address this is lamentable…
“Few sows remain productive enough to meet the demands of intensive animal agriculture beyond their fifth litter, after which they are sent to slaughter. Roughly 114 days—that’s three months, three weeks, and three days—after insemination she will give birth to a dozen or so piglets.
In 114 days, as those piglets fight for their mother’s colostrum and huddle together to ensure they do not succumb to chilling (a drop in temperature that will kill) the last delegate to leave the COP21 UN climate summit will have just reached home.
For the piglets it is a question of keeping warm. For us, the threat is of runaway global temperature rises. Come mid-December what is in gestation will have been birthed. What lasts beyond the end of the conference will, for the piglets and for us, be a matter of life and death.
Continue reading here.
First published in RTCC [Responding to Climate Change] 21.08.15