This refers to the article, “Demolishing the meat mountain” (January 26) by RK Pachauri. Meat-eaters the world over have at last an ethical choice to make, thanks to vegan meats being manufactured by enterprises based on soy or pea and alternatively lab-made ‘cultured meat’ derived from animal muscle tissue. Companies like Beyond Meat, Hampton Creek, Impossible Foods and Mosa Meat are few of the pioneers in this area. Back in India, we have the Udaipur-based ‘Good Dot’, which manufactures vegan plant-based meat.
Although the average annual per capita meat consumption in India stands at only 3.2 kilos, as against a whopping 125 kilos of America, switching to vegan meats has become the need of the hour, given ecological destruction and untold animal suffering that meat industries are causing. Eight thousand liters is the amount of water it takes to produce one kg of mutton, while 4,000 liters for one kg of chicken, while “16 lakh litres of water”, said Maneka Gandhi, “are needed daily to keep one moderate sized slaughterhouse clean”. In 2013, the Southern Bench of NGT was shocked to find slaughterhouses using 3,000 liters of water to process one kg of meat in a water-starved city like Chennai. On the other hand, there is what the demand for meat is doing to the Amazon rainforest in South America. The Amazon rainforest is being cleared at an alarming rate to grow soya that is to be used as cattle feed for animals, which are finally slaughtered for beef. And not to speak of the claustrophobic rearing conditions, artificial diets, antibiotics abuse and above all, the inhumane slaughtering methods. Year after year, the UN has been advising that a sustainable future lay in avoiding industrial meat and consciously switching to vegan diets. With companies like Good Dot, it should thankfully be no longer difficult for meat-eaters to make the transition.