United Nations says meat eaters are harming the planet!

U.N. panel says people need to change their diets and stop eating meat.

TORONTO, Ontario, Canada - June 2, 2010 - Humanity needs to radically alter what it eats, according to an expert panel advising the United Nations on the planet's environmental challenges.

Cattle and other animals are fed more than half the world's crops, an appetite the panel says needs to be curbed to provide more food for people and reduce agriculture's environmental impact.

"A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animals products," says the report to be released Wednesday by the United Nations Environment Program.

The panel was asked to identify activities associated with the largest environmental pressures and impacts in the world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes and rising consumption.

It identified agriculture as a priority area in need of "transformational change," along with fossil fuel use - which is helping drive climate change - and production and use of materials such as iron, steel, aluminum and plastics, which also has a large environmental footprint.

Agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption and 38% of total land use, and is a major source of greenhouse gases, phosphorus and nitrogen pollution.

With global population expected to increase 50% to as many as 10 billion people by 2050, the panel says changes in diet will be needed to ensure there is enough to eat.

Compounding the situation is increasing affluence, since richer people tend to consume more fossil fuels and eat more animal products.

"In the case of food, rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products -- livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilizers and pesticides linked with that crop production in the first place," German scientist Ernst von Weizsaecker, co-chair of the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management said.

Canadian panel member Yvan Hardy, former chief scientist at Natural Resources Canada, said in a telephone interview from Brussels Tuesday that there is plenty of potential for "disaster" on the horizon.

"We have to be very prudent and aware of what is going on," said Hardy, pointing to challenges associated with growing population and climate change.

"Basically I think the world . . . has lost sight of what it takes to support our standard of living," said Hardy. "What we can extract from the earth, in terms of both natural resources and nutrients, is limited."