stop food waste
HERE’S a terrific New Year resolution: let’s stop wasting food!
The latest analysis from Rabobank shows that Australians now spend over $10 billion dollars on food that ends up in their garbage bins. We have the shameful distinction of being the fourth highest wasters of food in the world.
Besides burning an average of $1026 from the average household’s budget, food in landfill decomposes anaerobically producing methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide. Additionally, the CSIRO have estimated that cattle alone are responsible for 48% of enteric methane emissions and 6% of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
The impact on animals is far worse. Land clearing is putting 28,000 animal species at risk of extinction within the next 25 years. That land is cleared to provide grazing or grains for hundreds of millions of cows, sheep, pigs and chickens who live in appalling conditions, packed into sheds or branded or castrated without pain relief, before being crammed into trucks for the long ride to a terrifying and often agonising death. Arable land could be used far more efficiently to grow plant-based food for humans, and to regenerate forests, which act as natural carbon sinks. Studies have shown that a meat-based diet requires far more energy, land, and water than a vegan one.
Have a look at how much food was thrown out over the holiday season, and let’s decide to reduce our wasteful footprint by moving to efficient, cruelty-free vegan fare.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
look to experts
IN response to my call for the testing of international drivers at airports before they use our roads, Daniel Andrews insisted that he only takes advice from the experts (Herald Sun, 25/8/2019).
When it comes to bushfire risk management, the Premier should listen to the experts.
Not the self-proclaimed experts of the former fire-chiefs who formed the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action Group, who overlook all other contributing factors that do not support the ‘climate emergency’ agenda, but real scientists and researchers, like Mr David Packham OAM.
Mr Packham has been studying bushfire seasons for decades both as a CSIRO researcher and as a resident of country Victoria, and contends that a primary causal factor in this year’s intense nationwide bushfire season is that “you need fuel to have a fire and due to gross mismanagement of our forests we have way too much of it”.
This is why I have continuously tried to raise concern over the locking up of our state forests and our designation of roadside vegetation as ‘wildlife corridors’ and ‘conservation zones’ instead of safe places.
It is integral to our bushfire management that we proactively reduce fuel loads in forests and on roadsides so that the intensity of potential fires is reduced.
The reality is, bushfires are an unfortunate part of our Australian landscape and the preoccupation with so-called bio-diversity concerns and native vegetation protection will not save vast acreage, livestock, homes, wildlife, native vegetation and even people from being burnt in an out of control fire.
Instead, we should be looking to burn-off fuel loads like Indigenous Australians had been doing prior to European settlement, and encourage droving on roadside vegetation to ensure roads act as necessary firebreaks not fire wicks.
Beverley McArthur MP
Member for Western Victoria Region
