Do you know the true cost of meat? (Picture: Getty)

If you can’t go vegan for the animals, why not go vegan for yourself? By switching to a plant-based diet, you won’t just help save animals’ lives, you might just save the planet.

The meat and dairy industries kill 70bn animals every year – and a new report has found that they are on track to become the world’s biggest contributors to climate change.

After studying the 35 largest meat and dairy companies, the researchers found that together, the top five alone are already responsible for more emissions than ExxonMobil, Shell or BP.

The authors concluded that if these secretive industries are allowed to continue on their current destructive path, the livestock sector could be responsible for 80% of the allowable greenhouse gas budget by 2050, accelerating environmental catastrophe.

Eventually, a tipping point will come, and the planet will turn into a gigantic slaughterhouse. It won’t be just calves and piglets these industries are killing – it will be you, your children and the children they could have gone on to raise.

Now the good news: we don’t need to wait for meat and dairy bosses to develop hitherto elusive consciences, nor for governments to develop the backbone to take us off this self-destructive path. There is a simple but significant contribution you can make right here, right now.

Last month, a paper published in the journal Science found that adopting a vegan diet ‘has transformative potential’, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 6.6 billion metric tons (a 49% reduction).

Its lead researcher Joseph Poore said: ‘A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.’

An abundance of evidence backs this up, as the brutal environmental impact of our addiction to meat and dairy has been clear for sometime.

(Picture: Getty)

In 2006, the United Nations found that the animal agriculture industry is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the combined exhaust from transportation.

Methane is 86 times more destructive than CO2 over a 10 to 20-year period, and a single cow produces between 250 and 500 liters of methane per day.

Animal agriculture is also responsible for huge emissions (73% in the US) of nitrous oxide, a gas which is 310 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the atmosphere.

There are countless other environmental impacts of meat and dairy.

With the future of fresh water under threat, the United Nations warns that cattle rearing in particular has an enormous impact on water use.

Agricultural scientists estimate that eating meat requires four-and-a-half times more land than is necessary for a vegan diet, which means rainforests and other precious areas are bulldozed to make way for farms.

As the Centre for International Forestry Research put it: ‘Cattle ranchers are making mincemeat out of Brazil’s rainforest.’

So each time you eat bacon, or drink milk, you have not only invested in the slaughter of pigs or the abuse of cows, you’ve signed your own death warrant. For this is a problem that is predicted to escalate in the coming decades and emissions for agriculture are projected to increase 80% by 2050.

In the 1980s, people started saying ‘meat is murder’, but it could become even worse than that – meat could mean Armageddon.

Of course, no diet or lifestyle is harmless.

For instance, as some defensive meat-eaters delight in reminding vegans, it takes 5 litres of water to grow one almond, so nut milk clearly takes its own toll on the environment.

As does soy farming – but a WWF study found that 80% of soy that is grown is fed to livestock animals, so we have come back to the environmental impact of farming animals for food.

The environmental impact of animal farming is clear, so be the change you want to see and stop eating meat and dairy.

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It’s never been easier: all high street chains, including Wagamama, Pizza Express, Carluccios and Nando’s have popular vegan menus. There are delicious plant-based versions of all your favourite foods, from shawarma to chicken nuggets, mozzarella to prawns.

Given that you can get all of those foods without supporting the slaughter of animals or the destruction of the planet, why would you not?

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