[Kate Winslet] Since 1900,
we have seen a dramatic increase
in worldwide weather related disasters.
There have now been four times more weather related disasters
in the last 50 years than in the previous 100.
[Mr. Rifkin] We began to work
together to move
this issue onto the global center stage.
There was a lot of discussion about the contribution
from buildings and from industrial factories,
but I became aware during that same period of time
that there was another factor that was going undiscussed,
and that is the role of animal agriculture,
which I could see was playing
some significant role around the planet.
But this was the elephant in the room
no one wanted to talk about.
Whatever environmental issue you want to look at
from species loss to water pollution,
to water use, to climate change, animal agriculture
is one of the top causes.
[Dr. Kong] The critical,
widespread negative impact
of animal agriculture on our planet is undeniable.
Severe global crises
from climate change
and environmental damage to species extinction,
hunger, poverty, disease and antibiotic resistance,
all of these have direct connections
to animal agriculture
and the massive inefficiency
of our current food production systems.
[Kate Winslet] A report published by
WikiLeaks as far back as 2009,
exposed the conversations between Nestlé executives
and U.S. officials called "The Tour D'Horizon."
The Nestlé executives said that their own research had shown
that the world was set to run out of fresh water
within the next 30 years.
It stated that one of the greatest reasons
for our detour down this catastrophic path
is the global demand for meat products.
[Prof. Wadhams] If you look at the impact
that food choice has on--
on global warming, it's very significant.
Eating meat is huge for global climate,
and that's something where personal choice
is the determining factor.
So there's the only case I can think of
where individual human choice
would have a big effect, would be food.
We're now over the line.
And the idea that we're going to double meat production
between now and 2050,
this is just unsustainable.
This is going to have to give.
Our diet is taking us to an abyss.
[dramatic musical sting]
[Mr. De Schutter] A significant reason
why livestock production
has been having such a huge impact
on greenhouse gas emissions
is because of the large surfaces
of forests that have been destroyed
in order to make room for pastures and for the growth
of soybean and maize for feedstock production.
[Kate Winslet] Our forests were once full
of the most incredible life.
In more recent years, we began to grow an insatiable appetite
for meat and dairy, and as our demand for more meat grew,
we needed more and more land.
So we slashed and burned our way through the pristine forests,
destroying everything in our paths
to make way for the animals we desired to eat.
As these animals weren't allowed to roam free
as they naturally do in the wild,
their grazing areas soon became empty,
and so, of course, we needed to feed them,
so again, we slashed and burned our way
through more and more forests,
sowed the ground with genetically
enhanced corn and soya,
and then dowsed it in pesticides,
herbicides and synthetic chemical fertilizer.
[dramatic music]
Animal agriculture has literally changed the face of our planet.
The green land is used for human crops.
A great area that spans the globe.
And yet the land we use for animal agriculture,
shown in red, now occupies vast amounts of our Earth's land,
a far greater area than that used for human crops.
Almost all the Earth's surface has-- now bears the mark
of some kind of human impact,
and most of that is livestock production.
Agriculture has transformed the planet like nothing else.
To produce milk, we farm an area about the size of Brazil.
To produce beef, we farm an area about the size of Canada,
the United States, the whole of Central America,
Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador combined.
To produce eggs, we farm an area the size of Sweden.
To produce aquaculture feed, an area about the size of the UK.
A plant-based diet would reduce the amount of land required
to produce our food by 3.1 billion hectares.
That's an area the size of the entire African continent.
[Kate Winslet] The Amazon is the world's
largest tropical rainforest.
This ancient and richly biodiverse world
is slowly being replaced.
It is often assumed that much of the soy
being planted in Brazil is for human consumption.
In fact, less than six percent of the soy
grown across the globe is fed to humans.
The vast majority is grown to create
animal feed for livestock.
The soy is exported all around the world
and fed to the billions of chickens, farmed fish,
pigs and cows that we eat each day.
The forests are not only home to millions
of species of wildlife and plants,
but are also great regulators of our planet's atmosphere.
Day by day, they slowly breathe in the carbon dioxide
whilst producing billions of tons of fresh oxygen
for our air.
[dramatic music continues]
Each year, an estimated 18 million
acres of forest are lost,
which is roughly the size of the country of Panama.
It is thought that about half of the Earth's
mature tropical forests have now been destroyed,
and some scientists have predicted
that unless significant measures are taken on a worldwide basis,
by 2030, only ten percent of the forests will remain.
[somber piano music]
[birds and insects chirping]
[Sir Branson] One of the most precious things we have in
the world is our rainforests.
The rainforests are literally being chewed away,
um, by farmers who know they can make money
by cutting another acre, and then another acre,
and then another acre for meat.
[somber piano music continues]
[Kate Winslet] Each year,
hundreds of tribespeople,
indigenous to the Amazon rainforest,
have their villages burned to the ground.
They have been forcibly removed from their land,
with many of them murdered by the agribusiness paramilitary
who seek to turn their jungle home
into farmland for growing soy for livestock feed.
[dramatic music]
[gunshot]
[woman cries]
[Kate Winslet] One of the worst affected
tribes is the Guarani Kaiowá
in Mato Grosso do Sul.
[somber music]
[dramatic music]
[loud whirring]
[inhabitants clamoring]
[music fades]
So there was actually a report that came out in 2018,
and they found that the world's top five livestock corporations
now release more annual greenhouse gas emissions
than ExxonMobil, Shell and BP.
It is crazy when you think about it
because the EU is spending £24 billion
of taxpayers' money on livestock farming each year,
and this is at a time when we are facing
an ecological collapse, and we drastically need to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.
So it's no surprise that people are asking
a lot of questions now about the fact that there seem to be
some serious conflicts of interest going on here.
There's some very heavy lobbying going on of government,
and I think that happens throughout the world,
and it's just a historic thing
that needs to be, I think, rebalanced.
[light dramatic music]
[car beeping]
Today, democracy does not always function
as well as it should because of the huge influence
that agribusiness corporations, and livestock producers
in particular, exercise on decision-making.
[reporter] The former director
of the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization, Dr. Samuel Jutzi,
warned as far back as 2010,
that interventions by agribusiness lobbyists
were blocking reforms that would offer better standards
for human health and preserving the environment.
Big animal agribusiness corporations'
and food producers' influence over political decisions
about the regulation of their industry,
has long been a concern
for campaigners, who see the narrow interests
of the industry taking widespread control.
[Mr. De Schutter] If we have any doubt about
how powerful this influence is,
we can recall that, for example,
when the Advisory Committee on Dietary Guidelines in the US
made recommendations to the US government
as to how dietary guidelines should be shaped,
they were blocked by this very powerful lobby
of agribusiness interests.
[Kate Winslet] In 2013, the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization
released a landmark report called
Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock.
The report states that livestock farming
is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions
than all global transportation combined.
[dramatic music]
A growing number of scientists
believe that the impact of animal agriculture is,
in fact, even worse than stated in the FAO report.
There are close ties between the research organizations
and governments, and government policy and industry.
It's very pervasive because livestock industries
depend on government policies that support them.
[Mr. De Schutter] The FAO report
was prepared within the FAO
by specialists of agriculture and livestock production,
not by specialists of the environmental issues
associated with agricultural production.
I believe that the more serious concern, of course,
is that the International Meat Association
was involved in preparing the report,
which does raise the question of the independence
with which the study was prepared.
[Mr. Wedderburn-Bisshop] Government policy in that regard
is not for the benefit of the land,
it's for the benefit of the industry.
[Kate Winslet] In their report,
the FAO partnered up
with member countries, non-governmental organizations
and many other organizations, including
the European Feed Manufacturers Federation,
the International Dairy Federation,
the International Meat Secretariat,
the International Egg Commission,
and the International Poultry Council.
In an industry worth over a trillion dollars,
are these not the very institutions
that have the most to lose from a damaging
scientific report against livestock farming?