Dart Veegan

82. "I’m already vegetarian, there’s no need to become vegan.”

Some non-vegans may appear to be uncorrectable but perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.

"I’m already vegetarian, there’s no need to become vegan.”
And isn’t vegetarianism enough?
After all, the chickens and cows don’t have to die to give us their eggs and milk, do they? So what is the problem?

The deliberate and unnecessary suffering and premature death of sentient and conscious beings is inevitably involved in the egg and dairy industries, whether it be on factory farms, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) or on organic family farms.

If you one is concerned with sustainability, health outcomes and animal well-being, then they should consider going vegan.
Vegetarians and those with plant-based diets do help with the sustainability efforts in their community and globally, but again, they can only help so far.

Vegans usually only opt for wholesome foods with many plants, no animal products, and fewer processed products, which means their foods take less energy and fewer resources to grow. This naturally reduces the vegan’s carbon and moral footprint.
However, food is not the only way to go vegan. We must also consider the clothing we wear, and personal care items, household products, and the other goods we buy.
Vegans are often more environmentally-conscious than vegetarians because they purposefully seek out vegan products while a vegetarian can still wear fur and leather while abiding by their vegetarian dietary lifestyle.

Vegetarianism as a dietary choice that avoids meat but may include other animal products such as dairy, eggs, and honey, can still contribute to cause harm to farm animals. The production of these animal products can, and do, often involve practices that cause deliberate and unnecessary suffering, harm, and premature death to these animals.

In the dairy industry, cows are typically kept in confinement and subjected to yearly or biyearly artificial insemination in order to maintain milk production. Female cows may give birth to multiple calves throughout their lifetime, but these calves are often taken away from their mothers within hours or days of birth and may be raised for veal if male or for future dairy production if female. This separation causes stress and emotional distress for both the mothers and their calves. Furthermore, the dairy industry often practices culling, or the killing of cows, when their milk production decreases, and sells the calves for veal production of beef production resulting in the deliberate and unnecessary suffering and premature deaths for these animals.

The egg industry can also cause harm to chickens. Hens are typically kept in crowded conditions, often in battery cages, which can cause physical and psychological stress and health problems. Chickens may also undergo a procedure known as debeaking, which involves removing part of their beaks to reduce the incidence of feather pecking and cannibalism in the crowded conditions of egg production facilities. In addition, male chicks in the egg industry are typically culled, either by asfixiation or shredded in industrial grinders soon after hatching as they do not lay eggs and are not considered suitable for meat production. This results in the deliberate and unnecessary suffering and premature deaths for these animals.

The production of honey can also cause harm to bees. Honeybees are considered livestock in many countries and are kept in managed hives for the production of honey. This can involve practices such as clipping the wings of queen bees to prevent them from leaving the hive and taking half the hive with them (in a process called swarming), and removing honey from the hives to be replaced with a sub-optimal artificial food source. These practices can cause death, stress and harm to the bees, and may have negative impacts on the health and well-being of the colonies.

Unlike the direct products of the meat industry, honey, eggs and dairy products have the tendency to look relatively harmless, making it much easier to maintain the disconnect that blinds people to the truth and blocks the compassion and empathy within them. The truth, however, is that no matter how humane a dairy, egg or honey producer claims to be, there simply is no such thing as suffering-and-slaughter-free animal agriculture.
Like all business owners, honey, egg and dairy farmers are in it to make a profit. When an animal is no longer profitable, he or she is sent to the slaughterhouse or killed outright.
Once one discovers the truth behind these industries, one can no longer ignore the fact that one is responsible for the deliberate and unnecessary torture, suffering and murder of innocent sentient and conscious beings.

In conclusion, while vegetarianism can be seen as a step towards reducing harm to animals compared to a meat-based diet, it is still important to consider the practices involved in the production of animal products such as dairy, eggs, and honey. These practices can cause deliberate and unnecessary suffering, harm, and premature death to farm animals, and individuals following a vegetarian diet should consider these factors in making their own informed decisions about what to include in their diets.

As can be easily confirmed by the positions of major Nutrition and Dietetics Associations, a whole-foods plant-based diet when appropriately planned is healthful and nutritionally adequate.

Non-human animals should not be needlessly killed for temporary nutrition-related sensory pleasure.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

And please research the publicly verifiable evidence available online, other vegans may not be as forgiving as I am.

Picture:

MILK, EGGS AND HONEY - PHOTO BY ISTETIANA VIA GETTY IMAGES

References:

Danny Lewis, “New Way to Wean Calves Leaves Them Happier and Healthier,” Smithsonian.com, 25 Jan. 2016.

Joseph M. Stookey and Derek B. Haley, “The Latest in Alternate Weaning Strategies,” Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, Western College of Veterinary Medicine, 2002.

Marina A.G. von Keyserlingk, Daniel M. Weary, “Maternal Behavior in Cattle,” Hormones and Behavior, 52 (2007) 106–113.

“Questions,” American Veal Association, 2016.

American Veterinary Medical Association, “Literature Review on the Welfare Implications of the Veal Calf Husbandry,” 13 Oct. 2008.

Current Developments in Beak-Trimming, USDA - ARS - MWA, Livestock Behaviour Research Unit, Laying Hen Welfare - FALL 2010By Dr. Heng-wei Chen

Saul, Heather (March 5, 2015). "Hatched, discarded, gassed: What happens to male chicks in the UK". The independent. Archived from the original on 2015-03-06. Retrieved July 1, 2015.

American Veterinary Medical Association - Welfare Implications of Induced Molding of Layer Chickens - Literature Review, February 7, 2010

NORMAL BEHAVIORS OF CHICKENS IN SMALL AND BACKYARD POULTRY FLOCKS, Written by: Dr. Jacquie Jacob, University of Kentucky, Extension Foundation

Influences of Maternal Care on Chicken Welfare - Joanne Edgar, Suzanne Held, Charlotte Jones, Camille Troisi, Animals (Basel) 2016 Jan; 6(1): 2. Published online 2016 Jan 5. doi: 10.3390/ani6010002 PMCID: PMC4730119

Ida C. N. Thøfner, Jan Dahl, Jens Peter Christensen. Keel bone fractures in Danish laying hens: Prevalence and risk factors. PLOS ONE, 2021; 16 (8): e0256105 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256105

Alan Bjerga; Donna Cohen; Cindy Hoffman. "California Almonds Are Back After Four Years of Brutal Drought". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Retrieved 16 April 2019.

Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers - J. POORE AND T. NEMECEK, SCIENCE, 1 Jun 2018 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaq0216
California Almonds, Almond Board of California - Annual Report, Almond Almanac 2018

82. "What about palm oil destroying rainforests and its biodiversity?"
Some non-vegans may appear to be uncorrectable but perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.

“What about palm oil destroying rainforests and its biodiversity?”
Once faced with this question, especially it being a plant-based product, where to start?
This ubiquitous product has consistently been linked to the cutting and clearing of tropical forests, inspiring many organizations and individuals to call for a palm oil boycott. However, solving the problem is not that simple.

African palm trees grown in tropical rainforests are the source of palm oil. Today, about 86% of all palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaysia. More than 40 other countries produce it, in far lower but fast-increasing quantities. Of the 18 million hectares (44 million acres) that have been planted with oil palm worldwide — a territory the same size as Cambodia — an estimated 60 percent of this land was directly converted from primary forest. The amount of total forest cover lost between 1990 and 2010 in Indonesia alone is equivalent to a forest the size of Uganda.
This oil is produced in high quantities through farming and is a type of vegetable oil, similar to sunflower. It is widely used due to its versatility and low cost, making it the most prevalent vegetable oil. It is present in a variety of household items, ranging from convenience foods to every other range of products.

The creation of an oil palm plantation starts with clearing the land using either heavy machinery or fire. Mechanical methods, often requires heavy machinery which can result in soil compactation among other soil physical degradations, while fire clearing causes high environmental harm by destroying aboveground vegetation, understorey growth, and ground litter.
Despite laws against fire clearing in Malaysia and Indonesia since the 90s, it remains prevalent. In case of peat lands, drainage is needed for the oil palms to grow because oil palms cannot grow on waterlogged peat soils, leading to further carbon loss. Next, roads, tracks, and drainage ditches are built, and the oil palm seedlings are planted at a density of 110-150 per hectare. Fruit harvesting starts after 2-3 years, with peak production at 9-18 years and the palms being harvested for up to 25-30 years. After that, they are cut down and new seedlings are planted.

Despite its unique qualities as a product and its high demand, palm oil has a mixed reputation. If produced unsustainably, it can have negative impacts on the environment, on wildlife and on human rights. In some regions palm oil has been produced irresponsibly. Forests have been cleared or damaged to grow palm oil, which has impacted both wildlife and local communities. And the workers and farmers producing palm oil in some places have suffered poor working conditions and low pay.
There have been calls to boycott palm oil because of these negative impacts. Yet switching to alternative vegetable oils to palm oil wouldn’t reduce these impacts by much. Sunflower, rapeseed and soy have much lower yields per hectare than oil palm, so, in fact, more land would be needed to produce an equivalent amount of oil. Currently oil palm is grown on about 7 percent of land devoted to vegetable oil crops, yet palm oil makes up 39 percent of all vegetable oil production. What’s more, millions of farmers and their families work on oil palm plantations and smallholdings. This provides them with the income for basic essentials such as food, clean water, and housing. Plus it allows many workers to send their children to school.
In recent years, this popular ingredient has gained a lot of bad press due to the destruction its causing to the planet. Unsustainable palm oil farming has brought species to the brink of extinction and is responsible for unbelievable amounts of deforestation. It's not like there aren't alternatives for us to use, there are plenty.

So why are we continuing to farm palm oil so intensively?

As was said before, it's cheap and versatile, so getting rid of palm oil is not an easy task. It's a super efficient crop. About half of the world's population relies on it and the demand for it is rising. The unparalleled efficiency of palm oil is the reason that it’s omnipresent in consumer products. Palm oil is virtually in half of all supermarket products. Compared to other oil-producing crops, palm oil requires 4 to 10 times less land, yields five to eight times more oil than rapeseed, sunflowers, and soybeans, and grows well in soils unsuitable for most other crops. Palm oil is a versatile, cheap miracle product, but the attendant deforestation is ravaging natural environments and destroying the homes of millions of animals and indigenous people.

As individuals and consumers, we can show the food industries that we want palm oil to be farmed more sustainably, or that we don’t want it at all.
The palm oil industry is responsible for deforestation on a huge scale and this actually plays a predominant part in how humans are contributing to climate change. Indonesia is the largest palm oil producer in the world, and just to give you a sense of how much they produce: half of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from cutting or burning forests.

With deforestation come the destruction of habitats and the loss of precious life. In order to make way for palm oil plantations, the tropical forests that support so much wildlife are destroyed, thus threatening the planet’s biodiversity. You have likely seen or heard the campaigns spreading awareness of how orangutans are negatively impacted by palm oil. Every year it is estimated that, between 1,000 to 5,000 orangutans are killed in palm oil concessions, and if this continues, they will be extinct within our lifetime. Other animals that are affected by this industry include tigers, elephants, and rhinos, all of which are considered either endangered or vulnerable.

The economic value of palm oil translates into jobs, infrastructure and tax revenues. In Indonesia and Malaysia, some 4.5 million people earn a living from the palm oil industry. In Indonesia alone, another 25 million people depend indirectly on palm oil production for their livelihoods. This all means palm oil could play a big role in reducing poverty, but only if done right because although oil palm cultivation has been an important generator of economic growth in recent years, the industry has also been associated with a number of adverse social and environmental impacts. Human rights violations are also a common occurrence in the industry. There are instances of child labour, violence, and employees working in terrible conditions. And despite this being common knowledge, not much is being done to improve it.

From a consumer point of view, unsustainably farmed palm oil is truly not worth the purchase. The industry has caused extensive destruction and ruined lives along with it.
Understandably, it’s a tricky ingredient to completely avoid, but there are things that one can do to help decrease the demand, like to avoid its purchase and consumption to the minimum possible and practicable and to encourage corporations to find more sustainable alternatives. We need to prevent further deforestation for new oil palm plantations and focus on promoting sustainable production because the outright banning of it would have disastrous effects as it would affect the livelihoods of millions of people and would lead to even more land being used to produce alternative oils.
While the impact of palm oil production on rainforests and biodiversity is certainly a concern for all of us, it is not a problem specific to veganism, it is a problem with our current socio-economic system and our international trade systems.
Once again, we need to rethink our diet and lifestyle trends and reduce the consumption of palm oil to minimise our personal contribution to its environmental impact.

And we must also remember that if we can’t find a fair trade label or a certification of sustainability in your palm oil and they come from questionable places, and if we are questioning ourselves if it’ll be ethical to purchase it, we should opt for the plenty of alternatives that can serve the same benefits and we would be better off if one does not contribute to such problematic plant-based products.

As can be easily confirmed by the positions of major Nutrition and Dietetics Associations, a whole-foods plant-based diet when appropriately planned is healthful and nutritionally adequate.

Non-human animals should not be needlessly killed for temporary nutrition-related sensory pleasure.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

And please research the publicly verifiable evidence available online, other vegans may not be as forgiving as I am.

Picture:

Indonesia Oil Palm Plantations – photo taken from ‘Indonesia’s Oil Palm Industries Leading to Deforestation and Climate Change’ article by JONATHAN DINOCHEN, JUNE 22, 2015.

References:

What you need to know about palm oil - Oct 4, 2016, By Molly Bergen

Carbon stock of oil palm plantations and tropical forests in Malaysia: A review - Lip Khoon Kho, Martin Rudbeck Jepsen - First published: 15 May 2015, https://doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.12100

A review of the ecosystem functions in oil palm plantations, using forests as a reference system - Claudia Dislich, Alexander C. Keyel, Jan Salecker, Yael Kisel, Katrin M. Meyer, Mark Auliya, Andrew D. Barnes, Marife D. Corre, Kevin Darras, Heiko Faust, Bastian Hess, Stephan Klasen, Alexander Knohl, Holger Kreft, Ana Meijide, Fuad Nurdiansyah, Fenna Otten, Guy Pe'er, Stefanie Steinebach, Suria Tarigan, Merja H. Tölle, Teja Tscharntke, Kerstin Wiegand - First published: 11 August 2016 - https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12295

Lal, R. (1996). Deforestation and land-use effects on soil degradation and rehabilitation in western Nigeria. II. Soil chemical properties. Land Degradation & Development 7, 87–98.

Schrier-Uijl, A. P., Silvius, M., Parish, F., Lim, K. H., Rosediana, S. & Anshari, G. (2013). Environmental and Social Impacts of Oil Palm Cultivation on Tropical Peat – A Scientific Review. Roundtable on Sustainable Oil Palm, Kuala Lumpur.

Murdiyarso, D., Lebel, L., Gintings, A., Tampubolon, S., Heil, A. & Wasson, M. (2004). Policy responses to complex environmental problems: insights from a science–policy activity on transboundary haze from vegetation fires in Southeast Asia. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 104, 47–56.

DeFries, R. S., Morton, D. C., van der Werf, G. R., Giglio, L., Collatz, G. J., Randerson, J. T., Houghton, R. A., Kasibhatla, P. K. & Shimabukuro, Y. (2008). Fire-related carbon emissions from land use transitions in southern Amazonia. Geophysical Research Letters, 35, L22705, doi:10.1029/2008GL035689.

argione, J., Hill, J., Tilman, D., Polasky, S. & Hawthorne, P. (2008). Land clearing and the biofuel carbon debt. Science 319, 1235–1238.

Sheil, D., Casson, A., Meijaard, E., van Noordwijk, M., Gaskell, J., Sunderland-Groves, J., Wertz, K. & Kanninen, M. (2009). The Impacts and Opportunities of Oil Palm in Southeast Asia: What do We Know and What do We Need to Know. CIFOR, Bogor.

USDA FAS (2012). Malaysia: stagnating palm oil yields impede growth. United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service.

Basiron, Y. (2007). Palm oil production through sustainable plantations. European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology 109, 289–295.

European Parliament Research Service, At A Glance: Palm Oil: Economic and Environmental Impacts, 2020.

PALM OIL AND CHILDREN IN INDONESIA EXPLORING THE SECTOR’S IMPACT ON CHILDREN’S RIGHTS – October 2016 © United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

‘Palms of controversies: Oil palm and development challenges’ by Alain Rival and Patrice Levang, newly translated into English and published online by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

Dart Veegan wishes happy holidays to you all 🌲☃️❄️🎁

Image source: edited from Jake Bartok's image

Why is something or someone worthy of moral consideration?

What is your case for moral consideration?

81. "The quinoa boom is harming the poor farmers of Peru."

Some non-vegans may appear to be uncorrectable but perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.

Quinoa is an amazing food and has seen a boom in developed countries but the idea that "the quinoa boom is harming the poor farmers of Peru" is factually wrong.
The claim that rising quinoa prices were hurting those who had traditionally produced and consumed it is patently false due to the fact that quinoa was never a staple food, representing just a few percent of the food budget for those people. The quinoa boom has had no effect on their nutrition, and in fact it has significantly boosted the farmers’ income overall.

According to the ENAHO, the national survey of about 22,000 randomly selected households that the government of Peru carries out every year and that covers a huge range of information about what households grow, spend and eat, all three groups of households (those who grow and eat quinoa, those who eat it but do not grow it, and those who neither grow nor eat quinoa) showed a clear rise in their welfare, measured as the total value of goods consumed, as the price of quinoa rose.
This reflects increasing living standards in Peru. But at the height of the boom, the welfare of quinoa growers increased more rapidly than that of the other two groups.

As for people who eat but don't grow quinoa? They are roughly twice as well-off as those who grow it. The amount they bought dropped slightly, but not much. They could still afford it, even at the height of the boom.

While every sane person is perfectly happy with the idea that the value of goods people consume is a reasonable measure of their welfare, it does miss some important factors, like nutrition. Perhaps, as non-vegans sometimes suggest that poor farmers were selling quinoa they might have eaten and buying cheaper but nutritionally inferior foods with the proceeds, consuming more but worse food.
A slightly trickier proposition is that when the price of quinoa goes up, people for whom it is culturally important pay more and so have less to spend on other cheap but highly nutritious foods.

Both ideas are proven to be unfounded.

Quinoa is clearly important to the people of Peru, both culturally and nutritionally, and even with the price increases, no sign of changes in calories, protein or carbohydrates in the diet across Peru as a whole was found.
The size of the effect of the price increases are quite small and should be of little concern to policymakers or non-vegans.

Quinoa is culturally important, but unlike rice, wheat and maize, it is not a staple food. Even in Puno it represents less than 4 percent of the household budget, and elsewhere in Peru less than 0.5 percent.

A greater but less tractable problem is environmental degradation.

There is an issue with falling soil quality, as the land is worked harder. But quinoa is now planted in China, India and Nepal, as well as in the US and Canada, easing the burden in South America. The researchers are more worried now about the loss of income for South American farmers as the worldwide quinoa supply rises and the price falls.

But that is a problem with our current socio-economic system and our international trade systems, not with veganism. High prices attract competitors and competition causes prices to fall.
Quinoa is famous among all health-conscious consumers not only vegans.

As can be easily confirmed by the positions of major Nutrition and Dietetics Associations, a whole-foods plant-based diet when appropriately planned is healthful and nutritionally adequate.

Non-human animals should not be needlessly killed for temporary nutrition-related sensory pleasure.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

And please research the publicly verifiable evidence available online, other vegans may not be as forgiving as I am.

Picture:

Peruvian quinoa farmer by Florian Kopp

References:

Foods and Fads: The Welfare Impacts of Rising Quinoa Prices in Peru, by Marc F. Bellemare, Johanna Fajardo-Gonzalez and Seth R. Gitter, March 2016 - Towson University Department of Economics - Working Paper Series

Quinoa Quandary: Cultural Tastes and Nutrition in Peru by Andrew Stevens, May 8, 2015 - Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, University of California

80. "Avocados have a huge environmental impact."

Some non-vegans may appear to be uncorrectable but perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.

Yes, while "avocados have a huge environmental impact" is a factual statement, as I said before, vegans are not the sole consumers of every plant-based product in existence, in fact we still are a minority.

The environmental problem with avocados is not very different from the issues of other plant-based foods that end up turning into commodities like coffee, palm oil, sugar, whole-flour or soy. Avocados are grown as a monoculture, which means that the same crop, avocado trees, grow in the same land year after year, for many years. This mass-scale agricultural technique (which is not exclusive to veganism) may be, economically, interesting for investors or producers, but in the long run, it can be very harmful to the environment, making the production of avocados unsustainable.

Mexico produces more avocado than anywhere in the world, but the “green gold”, as it is known, is consumed mainly in North America, Europe and Asia. Each year, 11 billion pounds of avocado are consumed around the world.
Michoacán produces eight out of 10 Mexican avocados and five out of 10 avocados produced globally.
Avocado farmers in Mexico and other countries have been planting young avocado trees beneath forest canopies. They then slowly take down shrubs and old trees to provide avocado trees greater sunlight so that they can flourish better, contributing, therefore, to deforestation and as a consequence, to global warming and climate change.

But what truly makes avocado’s production environmentally special, for the wrong reasons, is the amount of water it consumes.
According to some studies, avocados are among the 3 crops causing more water stress in their region of production.
Around 9.5 billion litres of water are used daily to produce avocados, the equivalent to 3,800 Olympic pools, thus requiring a massive extraction of water from aquifers, and excessive extraction of water from aquifers is having unexpected consequences, such as causing small earthquakes and causing droughts.

The Mexico’s multibillion-dollar avocado industry, headquartered in Michoacan state, is plagued and haunted by another dangerous and life threatening problem. It has become a prime target for organized crime mainly Mexican cartels, which have been seizing farms, clearing protected woodlands to plant their own groves of what locals call “green gold" and are are battling for the control of the avocado trade.

We, vegans and non-vegans' alike, urgently need to start thinking about the origin of our foods and to create more sustainable consumption food chains. Awareness of the environmental impacts of what we consume is the first step to reducing the climate impact of our food. The avocado situation makes it plain that not only the livestock industry is imposing a heavy environmental toll.

Despite all this, there are some solutions to reducing avocado’s environmental impact. Firstly, we need to demand as consumers an international certification of sustainable farming and fair trade for the avocados sold in supermarkets and stores, to ensure they are not the product of deforestation, organized crime, or indiscriminate exploitation of aquifers.
Secondly, trade agreements need to include the environmental impact in their clauses related to exports. Consumption in one country should not be at the cost of destroying the origin country.

And finally, if any of this does not happen, we need to rethink our diet and lifestyle trends and reduce the consumption of avocado to minimise our personal contribution to the environmental impact caused by “green gold”. We live a global and fully integrated planet where what we happily eat with our friends and family could be destroying entire ecosystems. This will affect us and/or our descendents in the long run.
So if one can’t find a fair trade label or a certification of sustainability in your avocado and they come from these questionable places, and if one is questioning if it’ll be ethical to buy it, one must remember there are plenty of alternatives that can serve the same benefits and everyone would be better off if one does not contribute to such problematic plant-based products.

As can be easily confirmed by the positions of major Nutrition and Dietetics Associations, a whole-foods plant-based diet when appropriately planned is healthful and nutritionally adequate.

Non-human animals should not be needlessly killed for temporary nutrition-related sensory pleasure.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

And please research the publicly verifiable evidence available online, other vegans may not be as forgiving as I am.

Picture:

An avocado farm in Peru.

References:

Franziska Stoessel, Ronnie Juraske, Stephan Pfister, and Stefanie Hellweg 'Life Cycle Inventory and Carbon and Water FoodPrint of Fruits and Vegetables: Application to a Swiss Retailer'. Environ Sci Technol. 2012 Mar 20; 46(6): 3253–3262. Published online 2012 Feb 6. doi: 10.1021/es2030577 PMCID: PMC3394405 PMID: 22309056

THE GREEN, BLUE AND GREY WATER FOOTPRINT OF CROPS AND DERIVED CROP PRODUCTS, VOLUME 1: MAIN REPORT M.M. MEKONNEN, A.Y. HOEKSTRA, DECEMBER 2010, VALUE OF WATER RESEARCH REPORT SERIES NO. 47

Boletín Mensual de Producción Aguacate, SIAP, Servicio de Información Agroalimentaria y Pesquera - Agricultura, Secretaria de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural, Octubre 2018

'4 of Mexico's cartels are fighting for control of the avocado business' Cat Rainsford, InSight Crime Sep 30, 2019, 7:48 PM - Business Insider article.

79. "Almond milk production is massacring bees and turning land into desert."

Some non-vegans may appear to be uncorrectable but perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.

"Almond milk production is massacring bees and turning lands into desert."
Some almond production may well cause environmental problems. But that is because rising demand has driven rapid intensification in specific places, like California, who is responsible for, approximately 80% of the global almond production, which could be addressed with proper regulation, better farming practices, better water management, massive reduction or outright substitution of current known bee-killing pesticides, better disease control, a higher consideration for habitat losses, or do as the researchers at the USA government Agricultural Research Service have done when they developed self-pollinating almond trees which have the potential to provide high yield of commercial quality nuts without the need for pollinating insects.

Current practices of almond production (and subsequent almond milk production) is not healthy for the planet and this popular milk substitute is especially hard on bees.
it is also perhaps worth noting that the european honeybees that die in California are not wild, but raised by farmers like six-legged livestock because commercial honeybees are considered livestock by the US Department of Agriculture because of the creature’s vital role in food production.
No other class of livestock comes close to the scorched-earth circumstances that commercial honeybees face. More bees die every year in the US than all other fish and animals raised for slaughter combined.

The pollination of California's almonds is the largest annual managed pollination event in the world, with 1.4 million hives (nearly half of all beehives in the US) being brought to the almond orchards each February.
To most commercial beekeepers in the US, at least half of their revenue now comes from pollinating almonds. Selling honey is far less lucrative than renting out bee colonies to mega-farms in California’s fertile Central Valley. Meaning that the honeybees who are being massacred are not wild populations of bees but European honeybee colonies specifically bred for pollinating the almond industry (not that it makes it less of a problem).

This is a thorny subject, and food sustainability experts are reluctant to single out any one plant milk as best because all have pros and cons but one thing is clear.
All milk alternatives are far better for the planet than dairy.

To analyze a product’s environmental footprint one should assess variables such as greenhouse gas emissions, land and/or water use, or soil degradation, global warming potential (GWP), renewable and non-renewable total primary energy use, and human toxicity potential.

Like soya milk, almond milk still has lower carbon emissions, land and water use and eutrophication potential than cow’s milk. But if you are still worried, there are plenty of alternatives, with oat milk usually coming out with the lowest environmental footprint.

Choosing from brands adopting sustainable methods of using agroecological methods of irrigating water into California’s almond crops is a way of helping reduce the impacts of this type of milk. And the only way of knowing is to demand brands to show better proof of their Corporate Social Responsability strategies along with their Corporate Social Responsability reports and impacts.

In my humble opinion, as long as the current California's intensified almond industry does not transform its apathetic large-scale production methods we, vegans and non-vegans alike, should not deliberately consume almond products derived from that industry.

As can be easily confirmed by the positions of major Nutrition and Dietetics Associations, a whole-foods plant-based diet when appropriately planned is healthful and nutritionally adequate.

Non-human animals should not be needlessly killed for temporary nutrition-related sensory pleasure.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

And please research the publicly verifiable evidence available online, other vegans may not be as forgiving as I am.

Picture:

Picture source in image.

References:

California Almonds, Almond Board of California - Annual Report, Almond Almanac 2018

Alfredo Flores (6 April 2010). "ARS Scientists Develop Self-pollinating Almond Trees". USDA Agricultural Research Service. Archived from the original on 17 October 2010.

Alan Bjerga; Donna Cohen; Cindy Hoffman. "California Almonds Are Back After Four Years of Brutal Drought". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. Retrieved 16 April 2019.

Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers - J. POORE AND T. NEMECEK, SCIENCE, 1 Jun 2018 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaq0216