People around the world are duly horrified at the millions of wild animals perishing in the Australian bushfires. The pictures and videos of the suffering of the iconic koalas and kangaroos are heartbreaking as their lives and habitats are destroyed by the fires, exacerbated by global heating. Australian scientists estimate that one billion wild animals have died as a result of these devastating fires, a number so huge that it is difficult to comprehend.
Concerned citizens everywhere want to help. Millions of dollars in donations to fire fighting efforts, animal rescues and aid for people forced from their homes are pouring in. It is laudable and necessary to help those in need. But, looking at the bigger picture, this is a predictable band-aid response to treating a symptom of a huge underlying problem, not the cause.
There is a more effective way to solve it but one of the difficulties is that our brains are hardwired to think about these issues in certain ways. Why do our hearts go out to some animals and not others? While we are all concerned about the fate of the wild animals, what about the fate of the thousands of farmed animals that have also succumbed to the cruel conflagration?
Australia’s Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie, says that 125,000 sheep and cattle have died in the fires so far. Media stories about the impact of the fires on the agriculture sector tend to focus on the loss of livelihood for the farmers involved, not the animals. Although some stories tell of tormented farmers, struggling with the task of shooting and burying their injured animals. And surviving animals are being sent to slaughter early because of shortages of feed and water.
We are culturally conditioned to care about wild animals but not to give much thought to the fate of the billions of farmed animals held captive in our industrialized food system. Farmed animals are marginalized in our societies, their suffering carefully hidden from public view and there is a huge cognitive disconnect for consumers between a cow or a lamb and the meat at the butcher’s counter.
A sale yard in New South Wales, Australia. Sheep sales are up 8% as animals are being slaughtered earlier because of drought and fires. Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media, January 2020.
For the wild animals that have survived the fires, they face the deadly combination of loss of habitat, the threat of starvation and dehydration, and are vulnerable to predators. Australia is home to many unique and rare species that may be wiped out by this fire season. This biologically diverse ecosystem will struggle to recover, and many species of flora and fauna will be lost forever.
On a global basis, what we eat is making the problem worse but also provides a way we can help. Australia has always had a bushfire season but the climate crisis has made the problem immeasurably worse. And scientists are predicting that fire prone regions of Canada and the US may soon experience more super-fires similar to Australia.
Given that animal agriculture is the second largest contributor to GHG emissions globally, what we eat plays an important role in this equation. Globally, more than 70 billion land animals are slaughtered for food every year. This means that more than two million animals are killed every second. More and more consumers are becoming concerned about the climate impact of a meat-heavy diet, animal welfare and the environmental damage inherent in the factory farming system. But meat eating is still expected to rise given the expected significant population growth by 2050, and a growing middle class in developing countries who aspire to eating meat as they become more prosperous.
Globally, we can make a difference to the climate crisis and help save wild animals by giving a thought to farmed animals, reducing the meat in our diets and lowering the carbon footprint of our food.
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