Finland

We eat a lot of imported vegetables in Nordic Europe. Which one is worse–eating imported vegetables or having locally grown meat?

Cederberg and Stadig (2003) reported that the environmental impacts per kilogram of Swedish beef were 22.3 kg of CO2 equivalents in global warming and 25.9 MJ of energy consumption. Also the answer has become obvious when I found an articles like Meat production ‘beefs up emissions’ and Food miles don’t feed climate change–meat does.

CARBON NEUTRALITY

Relative to other nations, carbon neutrality is low hanging fruit for Finland and only requires a 50 per cent carbon emission reduction. Reducing meat consumption, especially beef, is imperative for any nation and the world.

FUTURE IMPLICATIONS

Finnish education, known for its excellence and efficiency, has become the nation’s export. In near future the knowledge of reducing beef consumption, along with others of carbon neutrality, will also be one of those.

Now it is important time for mankind as 7 billion people will share the World by the end of 2011 or beginning of 2012, and the number will double by 2067 if the trend continues. In the mean time, beef consumption per capita both in Finland and worldwide has been increasing and if this trend continues we won’t be able to solve the aforementioned problems and will face the food crisis earlier than expected.

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1. Cederberg C, Stadig M. 2003. System expansion and allocation in life cycle assessment of milk and beef production. International Journal of Life cycle Assessment 8, 350–356.