When I was a kid I remember a yearly fundraiser that I took part in called the Heifer project. The idea was to save all my change for a month and try and get my friends and family to give me their change too, and at the end of the month I would have  $X.xx to buy livestock for people in Africa. It was an interesting project that gave me this impression that you could buy a goat for like $5 in Africa, and that confused me because a goat was something you saw at the petting zoo, right? If you want some milk and eggs, you go to the supermarket, right? Meat comes from plastic and Styrofoam-wrapped packages in the refrigerated part of the store where they guy is in that big white apron, right?

Of course, all of these misconceptions I had about where meat and dairy and poultry came from passed with time, as did an understanding that when I handle meat and eggs, there are certain ways to do it to make sure I don’t get sick. Occasionally, I’ve gotten sick- it’s no good.

I read this morning, though, that climate change may be changing the biology of livestock and giving rise to new diseases we may not know how to deal with, biologically. We being humans.

On top of that, 70% of all new diseases come from animals.

The first annual report of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shines a serious light on the dangers out to pasture inside the livestock we count on.
"What is more uncertain is to exactly what degree heat [from global warming] affects the biology of animals and the promotion of new diseases," said the report.
Not to be alarmist, as there are a few flaws with that sentence anyway. One, they are talking about “global warming”, the boogey-man-like term that is a little inaccurate. Two, “more uncertain…to exactly what degree” could just mean that some folks in a lab ran some computer models and it freaked them out. It’s not a fear based on evidence, it’s a fear based on fear.

But still. 70% of the world’s people earning less than $1.25/ day live off of livestock. So if the fears are real, once again, climate change and global warming will affect the poorest of the poor.

I particularly like this sentence from the article: “The researchers underlined that the question of how climate change would alter the already ‘fragile relationship’ between human beings and livestock was ‘fraught with uncertainty’.” Did a UN report really use the term fraught with uncertainty? Is the relationship between humans and livestock really that fragile? Isn’t it one of the bases of civilization?

Here’s the problem: The number of livestock in the world is exploding. Demand for meat, eggs, and milk are all going up, especially in developing countries. It’s a matter of scale.

"During the early stages of intensification of livestock production, large-scale livestock production units tend to be established near to growing urban centres, which places large livestock populations in close proximity to large human populations," said the report.

This makes me think about all the population issues that Ishmael talks about- how we, as humans, are expanding beyond the carrying capacity of our place on the Earth…and that has an exponential effect all its own.

Photo Credit: US Army Africa (via Flickr under CCL)