Wales Is on Fire. Meat is Fanning the Flames

Dr Carys Bennett

A mountain is burning on my doorstep. Since 19 July, wildfires have ripped through Mynydd Garnclochdy near Blaenavon.

When the smell of acrid smoke drifted across the valleys, it felt like a warning from the future: the climate crisis is here, and we must act before it’s too late. It starts with our forks.

July has been the driest on record in Wales in nearly 200 years, and a drought has been declared.

Wildfires have also been burning in the Rhondda Fach valley, and the Rhinogydd mountains in north Wales.

This isn’t ‘summer as usual’, it’s the undeniable signs of a planet in peril. With extreme fires raging across huge swathes of land in Spain and France too, what once felt like a problem for another day has become an immediate crisis for hundreds of thousands of people.

The debate over preventing a climate catastrophe often centres on fossil fuels. It’s true that we need to adopt clean energy, but we don’t have to wait for new legislation to pass or purchase costly electric technologies. We can each take incredibly powerful, personal action: we can go vegan.

Animal agriculture’s destructive impact on the planet is clear. Research shows that 90% of water now taken from natural systems for irrigation is used to feed the world’s over 80 billion land animals killed for food each year.

The wildfires in Blaenavon are burning land used for sheep and cow farming, agriculture that is singled out by the Climate Change Committee as hugely damaging.

Most of Wales’ farmland is used for animal farming, a model that is unsustainable, outdated, and cruel. Continuing on this path just worsens global warming and the likelihood of future fires and heatwaves.

As climate scientists call for an urgent, global shift to an animal-free diet, a solution is literally right under your nose.

Oxford University researchers report that, compared with UK meat-eating diets, vegan diets reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75%, water pollution by 73%, water use by 54%, and biodiversity loss by 66%. Eating vegan meals can be done right now, helps animals, is healthier, eco-friendly, and can even save you money.

Beyond poisoning the planet, animal agriculture also poses the biggest and most direct harm to living, feeling animals. Three-quarters of Welsh people proudly claim to be ‘animal lovers’, but the chickens we eat are just as sensitive, clever, and capable of suffering as the whinchat and skylarks fleeing the flames in Blaenavon.

Chickens enjoy complex social relationships, dream like us, can count, and cluck to their chicks in their eggs, as an expectant human mother might chat to her unborn baby.

Despite this, they’re one of the most abused animals on the planet, with the UK slaughtering over one billion birds a year, most at just six weeks old.

Logically, even the most die-hard ‘meat-lover’ would have to admit that abusing animals at the expense of fresh water, air quality, biodiversity, and the entire future of Earth – especially when it’s proven to be healthier to eat plants – is the definition of crazy. We can, and must, change.

With wildfires continuing across Wales, the UK and Europe, and a summer of heatwave upon heatwave, I worry about the future.

Then, I sit down to eat a juicy plant protein burger and tasty cheese that wasn’t squeezed out of a cow, and feel a little hope.

After all, if we can enjoy burgers as delicious as this, without harming anyone or the planet, we can do anything.

Let’s make this small but impactful change, before the climate changes a lot, for the worse, forever. It all starts on our plates.

Dr Carys Bennett is a Blaenau Gwent resident and Senior Corporate Projects Manager at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, PETA.

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