Hot! Hot! Hot!

Viva!’s Hot! campaign thrusts climate change into the headlines

The farmed animals who are killed to produce the world’s meat and dairy are destroying the planet at a terrifying rate. The science has been around for a couple of decades but ignored.

When the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO) produced its massive, 400-page report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, in 2006 and spelt out in minute detail the devastation caused by farmed animals, it should have produced a national debate and a change in agricultural priorities. It was almost completely ignored.

Incensed, Viva! press released the UN FAO’s report again and added our own comments. It was reported in just three titles – two of them agricultural newspapers.

And so we produced our own report, Diet of Disaster, which widened out the issues to include the oceans, fish farming, novel diseases such as bird flu, development issues and human health. We also drew the obvious conclusions that the UN FAO, as the representatives of global livestock farmers, were terrified to make – that people had to drastically slash the amount of meat and dairy they eat. Better still, they could take a moral stance and go vegetarian or vegan.

In November 2007, we went public by launching our HOT! campaign in
London’s Hyde Park, with Heather Mills highlighting the fact that livestock are the second biggest cause of greenhouse gases – more than all the world’s different forms of transport combined. It was covered by every newspaper, TV station and many radio stations in the UK, in the US, Australia and throughout the English speaking world.

Some of the reporting was crass but much of it was sound. Suddenly, livestock as the major threat to the planet was on the agenda and has continued to dominate the media. Viva! claims some of the credit for having thrust this important issue in front of the public. And as meat consumption in the UK is now falling for the first time since records began shows that perhaps the public are responding!

And we’re continuing to push the message, touring the country giving talks, sending our report to environmental organisations, media and politicians and continually pumping out information to the media.

We are gaining excellent local media coverage with our ‘balloon tour’ – showing photographically how meat eaters are so much more gassy than vegans when it comes to global warming. With your support, we’ll continue to help save the world.

Read more about Viva! HOT! campaign here.
 

Viva!s 50 page environmental report, available for £3.50 (inc p&p). Tel: 0117 944 1000 (Mon - Fri, 9am - 6pm). Or read online here.