On Tuesday, Animal Rights International (ARI) will hold a peace walk at Jantar Mantar to encourage Indians to switch to ‘green’ food.

According to Kritika Sharma, ARI’s executive director and one of the organisers, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has pegged Indians' per capita consumption of meat at 5.2 kg per year, the highest for the country since FAO began compiling records.

A study by the US-based Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute claims that India’s per capita consumption of meat has doubled. ARI claims even a 1-percent drop in national meat consumption would prevent killing of billions of animals per year.

More importantly, the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, headed by RK Pachauri, maintains that diet change is important due to the huge greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental problems — including habitat destruction — associated with rearing cattle and other animals.

The proposed ‘march against meat’ shows how the world’s greenhouse burden has once again come on the shoulders of India, which has of late emerged as the Atlas for all the globe’s wrongdoings — be it toxic waste, air pollution and now meat eating.

But let us see closer at the stats to know whether Indians need to, or not, worry about their meat consumption figures. According to the 2006 Hindu-CNN-IBN State of the Nation survey, 31 percent Indians are vegetarians. Similar surveys in the West have shown that this figure in the United States is 1 percent and 3 percent in the United Kingdom.

In China, not even 1 percent claimed that they are strictly vegetarians. 

A closer look at the meat consumption figures of FAO will help us put things in perspective. Back in 1961, the Chinese consumed only 3.6 kg meat per person, while in 2002 they reached 52.4 kg — the country’s levels doubled between 1990 and 2002 alone. The US consumed an average 89.2 kg per person per year in 1961, which went up to 124.8 in 2002. The UK remained somewhat stable: in 1961, it consumed 69.8 kg per person a year and 79.6 kg in 2002.

Denmark recorded an annual average of 145.9 kg per person in 2002, up from 56.7 kg in 1961.

Other countries with very high meat-consuming data were mostly European, like France (101.1), French Polynesia (112.2), Greenland (113.8), Hungary (100.7), Ireland (106.3), Luxembourg (141.7) and Spain (118.6).

India, with dairy vegetarianism in its roots, consumed 3.7 kg meat per person per year in 1961 and 5.2 kg in 2002. India's per capita meat consumption remains well below the Asian average as well.

Various studies have confirmed a link between dietary preferences and income. India’s booming middle-class, with better-than-ever resources in their kitty, is driving this demand for meat. The rapid rise of the domestic poultry market is a good indication of changing diet pattern: worth an estimated US $9 billion, it is growing at an annual rate of 20 percent.

However, compared to meat consumption figures of other countries, India still scores a goal. Traditionally a nation of vegetarians, it is not merely a belief here, it is a practice. No meat-eater I know eats it more than once or twice a week. 

So instead of organising a march in Delhi, it will be a better idea to organise marches in New York, London and other European cities with people holding placards reading “Let us learn from India”. That would be a sincere way of doing it.

However, think-tanks in the West have already begun working on their strategies. Veering the debate off their own very high meat-consumption figures, they have placed it in a trajectory which would again bring back the guilt burden on to India.

A 2008 article in The Guardian says that in 2007, a report on the environmental impact of meat eating by the Food Climate Research Network at Surrey University claimed livestock generated 8 percent of UK emissions — but eating some meat was good for the planet because some habitats benefited from grazing. Quoting the Surrey varsity report, The Guardian said vegetarian diets that included lots of milk, butter and cheese would probably not noticeably reduce emissions because dairy cows are a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas released through flatulence.

Now, India which practices largely dairy vegetarianism and has huge livestock resources (500 million cows and buffalo), will again be held guilty, believe me.