Miss Earth 2019 Pre-pageant Competitions
Diamond Hotel, Manila, Philippines
October 19, 2019
If you think beauty is only skin deep, think again. Beauty queens are becoming more aware, vocal, and passionate of their responsibilities for the planet and for all fellow living beings—humans or otherwise.
At the Diamond Hotel in Manila, a special component of the Miss Earth pre-pageant competitions, the Intelligence Judging, has been held, and some candidates have revealed that they had gone meatless in their diets.
Now, what does going meatless have to do with the Miss Earth beauty pageant? Apparently, there’s a stronger link than meets the eye. Just recently, the pageant organizers included Meatless Mondays in their key activities. So, for the Miss Earth 2019, there will be the groundbreaking inclusion of vegan and vegan-friendly food brands and restaurants such as Quorn Philippines, Cafe Nenzo, Indulge, Go Salads, Veggie Guys, Good Choices, and Presotea among others, as partners.
“One of the first reasons I’m vegan is the ecology. When you look at livestock farming, 70% of climate change is caused by the production of meat and the dairy industry. I believe that the solution to this is to introduce more plant-based products into the market so that people will have greater choices and don’t have to sacrifice their taste,” Miss Germany tells TessDrive.com.
“Every year, Miss Earth as a pageant—local and international—always tries freeits best to do eco-friendly practices to make the pageant more sincere with advocacy for the environment. for the past year, we have eliminated plastic straws, and slowly we are eliminating the use of plastics in many aspects of the pageant, including, for example, in Miss Philippines, our stage was made of recycled materials. So this year, acknowledging that meat industry is a big contributor to our carbon emissions, we started doing Meatless Mondays. By doing it at least once a week, we can make a small contribution. A lot of people are saying that a real environmentalist is a vegetarian or vegan. If you can’t go vegan, have at least once a day you can dedicate to the environment,” says Cathy Untalan-Vital, consultant for the Miss Earth Foundation.
“Go meatless for the animals! Go meatless for the environment! Friends not food!” adds Untalan-Vital.
“Im extremely happy that Miss Earth is promoting Meatless Mondays, and this is such a revolution because as the population is growing, meat consumption is also growing a lot. And this meat consumption is also a cause for greenhouse gases and climate change to happen. So, for at least, one day in a week, if we could not take meat, that could contribute in a huge way to the environment. Miss Earth is doing a wonderful job,” says Miss India to TessDrive.
“Meatless Monday’s a really great option!” chimes in Miss Northern Ireland.
Worldwide meat production from cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs, and poultry emits more atmospheric greenhouse gases or GHGs than do all forms of global transportation or industrial processes.
Livestock farming accounts for the use of 70% of the global freshwater and 38% of the world’s land-use conversion. Some 70% of the Amazon Rainforest, in fact, has already been cleared for grazing and feed crop production.
An article, titled “Livestock and Climate Change” published in the issue of World Watch magazine, reported that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of annual worldwide GHG emissions.
According to analysis, the lifecycle and supply chain of livestock products is actually responsible for at least 51% of all anthropogenic GHGs.
The food and climate connection may not be obvious to many, but just think of the amount of energy and fossil fuels it takes to raise and slaughter the approximately 65 billion land animals in 2011 alone.
Forty-five percent of all earth’s land area is now being used for livestock and feed production instead of growing trees to absorb excess greenhouse gases, and instead of growing food to feed the hungry. Twenty percent of pastures are already degraded through overgrazing and erosion.
Why stop at one pageant, and why limit your planet-saving diets and lifestyles to just Mondays? TessDrive hopes that all beauty pageants will make the environment and animal compassion part of their advocacies, so that, one day all of us will go meatless not just for the sake of beauty, but also for humanity.
The Miss Earth 2019 Pre-Pageant activities included the Meatless Monday lunch held during several occasions, where the delicious, meat-free fare was supplied by food partners Quorn Philippines, Cafe Nenzo, Indulge, Go Salads, Veggie Guys, Good Choices, Presotea, among others.
Go Meatless for the animals! Go meatless for the environment! Wooh!