Sustainable Protein Production and Consumption: Pigs or Peas?

Sustainable Protein Production and Consumption: Pigs or Peas? is a book that presents and explores the PROFETAS programme for development of a more sustainable food system by studying the feasibility of substituting meat with plant based alternatives. The emphasis is on improving the food system by reducing the use of energy, land, and freshwater, at the same time limiting the impacts on health and animal welfare associated with intensive livestock production. It is clear that such a new perspective calls not only for advanced environmental and technological research, but also for in-depth societal research, as the acceptance of new food systems is critically contingent on perceptions and attitudes of modern consumers. In this unique multidisciplinary setting, PROFETAS has opened up pathways for a major transition in protein food production and consumption, not by just analyzing the food chain, but rather by exploring the entire agricultural system, including biomass for energy production and the use of increasingly scarce freshwater resources. The study presented here is intended to benefit every stakeholder in the food chain from policymakers to consumers, and it offers guiding principles for a transition towards an ecologically and socially sustainable food system from a multi-level perspective.

• consumer
• development
• meat
• plant proteins
• production
• proteins
• sustainability
• transition
• industrial pollution prevention

From the reviews:

"This book is a highlight in multidisciplinary studies on innovative food production and consumption in an era of new scarcity and offers useful guiding principles for a transition towards an ecologically and socially sustainable food system from a global perspective. The authors/researchers ought to be complimented for their creative research results which deserve to be disseminated to a wide audience."
(Peter Nijkamp, President NWO)

"This book sets out the findings of the PROFETAS … research programme, which studied the options for more sustainable food production and consumption. … The book argues for a ‘protein transition’. … informed by a range of disciplines whose methodologies are integrated together into a coherent analysis, presents a powerful and reasoned case for both the ethical expedient worth of the protein transition. … is emphatic that a debate involving the public is needed on the introduction of NPFs." (Emyr Vaughan Thomas, Environmental Values, Vol. 16 (4), 2007)

• Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

  Harry Aiking, Joop Boer

• Agrotechnology & Food Innovations BV, Wageningen University and Research Centre, Wageningen

  Johan Vereijken

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