We Are All Leaving Blood Footprints

What Can You Do About Yours?

Photo by Danie Franco on Unsplash (Edited by author)

It’s a powerful image — each and every one of us leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints as we move through life. But what the hell does it mean?

And more to the point, what can we do about it?

Most of us are familiar with the term ‘carbon footprint’ as a way to measure our impact on global warming. Our carbon footprint refers to the amount of greenhouse gasses produced by an individual, event, organization or product and expressed as its equivalent in carbon dioxide.

The idea stemmed from a concept developed by William E. Rees and Mathis Wackernagel in the 1990s and is closely related to the concept of ecological, land and water footprints, which all generally measure our impact upon this glorious planet on which we live.

But very few people have yet to come across the similar concept of a ‘blood footprint’. It’s a relatively new term, coined by vegan zoologist and writer Jordi Casamitjana, who defines it as:

The total amount of suffering caused to other sentient beings by an individual, event, organization or product.

Simply put, reducing our blood footprint is a way of seeking to exclude, as far as…