Why vegans were right all along

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Why vegans were right all along

 

Famine can only be avoided if the rich give up meat, fish and dairy

 

George Monbiot

Tuesday December 24, 2002

The Guardian

 

The Christians stole the winter solstice from the pagans, and capitalism stole

it from the Christians. But one feature of the celebrations has remained

unchanged: the consumption of vast quantities of meat. The practice used to

make sense. Livestock slaughtered in the autumn, before the grass ran out,

would be about to decay, and fat-starved people would have to survive a further

three months. Today we face the opposite problem: we spend the next three

months trying to work it off.

Our seasonal excesses would be perfectly sustainable, if we weren't doing the

same thing every other week of the year. But, because of the rich world's

disproportionate purchasing power, many of us can feast every day. And this

would also be fine, if we did not live in a finite world.

 

By comparison to most of the animals we eat, turkeys are relatively efficient

converters: they produce about three times as much meat per pound of grain as

feedlot cattle. But there are still plenty of reasons to feel uncomfortable

about eating them. Most are reared in darkness, so tightly packed that they can

scarcely move. Their beaks are removed with a hot knife to prevent them from

hurting each other. As Christmas approaches, they become so heavy that their

hips buckle. When you see the inside of a turkey broilerhouse, you begin to

entertain grave doubts about European civilisation.

 

This is one of the reasons why many people have returned to eating red meat at

Christmas. Beef cattle appear to be happier animals. But the improvement in

animal welfare is offset by the loss in human welfare. The world produces

enough food for its people and its livestock, though (largely because they are

so poor) some 800 million are malnourished. But as the population rises,

structural global famine will be avoided only if the rich start to eat less

meat. The number of farm animals on earth has risen fivefold since 1950: humans

are now outnumbered three to one. Livestock already consume half the world's

grain, and their numbers are still growing almost exponentially.

 

This is why biotechnology - whose promoters claim that it will feed the world -

has been deployed to produce not food but feed: it allows farmers to switch

from grains which keep people alive to the production of more lucrative crops

for livestock. Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a

choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world's animals or it

continues to feed the world's people. It cannot do both.

 

The impending crisis will be accelerated by the depletion of both phosphate

fertiliser and the water used to grow crops. Every kilogram of beef we consume,

according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland,

requires around 100,000 litres of water. Aquifers are beginning the run dry all

over the world, largely because of abstraction by farmers.

 

Many of those who have begun to understand the finity of global grain

production have responded by becoming vegetarians. But vegetarians who continue

to consume milk and eggs scarcely reduce their impact on the ecosystem. The

conversion efficiency of dairy and egg production is generally better than meat

rearing, but even if everyone who now eats beef were to eat cheese instead,

this would merely delay the global famine. As both dairy cattle and poultry are

often fed with fishmeal (which means that no one can claim to eat cheese but

not fish), it might, in one respect, even accelerate it. The shift would be

accompanied too by a massive deterioration in animal welfare: with the possible

exception of intensively reared broilers and pigs, battery chickens and dairy

cows are the farm animals which appear to suffer most.

 

We could eat pheasants, many of which are dumped in landfill after they've been

shot, and whose price, at this time of the year, falls to around £2 a bird, but

most people would feel uncomfortable about subsidising the bloodlust of

brandy-soaked hoorays. Eating pheasants, which are also fed on grain, is

sustainable only up to the point at which demand meets supply. We can eat fish,

but only if we are prepared to contribute to the collapse of marine ecosystems

and - as the European fleet plunders the seas off West Africa - the starvation

of some of the hungriest people on earth. It's impossible to avoid the

conclusion that the only sustainable and socially just option is for the

inhabitants of the rich world to become, like most of the earth's people,

broadly vegan, eating meat only on special occasions like Christmas.

 

As a meat-eater, I've long found it convenient to categorise veganism as a

response to animal suffering or a health fad. But, faced with these figures, it

now seems plain that it's the only ethical response to what is arguably the

world's most urgent social justice issue. We stuff ourselves, and the poor get

stuffed.

 

www.monbiot.com

 

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Useful links

Disaster Emergency Appeal

World Food Programme Africa Hunger Alert

UN food and agriculture organisation

UN world food summit 2002

Famine Early Warning System

Drought Monitoring Centre

Global information and early warning system on food and agriculture