Vegans Were Right All Along

[Guest guest]

Talk about an early Christmas present! This was

published in a major British newspaper today!

------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,865087,00.html

 

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Why vegans were

right all along

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.

 

 

Copied here by Chris

[Guest guest]

excellent article... i have forwarded it on to many already ... (for reading whilst they sit out their turkey digestion...)

 

 

 

Chris Phillips <chris [chris] Talk about an early Christmas present! This waspublished in a major British newspaper today!------http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,865087,00.htmlGuardian Unlimited | Special reports | Why vegans wereright all along Why vegans were right all along Famine can only be avoided if the rich give up meat,fish and dairy George MonbiotTuesday December 24, 2002The Guardian