16
Apr
Veganism Could Cure Global Food Crisis
- posted at 10:39 AM
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In the Independent today, health editor Jeremy Laurance set down his answers to the big question on everyone’s lips at the moment - Is changing our diet the key to resolving the global food crisis?
In the short excerpts below, you can see that he makes a good case but there are a few holes that need addressing, see my comments in italics. View the full article.
- Would cutting car use solve the food crisis?
“… The world’s passion for meat is a much bigger cause of global hunger than its passion for the car.”
Yes, this is so true. Thank goodness the national media are giving these shocking facts an airing.
- Isn’t it completely unrealistic for Britain to go vegan?
“Of course. Vegans number 0.4 per cent of the population, vegetarians 3 per cent, and most people will not take readily to a diet of green leaves, pulses, fruit and nuts. This is about the direction we should be moving in, not the ultimate destination. We should be aiming to reduce our meat and dairy consumption, and increase consumption of fruit and vegetables.”
I wouldn’t be so quick to say it’s unreliable for Britain to go vegan, Jeremy. Going vegan really is the answer to this impending doom we all face. Flouting the vegan diet as one of mere ‘green leaves, pulses, fruit and nuts’ will of course have a negative impact on its uptake. As a vegan, I eat a varied diet and relish the thought of cooking up a treat in the evenings and eating in restaurants (seriously, it’s one of my favourite things to do, so it’s not difficult and therefore not unrealistic). Meat reducing is a great start however, and is a responsibility we all owe the third world, the planet, the animals and our health.
- Are there other reasons for cutting back on meat-eating?
“Yes. The largest study of the link between diet and health published by the World Cancer Research Fund last November concluded that animal flesh occupies too big a place in the western diet, contributing to high rates of cancer and heart disease… Finally, there could be animal welfare benefits.”
A shame this is added as a ‘finally’ but at least it’s there. Of course there could be most definitely are benefits for animals in giving up eating them. I’m pretty sure the implications of not slaughtering an animal and then eating its flesh is a good thing for that animal, no? Rather than selling fewer animals (which would of course be better than the immense amount at the moment), we should focus on completely phasing out selling animals for food or any other human use.
“Global hunger could be directly attributed to meat-eating.” —Chrissie Hynde
Half the world’s population does not receive an adequate amount of food to eat. Ten to twenty million die annually of hunger and its effects. The Institute for Food and Development Policy reports that, “Forty thousand children starve to death on this planet every day,” or one child every two seconds.
The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country. We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats. Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for people. Most of it is used to grow livestock feed.
Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain-fed livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.
The world’s cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattlefeed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.
In his book, The Hungry Planet, Georg Bergstrom points out that protein-starved underdeveloped nations export more protein to wealthy nations than they receive. He calls this “the protein swindle.” Ninety percent of the world’s fish meal catch, for example, is exported to rich countries. One-third of Africa’s peanut crop winds up in the stomachs of European livestock. Half the world’s cereal crop is fed to livestock and the United States annually imports one million tons of vegetable protein from Third World nations–just to feed its farm animals.
Bergstrom writes: “Sometimes one wonders how many Americans and Western Europeans have grasped the fact that quite a few of their beef steaks, quarts of milk, dozens of eggs, and hundreds of broilers are the result, not of their agriculture, but of the approximately two million metric tons of protein, mostly of high quality, which astute Western businessmen channel away from the needy and hungry.”
Jeremy Rifkin, author of a dozen influential books and President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, writes in his 1992 bestseller Beyond Beef:
“Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet. It need be emphasized that this is a new phenomenon, unlike anything ever experienced before.
“Contrary to popular belief, the poor are getting poorer each year…Increased poverty has meant increased malnutrition. On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the Pacific, 28 percent of the people border on starvation, experiencing the gnawing pain of a perpetual hunger.”
“In the Near East, one in ten people is underfed. Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the world Health Organization–a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all the grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species–nearly 25 percent–been malnourished.
“The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an…evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings.”
In the 1970s, the United Nations Secretary General said that the food consumption of the rich countries is the key cause of hunger around the world. The United Nations has recommended that the wealthy nations cut down on their meat consumption.