The Guardian (London)
December 24, 2002
http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,865087,00.html
Famine can only be avoided
if the rich give up meat, fish and
dairy
By George
Monbiot
--------------------------------------
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.
Article continues
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.