“And there are ideas of the future, of which some are already
approaching realization and are obliging people to change their way of life
and to struggle against the former ways: such ideas in our world as those of
freeing the laborers, of giving equality to women, of ceasing to use
flesh-food, and so on.” -- Count Leo Tolstoy
“The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's
greed.” -- Mohandas Gandhi
Humans are suited for a plant-based diet, but can adapt to flesh-eating if
our survival depends on it. According to the American Dietetic Association,
"most of mankind for most of human history has lived on vegetarian or near
vegetarian diets." Meat has traditionally been a luxury which few could
afford.
How did agriculture arise? One theory, by Mark Nathan Cohen in his book
The Food Crisis in Prehistory is startlingly simple: agriculture
developed because the world was overpopulated. Relative to the existing
hunter-gatherer technology, the environment was incapable of supporting the
existing population.
'"It seems odd at first to think of the world as being overpopulated when
the population was only a fraction of what it is today or to think of the
world as environmentally exhausted, when it was more fertile then than it is
now,'" observes author Keith Akers in A Vegetarian Sourcebook. "But
we must remember that the hunter-gatherer technology is extremely
inefficient with respect to land resources. It is estimated that each of the
Kung bushmen (a modern hunter-gatherer society) requires over ten square
kilometers of land -- more than 2,500 acres. At this rate of land use, the
world could hardly have supported more than a few million hunter-gatherers."
Humanity is once again at a crossroads. The real issue isn't overpopulation,
but overconsumption: our meat-centered diet. As pointed out by Canadian
tennis champion and health and wellness expert Peter Burwash in A
Vegetarian Primer, the world population has long since passed the point
at which everyone could be comfortably fed on a meat-centered diet, so it
makes sense to eat lower on the food chain, an idea popularized by Frances
Moore Lappe, in her bestseller, Diet for a Small Planet. As vegan
author John Robbins points out in Diet for a New America, the
world's cattle alone consume enough to feed over 8.7 billion humans.
Nor can fish provide any help in alleviating global hunger. There are signs
that the fishing industry (which is quite energy-intensive) has already
overfished the oceans in several areas. And fish could never play a major
role in the world's diet anyway: the entire global fish catch of the world,
if divided among all the world's inhabitants would amount to only a few
ounces of fish per person per week. Fish are now being "factory
farmed." Fish are sentient beings, able to feel and experience pain, stress
and anxiety.
Keith Akers writes: "Some vegetarians may be somewhat offended to find that
dairy products and eggs are part of the problem." The arguments that
convince meat-eaters to go vegetarian (ecological, economic,
energy, environmental, ethical, health and nutrition) can be taken a step
farther and convince meat-eaters and vegetarians to go vegan.
In the Central Valley of California cows generate the same amount of fecal
waste as a city of 21 million people, much of which goes untreated and
pollutes waterways. Dairy products, like other animal products, are obtained
through modern agribusiness and factory farming, and the issues of animal
cruelty, the health hazards caused by eating higher rather than lower on the
food chain, as well as the energy and environmental concerns are not avoided
by switching from one commercially produced animal product to another.
According to World Watch: "The human appetite for animal flesh is a
driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage
now threatening the human future -- deforestation, topsoil erosion, fresh
water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss,
social injustice, the destabilization of communities and the spread of
disease."
Mac McDaniel writes: "We're looking at a global food crisis by 2050 and
we're trying to George Lucas our way out of it with prototypes, science
fiction, and undeveloped technology. With any discussion of food shortages,
the 800 lb. gorilla in the room is animal agriculture. (Nearly 75) percent
of all agriculture land is used to raise livestock, and a third of land used
for growing crops is used for growing feed for livestock. It doesn't take a
scientist to see the common sense that feeding plants to animals, and then
eating the animals, is a horribly inefficient way to produce food."
Peter Singer similarly concludes: "Environmentalists are increasingly
recognizing that the choice of what we eat is an environmental issue.
Animals raised in sheds or on feedlots eat grains or soybeans. To convert
eight or nine kilos of grain protein into a single kilo of animal protein
wastes land, energy, and water. On a crowded planet with a growing human
population, that is a luxury that we are becoming increasingly unable to
afford. Intensive animal production is a heavy user of fossil fuels and a
major source of pollution of both air and water. It releases large
quantities of methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. We are
risking unpredictable changes to the climate of our planet for the sake of
more hamburgers. A diet heavy in animal products, catered to by intensive
animal production, is a disaster for animals, the environment, and the
health of those who eat it."
The world population is now eight billion and is expected to be ten billion
by the middle of the 21st century. Bruce Friedrich of the Good Food
Institute, formerly with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
-- his activism nurtured through service in the Catholic Worker community --
is convinced the future is plant-based.
Even if shifting to a plant-based diet isn’t enough to stave off
overpopulation, in light of the data showing the depletion of energy, food,
fresh water, land space, raw materials and resources as well as the heavy
contribution to air and water pollution, deforestation, and global warming
caused by a meat-centered diet, how do proponents of population control —
warning about overpopulation consuming the world’s resources — justify
consuming animal products?
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