As well as costing the lives of millions
of animals each year, meat production is causing human starvation
throughout the world. Because over half the world's cereal harvest
is fed to livestock being reared for slaughter, men, women and
children are going hungry. It takes a full 3 kg of grain to
produce just 1 kg of poultry, or 10 kg of grain to yield a mere
1 kg of intensively reared beef.
It's a shameful waste of resources. The more people who go vegetarian,
the more the agricultural industry - and it is an industry these
days, as mechanical as any other - will be forced to reassess
its methods of operation and reduce its swollen meat production
as demand dwindles.
Starving!
A third of the world's population is starving,
15 million children die every year because of malnutrition,
yet this planet could supply ample food for everyone.
The problem is mismanagement - resulting in a huge waste of
resources. Ten acres of land (that's about five football fields)
will support:
61 people on a diet of soya beans
24 people on a diet of wheat
10 people on a diet of maize
2 people on a diet of cattle meat.
At least ten times as many people can be supported on a cereal
diet compared with the number that can be supported on a meat-based
diet. When the diet is based on soya products, the comparison
rockets to 30 times as many people.
New Zealand alone could support an increase in population of
more than 1000 percent if everyone was on a plant-based diet.
Countries like Ethiopia and India grow their own grain. Developed
countries continually take food from the Third World where it
is needed, and feed it to their livestock.
The Environment
Tropical rainforest produces most of the
oxygen we breathe. Yet right now large multinational companies
are clearing vast areas for cattle ranching - cattle that are
the basic ingredient of beefburgers!
Forests are destroyed, cattle reared and slaughtered, and the
land left infertile. When the forest goes, it goes for good,
and it's going fast. Every minute of every day, 100 acres of
rainforest is devastated and disappears, reducing the Earth's
oxygen supply.
The East Cape of the North Island provides a prime example of
what happens when land is cleared for animal production (sheep
farming in this case). Erosion is widespread in the area, with
many landslides and gouges on the hillsides. Floods are a regular
occurrence. The government is now planning to reforest the area.
Meat production is more than killing animals, it's suicide!
Suggested Reading
Diet For A Small Planet by Francis
Moore Lappe Why You Don't Need Meat by Peter Cox Compassion - The Ultimate Ethic by Victoria Moran Organic Gardening by Lawrence D. Hills The Poisoned Earth by Nigel Dudley Winds of Change by J. Gribbin & M. Kelly
Think about the consequences of meat production. Is it worth
ruining our planet for?
This website is administered
by the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Vegetarian Society
