BEFORE2030 - A LIVABLE FUTURE For people, planet, and all life
REDUCE ANIMAL FOOD CONSUMPTION WORLD-WIDE
You might think that the Plague of the early 2020s (Pandemic) was a health-crisis, and indeed that is what it became. But, actually, it started within the now ‘indefinite’ worldwide food crisis for the foreseeable future. That’s if you except that being a zoonotic disease, COVID, came from a panguin, or some such wild animal, within the Chinese wild animal economy, which amounts to billions in sales annually, far from being a fringe operation.
Part of the way to address the food crises is to reduce animal-food consumption. In fact, going forward it is imperative. That’s why, when I saw a recent article in the New York Times (2023) about a 26 floor, high-rise pig farm in China, my jaw just dropped. Approximately 600,000 pigs in one building, as much as one million pounds of feed going in a day, then how much waste per day coming out? What to do with it? This seems to me to be the height of ignorance. Maybe just an animal industry having its way, but they have to feed almost 4 times the US population, and they haven’t thought through what a smart diet would be? Not to mention 600,000 genetically identical clones of a mono-culture, wandering around there, waiting to become the next pandemic petri dish, then passing there infection on to the human workers, just the way flu spreads every year from that part of the world!
In the foreword of John Robbins’ book, Diet for a New America, 1987, Joanna Macy imagines a world that adopted some of the information he documented there: “We find that the grain we previously fed to fatten livestock can now feed five times the U.S. population;…The great forests of the world, that we had been decimating for grazing purposes (that was, we discover, the major cause of deforestation), begin to grow again…As we stop raising and grinding up cattle for hamburgers, we discover that ranching and farm factories had been the major drain on our water resources.”
With over a billion people to feed a day, you’d think feeding the grain, or spending that money to buy a plant product that can be turned into protein, like soy beans, or any other bean, would help solve so many of the Chinese food system’s problems, even as crop disruption from climate change decreases yields!
U.S. meat consumption is three times the global average, this is not only unhealthy, it is unnecessary. It is also a choice. Melanie Joy, PhD, Edm, wrote the book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. She also started the website, Beyond Carnism. She says, “Carnism is the invisible belief system, or idealogy, that conditions people to eat certain animals.” Also, “Most people are opposed to such violence, (the raising and slaughtering of animals for their consumption), and so to keep itself intact, carnism uses a set of psychological defense mechanisms designed to prevent people from becoming aware of the violence of the system or of the fact that the system even exists.”
Another reason: “the same antibiotics that humans need, are used for animal health. In fact, the (antibiotic) overuse in animal agriculture is now considered a global health threat because it could lead to antimicrobial resistance. 80% of antibiotics sold in the United States are for animal agriculture and expected to increase worldwide as time continues. The practice of medicine and the state of public health would be catastrophically affected if antibiotics were not generally effective in treating bacterial illnesses.” (www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638249/)
It seems to me that there will be no choice to reduce animal consumption in the future for a sustainable planet.
Further info:
IPES Food, A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045 https://www.ipes-food.org
John Robbins, Diet For A New America, 1987, (this book is even more relevant today)
USE UP AND DOWN ARROWS ON YOUR KEYBOARD IN 'MORE' COLUMN IF PAGES DON'T SHOW
You might think that the Plague of the early 2020s (Pandemic) was a health-crisis, and indeed that is what it became. But, actually, it started within the now ‘indefinite’ worldwide food crisis for the foreseeable future. That’s if you except that being a zoonotic disease, COVID, came from a panguin, or some such wild animal, within the Chinese wild animal economy, which amounts to billions in sales annually, far from being a fringe operation.
Part of the way to address the food crises is to reduce animal-food consumption. In fact, going forward it is imperative. That’s why, when I saw a recent article in the New York Times (2023) about a 26 floor, high-rise pig farm in China, my jaw just dropped. Approximately 600,000 pigs in one building, as much as one million pounds of feed going in a day, then how much waste per day coming out? What to do with it? This seems to me to be the height of ignorance. Maybe just an animal industry having its way, but they have to feed almost 4 times the US population, and they haven’t thought through what a smart diet would be? Not to mention 600,000 genetically identical clones of a mono-culture, wandering around there, waiting to become the next pandemic petri dish, then passing there infection on to the human workers, just the way flu spreads every year from that part of the world!
In the foreword of John Robbins’ book, Diet for a New America, 1987, Joanna Macy imagines a world that adopted some of the information he documented there: “We find that the grain we previously fed to fatten livestock can now feed five times the U.S. population;…The great forests of the world, that we had been decimating for grazing purposes (that was, we discover, the major cause of deforestation), begin to grow again…As we stop raising and grinding up cattle for hamburgers, we discover that ranching and farm factories had been the major drain on our water resources.”
With over a billion people to feed a day, you’d think feeding the grain, or spending that money to buy a plant product that can be turned into protein, like soy beans, or any other bean, would help solve so many of the Chinese food system’s problems, even as crop disruption from climate change decreases yields!
U.S. meat consumption is three times the global average, this is not only unhealthy, it is unnecessary. It is also a choice. Melanie Joy, PhD, Edm, wrote the book, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows. She also started the website, Beyond Carnism. She says, “Carnism is the invisible belief system, or idealogy, that conditions people to eat certain animals.” Also, “Most people are opposed to such violence, (the raising and slaughtering of animals for their consumption), and so to keep itself intact, carnism uses a set of psychological defense mechanisms designed to prevent people from becoming aware of the violence of the system or of the fact that the system even exists.”
Another reason: “the same antibiotics that humans need, are used for animal health. In fact, the (antibiotic) overuse in animal agriculture is now considered a global health threat because it could lead to antimicrobial resistance. 80% of antibiotics sold in the United States are for animal agriculture and expected to increase worldwide as time continues. The practice of medicine and the state of public health would be catastrophically affected if antibiotics were not generally effective in treating bacterial illnesses.” (www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4638249/)
It seems to me that there will be no choice to reduce animal consumption in the future for a sustainable planet.
Further info:
IPES Food, A Long Food Movement: Transforming Food Systems by 2045 https://www.ipes-food.org
John Robbins, Diet For A New America, 1987, (this book is even more relevant today)
USE UP AND DOWN ARROWS ON YOUR KEYBOARD IN 'MORE' COLUMN IF PAGES DON'T SHOW
