2008: the year much of humanity began to go hungry

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

The argument between vegetarians, vegans and the omnivorous majority over the ethics of killing and eating animals is now irrelevant, or rather, it has to change; while for many of us eating animals is wrong because we believe we should not be killing them for food, the argument to get across today is that by raising animals to kill and eat, we feed them grain and other plant materials that would be better repurposed to fill the bellies of starving human beings. We seem incapable of controlling human population growth—but farm animals are a different matter.

There are those who think they immunise themselves from criticism by becoming self-sufficient in everything, including livestock; but keeping a pig on a small plot of land for a year or two and then killing it for the table still consumes way too much food for one family that should be directed to many more poor instead.

Chickens are a quandary, because feeding them and then killing them is no different to the previous example, but arguably keeping a few chickens for their eggs and letting them live full, natural lives may just be a little more justifiable. Just. The same would go for sheep, providing wool, and cows, giving us milk, but the individual food requirements of just one cow are enormous. Larger livestock also produce enormous quantities of methane, currently going straight into the atmosphere and a major contributor to global warming. Sheep, at least, eat grass—and we can’t really stomach eating grass, it’s way too tough.

This is a multi-page entry: page 1 page 2 page 3

categories: healthy planet