MEAT: Root Cause of Endless War, Distinct Threat to Humanity
It takes nearly one gallon of fossil fuel and 2,500 gallons of water to
produce just one pound of conventionally fed beef. (Mother Jones)
The Worldwatch Institute estimates one pound of steak from a steer raised in
a feedlot costs: five pounds of grain, a whopping 2,500 gallons of water,
the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, and about 34 pounds of
topsoil.
Thirty-three percent of our nation's raw materials and fossil fuels go into
livestock destined for slaughter. In a vegan economy, only two percent of
our resources will go to the production of food.
One-third of all raw materials in the U.S. are consumed by the livestock
industry and it takes thrice as much fossil fuel energy to produce meat than
it does to produce plant foods.
A report on the energy crisis in Scientific American warned: "The trends in
meat consumption and energy consumption are on a collision course."
Livestock production affects a startling 70 to 85 percent of the land area
of the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. That includes
the public and private rangeland used for grazing, as well as the land used
to produce the crops that feed the animals.
By comparison, urbanization only affects three percent of the United States
land area, slightly larger for the European Union and the United Kingdom.
Meat production consumes the world's land resources.
Half of all fresh water worldwide is used for thirsty livestock. Producing
eight ounces of beef requires an unimaginable 25,000 liters of water, or the
water necessary for one pound of steak equals the water consumption of the
average household for a year.
"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to
dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and
third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle
and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed
the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."
--Jeremy Rifkin, pro-life AND pro-animal author, Beyond Beef: The Rise and
Fall of the Cattle Culture, and president of the Greenhouse Crisis
Foundation
**
I'm wary of the claim by many on the political left that we'd all be at
peace, holding hands, singing "Kumbaya," etc. if it weren't for the terrible
world leaders plotting to wage war at every turn, and using innocent
citizens as pawns in a global chess game. War and abortion are the karma for
killing animals.
The institutionalized killing of billions of animals has led to global
hunger, global warming, the energy, environmental, population and water
crises. Why is it so hard to accept that there's a slippery slope, a
connection between the killing of animals and the killing of human beings?
"Who loves this terrible thing called war?" asked Isadora Duncan. "Probably
the meat-eaters, having killed, feel the need to kill... The butcher with
his bloody apron incites bloodshed, murder. Why not? From cutting the throat
of a young calf to cutting the throats of our brothers and sisters is but a
step. While we ourselves are living graves of murdered animals, how can we
expect any ideal conditions on the earth?"
"I personally believe," wrote Isaac Bashevis Singer, "that as long as human
beings will go on shedding the blood of animals, there will never be any
peace. There is only one little step from killing animals to creating gas
chambers a' la Hitler and concentration camps a' la Stalin -- all such deeds
are done in the name of 'social justice.' There will be no justice as long
as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are
weaker than he is."
In his 1979 book, Vegetarianism: A Way of Life, author Dudley Giehl writes:
"Competition for food has inevitably led to conflict and this struggle for
survival has been a significant factor in the history of organized warfare.
In this respect, meat-eating may be regarded as either the underlying cause
of armed conflict or at least one of several factors contributing to the
exacerbation of a pre-existing problem. The reason why meat, in particular,
has created such problems is that the practice of raising livestock requires
a much greater use of resources. The basic problem is simply that people
are forced to compete with animals for food--a most precarious situation
when food is in short supply."
Many of us believe that hunger exists because there's not enough food to go
around. But as Frances Moore Lappe and her anti-hunger organization Food
First! have shown, the real cause of hunger is a scarcity of justice, not a
scarcity of food.
In country after country the pattern is repeated. Livestock industries are
consuming feed to such an extent that now almost all Third World nations
must import grain. Seventy-five percent of Third World imports of corn,
barley, sorghum, and oats are fed to animals, not to people. In country
after country, the demand for meat among the rich is Squeezing out staple
production for the poor.
The same trend can be found in the Middle East and North Africa--increases
in grain-fed livestock require more imported feed. Twenty years ago, Egypt
was self-sufficient in grain. Then, livestock ate only 10 percent of the
nation's grain. Today, livestock consume 36 percent of Egypt's grain. As a
result, Egypt must now import eight million tons of grain every year.
Twenty-five years ago, Syria was a barley exporter. But in the intervening
years, livestock has consumed increasing amounts of the country's grain.
Now, despite a phenomenal 1,000 percent increase in the land area devoted to
producing barley, Syria must import the cereal.
Because of its reliance on livestock agriculture, Israel's economy depends
heavily on groundwater use. You can't make the desert bloom through sheer
hard work; it requires water. Today Israel is heavily dependent on water
from the West Bank, and the Israeli press is full of talk of retaining the
West Bank in order to protect water supplies from encroaching Arab wells.
One analyst gloomily concludes that the water in the West Bank
region--which the Israelis captured from the Arabs in the 1967 war--is "fast
becoming the most ominous obstacle to any peaceful settlement in the
region."
Any economy that relies on meat production is in serious trouble. Any
social system which persists in putting an emphasis on meat production will
be progressively weakened until it as destroyed or until its policies are
changed. The amount of time which will pass before a serious social
disaster sets in, of course, will vary from region to region. In the case
of the United States, which still has abundant agriculture resources, there
are probably many decades left. In the case of Africa, the disaster is
there today.
Regardless of social system or ideology, any country that emphasizes meat
production is going to make its food situation worse. In the richer
nations, food may simply become somewhat more costly. If the livestock
industry is subsidized by the government--as is the case in both the United
States and the former Soviet Union--then other areas of the economy may
suffer, as they are sacrificed go keep agriculture afloat. In
the poorer nations, food may become unavailable to many and starvation may
result.
In Ethiopia and Mozambique, we have two cases of very poor countries which
have relied heavily on livestock agriculture with tragic results. In both
countries, thousands have died and tens of thousands more are in danger of
dying. In both countries, livestock agriculture has played a key role in
crippling the ability of the food system to produce food. Ecological
disaster is not new in Africa. Northern Africa, once the granary
of the Roman Empire, was reduced to a barren wasteland by the pastoral
nomads which entered the area after the Empire's collapse. The
march of the Sahara desert southward, preceded by large herds of livestock
animals, has been observed for decades. Numerous independent observers have
confirmed that soil erosion today is rampant in Africa. The destruction has
been savage. Fifty years ago, 40% of Ethiopia was covered with trees, while
only 2% to 4% is covered with trees today.
So the famine in Ethiopia during the 1980s should not have been a surprise.
Many blamed the drought, the civil war, or governmental incompetence in
pushing the country over the edge into starvation; and certainly these
factors played a role. but we cannot ignore the ecological realities which
are the underlying conditions responsible for Ethiopia's getting to the
brink of disaster in the first place. Overgrazing by cattle has played a
key role in Ethiopia's decline.
Incredibly, while the people are starving, Ethiopia today has a larger
livestock population than any other country in Africa, though it is only
ninth in total land area!
Similar problems have affected Mozambique. Here we have a country which
recently liberated itself from colonialism. Yet Mozambique then proceeded
to import beef from abroad to satisfy the demands of the urban elite for
meat. Perhaps even worse, they are intensifying their production of
corn--one of the most erosive of all plant foods--and feeding it to their
cattle! This is a recipe for disaster and a most depressing pattern
throughout many third world countries. They throw out colonialism, but they
keep or even intensify the colonial system of food production.
Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are also experiencing serious
problems related to meat production. In Poland, prior to the worker's riots
in 1979 over rising meat prices, the per capita meat consumption was nearly
as high as it was in the United States. In 1979 the government allowed the
price of meat to rise, and the workers expressed their intense
dissatisfaction.
Meat consumption has placed a severe strain on the Polish economy; the
Polish economy simply cannot sustain the level of meat consumption which
approaches the "American" level. The Commonwealth of Independent States'
well-publicized agricultural difficulties only arise because it tries to
feed its citizens a Western-type diet high in meat and animal products. The
former Soviet Union would not have the slightest difficulty in feeding
itself from its own resources, but grain has to be imported for their
cattle.
Most news reports on shortages and hunger in the former Soviet Union
emphasize the lack of meat, which is really an unnecessary luxury and not a
necessity. Meat consumption has severely aggravated the country's problems.
In 1991, Worldwatch noted: "Since 1950, meat consumption has tripled and
feed consumption quadrupled. Use of grain for feed surpassed direct human
consumption in 1964 and has been rising ever since. Soviet livestock now
eat three times as much grain as Soviet Citizens. Grain imports have
soared, going from near zero in 1970 to twenty-four million tons in 1990,
and the USSR is now the world's second largest grain importer."
Development funds have irrigated the desert in Senegal so that multinational
firms can grow eggplant and mangos for air-freighting to Europe's best
tables. In Haiti, the majority of peasants struggle for survival by trying
to grow food on mountain slopes of a 45 degree incline or more. They say
they are exiles from their birthright--some of the world's richest
agricultural land. These lands now belong to a handful of elite; cattle are
flown in by U.S. firms for grazing and re-exported to franchised hamburger
restaurants.
Throughout Latin America, land availability is a prominent social issue.
Revolutionaries as well as reform-minded moderates have made land reform a
major issue. Yet in many Latin American countries, forests are being
leveled in order to create pastures for cattle grazing land. In a region
where land availability is a central social issue, existing land is being
gobbled up by livestock agriculture. The resulting social
tensions have resulted in civil wars, repression and violence.
And what about the United States? Half the water consumed in the U.S. goes
to irrigate land growing feed and fodder for livestock. Huge amounts of
water are also used to wash away their excrement. In fact, U.S. livestock
produce twenty times as much excrement as does the entire human population,
creating sewage which is ten to several hundred times more concentrated than
raw domestic sewage. Animal wastes cause ten times more water pollution
than does the U.S. human population; the meat industry causes three times
more harmful organic water pollution than the rest of the nation's
industries combined.
Meat producers are the number one industrial polluters in our nation,
contributing to half the water pollution in the United States. The water
that goes into a thousand-pound steer could float a destroyer. It takes
twenty-five gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat, but twenty-five
hundred gallons to produce a pound of meat. If these costs weren't
subsidized by the American taxpayers, hamburger meat would be $35 per pound!
The burden of subsidizing the California meat industry costs taxpayers $24
billion. Livestock producers are California's biggest consumers of water.
Every tax dollar the state doles out to livestock producers costs taxpayers
over seven dollars in lost wages, higher living costs and reduced business
income. Seventeen western states have enough water supplies to support
economies and populations twice as large as the present.
Overgrazing of cattle leads to topsoil erosion, turning once-arable land
into desert. We lose four million acres of topsoil each year and eighty-five
percent of this loss is directly caused by raising livestock. To replace the
soil we've lost, we're destroying our forests. Since 1967, the rate of
deforestation in the U. S. has been one acre every five seconds. For each
acre cleared in urbanization, seven are cleared for grazing or growing
livestock feed.
One-third of all raw materials in the U.S. are consumed by the livestock
industry and it takes thrice the fossil fuel energy to produce meat than it
does to produce plant foods. A report on the energy crisis in Scientific
American warned: "The trends in meat consumption and energy consumption are
on a collision course."
According to Howard Lyman, former senior lobbyist for the National Farmers
Union, "Family farmers are victims of public policy that gives preference to
feeding animals over feeding people. This has encouraged the cheap grain
policy of this nation and has made the beef cartel the biggest hog at the
trough."
The Bible contains numerous examples of conflict situations that are
directly attributable to the practice of raising livestock, including
contested water rights, bitter competition for grazing areas, and friction
between agriculturalists and nomadic herdsmen. The more settled
agricultural communities deeply resented the intrusion of nomadic tribes
with their large herds of cattle, sheep, and goats. These animals were
considered a menace. Aside from the threat to the crops themselves, large
herds of livestock caused much damage to the general quality of the land as
a result of over grazing.
It was ostensibly for this reason that the Philistines, whose primary
agricultural pursuits were corn and orchards, sought to discourage nomadic
herdsmen from using their territory by filling in many of the wells in the
surrounding area. One of the earliest accounts of strife among the herdsmen
themselves is found in the story of Lot and Abram:
"And Lot also, which went with Abram, had flocks, and herds, and tents.
And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together; for
their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together. And there
was a strife between the herdmen of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's
cattle." (Genesis 13:5-7)
Abram moved Westward to a region known as Canaan, while Lot journeyed to the
east, finally settling in Sodom. Such peaceful agreements, however, were
not always possible. There are several references in the Bible to clashes
between the Israelites and Midianites. The Midianites were wealthy Bedouin
traders who owned large numbers of livestock, as did the Israelites, who
brought their herds with them when they left Egypt.
Livestock require vast areas of land for grazing. They also need water,
which has never been abundant in that region of the world. The strain thus
placed on the land's resources is mentioned in Judges 6:4: "And they
encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth."
The depletion of resources created by the people arid livestock moving into
this territory is described in Judges 6:5 by a singularly appropriate
simile: "For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came
as grasshoppers." Another passage informs us that after a
particularly vicious battle with the Midianites the Israelites augmented
their herds with the livestock of their slain captives. This included
675,000 sheep and more than 72,000 beeves.
A strikingly frank reference to the casual relationship between flesh eating
and war, in terms of land use, is found in Deuteronomy 12:20: "When the Lord
thy God shall enlarge thy border, as he hath promised thee, and thou shalt
say, 'I will eat flesh,' because thy soul longeth to eat flesh; thou mayest
eat flesh, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after."
A similar straightforward reference to the relationship between flesh eating
and war can be found in Plato's Republic. In a dialogue with Glaucon,
Socrates extols the peace and happiness what come to people eating a
vegetarian diet: "And with such a diet they may be expected to live in peace
and health to a good old age, and bequeath a similar life to their children
after them."
Glaucon remains skeptical that people would be satisfied with such fare. He
asserts that people will desire the "ordinary conveniences of life,"
including animal flesh. Socrates then proceeds to stock the once ideal
state with swineherds, huntsmen, and "cattle in great number." The dialogue
continues:
"...and there will be animal's of many other kinds, if people eat them?"
"Certainly."
"And living in this way we shall have much greater need of physicians than
before? "
"Much greater."
"And the country which was enough to support the original inhabitants will
be too small now, and not enough?"
"Quite true."
"Then a slice of our neighbor's land will be wanted by us for pasture and
tillage, and they will want a slice of ours, if, like ourselves, they exceed
the limit of necessity, and give themselves up to the unlimited accumulation
of wealth?"
"That, Socrates, will be inevitable."
"And so we shall go to war, Glaucon. Shall we not?"
"Most certainly," Glaucon replies.
Critics of Plato, reading the rest of the Republic, have complained that
what Plato gives us is a militaristic or proto-fascist state, with
censorship and a rigidly controlled economy. Plato would hardly disagree
with these critics; what they have overlooked is that the state which he
describes is not his idea--it is merely a consequence of Glaucon's
requirements which Socrates himself disavows. Greed for meat, among other
things, produced the character of the second state Plato describes.
The history of the European spice trade would seem to suggest that there is
indeed a relationship between war and large-scale consumer demand for foods
not required by what Plato refers to as "natural want." Spices were of
vital importance to meat preparation before the process of mechanical
refrigeration was developed in the 20th century, meat was usually preserved
by the process of salting. Using various combinations of spices to offset
the saltiness of meat, thus making it palatable, became a popular practice
in medieval Europe.
The demand for spices was a significant factor in European colonial
endeavors. Competition intensified, contributing to the exacerbation of
serious disputes that already existed among various European nations.
Efforts in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Dutch, Portuguese, English and
French to expand their spice trade resulted in warfare, as well as the
subjugation of native peoples by these imperialist powers.
Shepherds have traditionally been depicted in both art and religious and
secular literature as a peaceable lot. However, there were inevitable
disputes between farmers and shepherds over territorial rights. This
situation was aggravated by the fact that sheep posed an even greater threat
to the land than cattle because they clipped grass closer to the ground,
sometimes tearing it out by the roots. The Spanish sheepowner's guild known
as the Mesta dominated Spain's political affairs for several centuries (AD
1200-1500) and was the source of much internal strife within that country.
The Mesta's sheep not only destroyed pastureland by overgrazing but were
also allowed to rampage through cultivated fields. The peasant farmers could
hardly expect the monarchy to rectify this injustice since sheep raising
dominated medieval Spanish commerce and was the government's principal
source of revenue during this period.
There was considerable animosity among shepherds, cattlemen and crop farmers
in 19th-century America. The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged more people to
settle in the West. The very nature of livestock raising in the United
States at that time required vast areas of land for grazing and moving the
animals along designated trails to their final destinations. Hence the
proliferation of farming communities became a serious threat to the
livestock industry. This situation became worse when the farmers put up
barbed-wire fences, a practice that began in the 1880s.
Aside from the conflict between livestock herders and farmers, there were
bitter feuds between cattlemen and sheepmen, including such conflicts as the
"Tonto Basin War" in Arizona, the "Holbrook War" in Montana, the "Blue
Mountain War" in Colorado and the "Big Horn Basin Feud" in Montana.
We are presently confronted with a rather precarious situation in which a
few select regions of the world are the principal suppliers of various
commodities that are essential to the entire process of food production.
The Middle East region, for example, dominates the world petroleum market.
Petroleum is needed to power farm machinery in addition to its use as a
fertilizer base. Despite the relatively large amount of petroleum produced
in the United States, this country is, nonetheless, highly dependent on
Middle East oil.
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger commented in 1975 that military
intervention "could not be ruled out" in the event of another Arab oil
embargo. His comment indicates the extent of American dependency on Arab oil
and the desperate lengths the U. S. government will go to obtain it. The
"Carter Doctrine" of 1980, concerning the use of tactics nuclear weapons in
the Middle East by the United States and the Persian Gulf War of 1991
reiterate American dependence upon a highly unstable part of the globe.
Morocco is the leading producer of phosphate, an important element in
fertilizer production. Within the period of a few years in the early 1970s,
Morocco more than quadrupled its price for phosphate. The large world
demand for phosphate prompted Morocco to invade the Spanish Sahara when the
Spanish relinquished control of the region in 1975. A guerilla force of
Saharan nationals found themselves battling the Moroccan aggressors, whose
sole interest in the region was its phosphate reserves.
The United States is fond of using its position as a major food exporter to
manipulate the policies of foreign governments. The most striking example
of this practice is the successful American "destabilization" effort in
Chile in the early 1970s. A project initiated by the American Central
Intelligence Agency to create dissatisfaction among Chilean truckers
resulted in widespread food shortages. The Allende regime was then rebuffed
in its attempts to make a cash purchase of vitally needed U S wheat.
However, in less than a month after a successful Chilean coup that was
abetted by the U S government, the new fascist regime was given a large
shipment of American wheat on generous credit terms despite Chile's unstable
economy.
A report prepared in August, 1974, by the American Central Intelligence
Agency cites several ominous trends in weather conditions and population
growth.
The authors of this report indicate there is substantial evidence to support
the belief that food shortages will become more acute as the result of a
major cooling trend. As a result, such a situation "could give the United
States a measure of power it had never had before--possibly an economic and
political dominance greater than that of the immediate post-World War II
years." The study warns, however, that countries adversely affected by these
weather changes may resort to desperate measures, including "nuclear
blackmail" and "massive migration backed by force."
The report concludes that we have the potential to compensate for future
large-scale famines that may be far worse than the present food crisis. It
is duly noted that if the anticipated marked and persistent cooling trend
occurs there would not be enough food to feed the world's population "unless
the affluent nations make a quick and drastic cut in their consumption of
grain-fed animals."
Vegetarian author Laurel Robertson writes that "The relationship between
meat consumption and available grain is...more sensitive than we might
think... In 1974, when the market for meat did fall, the grain that was so
unexpectedly released actually did find its way to poorer countries."
Vegan author John Robbins writes in his 1987 Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet
for a New America:
"Meat-eating contributes to the fear in the world by putting us in a
position in which there is not enough to go around (half the world's grain
is fed to livestock). But that's not all. Meat-eaters ingest residues of the
animal's biochemical response to the horrors of the slaughterhouse.
"Programmed to fight or flee when in danger for their lives, the animals
react to the slaughterhouse in sheer terror. Powerful biochemical agents are
secreted that pump through their bloodstreams and onto their flesh,
energizing them to fight or flee for their lives. Today's slaughterhouses
virtually guarantee that the animals will die in terror."
The Maoris would eat the flesh of a slaughtered enemy in order to possess
the enemy's courage and strength. The people of the lower Nubia, likewise,
would eat the fox, believing that by so doing, they would be possessed of
his cunning. In upper Egypt, the heart of the hoopoe bird was eaten in order
to acquire the ability to become a clever scribe. The bird would be caught
and its heart would be torn out and eaten while it was still alive.
John Robbins notes, "certain Native American tribes would not eat the flesh
of an animal who died in fear, because they did not want to take into
themselves the terror of such an animal. When we eat animals who have died
violent deaths we literally eat their fear.
"We take in biochemical agents designed by nature to tell an animal that its
life is in the gravest danger, and it must either fight or flee for its
life. And then, in our wars and our daily lives, we give expression to the
panic in which the animals we have eaten died."
Vegan author John Robbins writes in his Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet for a
New America (1987):
"The way we treat animals is indicative of the way we treat our fellow
humans. One Soviet study, published in Ogonyok, found that over 87% of a
group of violent criminals has, as children, burned, hanged, or stabbed
domestic animals. In our own country, a major study by Dr. Stephen Kellert
of Yale University found that children who abuse animals have a much higher
likelihood of becoming violent criminals."
A 1997 study by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals (MSPCA) reported that children convicted of animal abuse are five
times more likely to commit violence against other humans than are their
peers, and four times more likely to be involved in acts against property.
Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, which launched the modern day
environmental movement, wrote:
"Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is whether its
victim is human or animal we cannot expect things to be much better in this
world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any
living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic
delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity."
In a December 1990 letter to Eric Mills of Action For Animals, vegan labor
leader Cesar Chavez similarly wrote:
"Kindness and compassion towards all living things is a mark of a civilized
society. Conversely, cruelty, whether it is directed against human beings or
against animals, is not the exclusive province of any one culture or
community of people. Racism, economic deprival, dog fighting and
cockfighting, bullfighting and rodeos are cut from the same fabric:
violence. Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have
learned to live well ourselves."
Marjorie Spiegel, author of The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal
Slavery, writes: "All oppression and violence is intimately and ultimately
linked, and to think that we can end prejudice and violence to one group
without ending prejudice and violence to another is utter folly."
Apart from the violence against animals involved in meat-eating, foods DO
affect one's consciousness! The ill effects of alcohol, opium, morphine,
nicotine, etc. upon individual users have been well-documented. The Federal
Bureau of Investigation reports that 60 to 75 percent of all violent crime
is alcohol-related. Might there be a similar relationship between
meat-eating and aggressive behavior?
In a letter to a friend on the subject of vegetarianism, Albert Einstein
wrote, "besides agreeing with your aims for aesthetic and moral reasons, it
is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect
on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of
mankind."
U Nu, the former Prime Minister of Burma, made a similar observation: "World
peace, or any other kind of peace, depends greatly on the attitude of the
mind. Vegetarianism can bring about the right mental attitude for peace...
it holds forth a better way of life, which, if practiced universally, can
lead to a better, more just, and more peaceful community of nations."
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