While international charity-based organisations have good and noble intentions in providing international relief for the needy it is also crucial for them to understand that they can do a lot better for all humans, animals and the environment without the need to massively sacrifice other defenseless living beings on this planet.
Think about this. They are 20 billion 'slaughter animals' on our planet. What do they eat? Forty percent of the world's grain harvesting lands is for the factory farms of industrial nations. Thus, in order to 'produce' one kilo of beef, you need nine kilos of grain.
The poor nations are partly forced to sell for animal feed their highly nutritious plant foods that are necessary for the human diet. The US, for example, imports 60 percent of its animal feed used in factory farming comprising grain, soybeans, corn, peanuts, etc from developing countries. So, for a 200 gramme steak, up to two kilos of grain is used as animal feed.
This two kilos of grain would satisfy the hunger of approximately eight children. Some 40,000 children starve to death everyday. Fifty million people starve to death every year. If the industrial countries would reduce their meat consumption by a mere 10 percent, 100 million additional people could be fed. No one has to starve.
If the massive quantities of grain, soybeans, corn, peanuts etc. that are now fed to farm animals like cows, chickens, pigs and so on were freed up, there would be plenty of food for the entire world's starving people.
Moreover, funneling crops and water through animals rather than using those resources directly is our top way of wasting water and polluting. Factory farms demand more water than all other users combined and produce a large amount of waste equal to the entire human population in this country and in this world. Farming animals also require greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels that have destroyed our topsoil, a permanent environmental catastrophe that can't be corrected.
The production of one kilo of beef generates approximately 15 kilos of liquid manure. The nitrate contained in it pollutes the groundwater. The ammonia fumes from manure and slurry is a major contributor to the development of acid rain and dying forests.
Fifty percent of the entire consumption of drinking water is accounted for by factory farming. For the production of one kilo of meat, 100 times more water is used on the average than for the production of one kilo of grain or vegetables. And yet, according to the United Nations, more than 1.4 billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water.
My question now is, have we really set our food priorities right? Or do we rather take the easy way out by selfishly blinding ourselves from the truth?
