Written by PETA
People should be encouraged to dump meat just as smokers are encouraged to give up tobacco, according to The Future of Food and Farming, a British report featuring contributions from 400 researchers around the world.
With the global population expected to jump from 6.8 billion to more than 9 billion by 2050, the report predicts that farmers will need to produce 70 percent more food while using the same amount of land. Since this will be extremely difficult—if not impossible—people will need to drastically reduce their meat consumption in order to stave off food shortages. This is because raising animals for food is grossly inefficient: Animals consume large quantities of food but produce comparatively small amounts of meat in return. More than 70 percent of the grain that we grow in the U.S. is fed to farmed animals.
The report's authors expect that efforts to promote plant-based diets will be met with the same resistance from the meat industry that anti-smoking initiatives were initially met with by tobacco companies. But they say that's a small price to pay in order to help prevent poverty, starvation, climate change, loss of wildlife, and environmental damage. Not to mention animal suffering.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
jobuck - The Earth is already vastly overpopulated with cows, chickens, pigs, etc., because they are artificially bred in huge, unsustainable numbers for their flesh. As the demand for meat decreases, the number of animals bred will decrease. When there are fewer of these animals, they may be able to return to a more natural way of life, the kind their ancestors enjoyed. As with other wildlife, such freedom would also bring risks, but that is preferable to the lifetime of certain suffering and death they face now when billions of animals are bred every year, raised under cruel conditions, and violently slaughtered for human consumption.
answer to jobuck: I don't think it'll happen overnight and all the cows will excommunicated in . minutes. Much more probable that, like with anti-smoking, there will be changes. People will turn land from one production area to another, and styles of eating and product consumption will change to more effecient products, based on green-house or open grownig methods. I grew up near orchards :)
we live in a time of massive international growth,, change and learning. The document 'livestock's long shadow' - a report for leading world organisation is very illuminating. Especially good reading if people think that this food crisis from animal product consumption is just hype. The document is already several years old. The warning bells have been ringing in our ears for sometime.
I love animals but have always lived on a farm. I would like to know what PETA would want to do with all of the cows if no one could have beef. I do not know of any farmer that is rich enough to keep hundreds of cows for pets. Should we just turn them loose to wander the streets. I just want to understand who they think could take care of all the cows, pigs, chickens and so forth. what exactly is their idea on this.
asg- i just thought i would let you know it takes 16 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of meat. while plants tend to have less calories hey do use much less water and energy to produce them
Go vegan.
Nancy - Do you understand the massive scale of land, water, pesticides, and herbicides used to raise calorie-less plants? I admit, I don't either. I also don't understand the scale of those things for animals either. Anyone care to put out some reliable numbers?
Note to everyone: I never said I was a meat-eater. I was simply pointing out an apparent hypocrisy within the original article that may be used against the main point of that article.
Asg, I think you don't understand the massive scale of land, food and water that is being used to raise animals for food.
asg,
It's true the things you listed have virtually no calories, but they do contain necessary anti-oxidants and other phytonutrients. Just ingesting sufficient calories alone will not ensure good health. All plant foods (some of which are very high calorie) are brimming with these healthful nutrients. The production of meat is very wasteful and inefficient in terms of the required water and animal feed. If I had to give up my coffee to allow high-caloric plants to be grown instead to keep the world fed, I could live with that.
asg: I agree with you about coffee, and Decorative plants. But most teas are very nutritious, spices are a bit, and herbs are very nutritious.
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