Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
1
I NTRODUCTION
The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and waste of al-
iment absolutely incapable of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, to any great degree, even now, indulge the un-
natural craving for dead flesh.
W ith these words, written in 1813, Percy Shelley introduced a fresh, socialist argument
into a centuries-old debate which had hitherto mainly focussed on the brutality to animals
and the damage to human health caused by meat eating. Not only did the consumed and the
consumer suffer - so too did those excluded from consumption.
As the world's population has surged, causing increasing pressure on land and natural re-
sources, the concerns raised by Shelley have come to the fore. In a 1976 debate in The Eco-
logist on the role of meat in an ecological society, Peter Roberts of Compassion in World
Farming argued:
There is starvation because of poverty and because of greed and because we devote
the major part of the world's food resources and its expertise to the feeding of anim-
als instead of children. If we continue along these lines famine will increase on a scale
never before seen … The answer is plain. We must get rid of the animal in the food
chain. 1
A quarter of a century later he was echoed by George Monbiot in The Guardian :
The world produces enough food for its people and its livestock, though (largely be-
cause they are so poor) some 800 million are permanently malnourished. The number
of farm animals on earth has risen fivefold since 1950: humans are now outnumbered
three to one. Livestock already consume half the world's grain, and their numbers are
still growing almost exponentially … As a meat-eater, I've long found it convenient to
categorize veganism as a response to animal suffering or a health fad. Faced with these
figures, it now seems plain that it is the only ethical response to what is arguably the
world's most urgent social justice issue. 2
 
 
 
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