JAINA Convention 2009 07 Los Angeles

Author(s): Federation of JAINA
Publisher: USA Federation of JAINA

Page 80

15th Biennial JAINA Convention 2009
Ecology - The Jain Way
AHIMSA, ECOLOGY, AND STRICT
Second, a meat-based agriculture is an ecological VEGETARIANISM AS THE JAIN
disaster and a central tenet of Jain philosophy WAY OF LIFE
involves our obligation to minimize our impact on Gary L. Francione
the environment. Because we need so many gfrancione@earthlink.net
crops to feed the billions of animals that humans consume, we use an enormous amount of land to
grow those crops: Dr. Gary L. Francione is the . Livestock use 30 percent of the earth's entire Distinguished Professor of Law and land surface, including 33 percent of the global Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of arable land used to producing feed for animals. Law and Philosophy at Rutgers
Livestock herds cause serious degradation of University School of Law, Newark,
land through overgrazing, compaction, and New Jersey. His book, "Animals as
erosion. Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Approximately 20 percent of pastures are Animal Exploitation", was published in 2008. His considered as degraded and the percentage is forthcoming book (with Dr. Robert Garner), "The even higher in dry lands where there is Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation?", increasing desertification. will be published in Fall 2009. (Photo by N. . Approximately 90 percent of cropland in the Romanenko)
United States is losing topsoil at a rate
thirteen times above the sustainable rate. THE BASIS OF JAIN VEGETARIANISM There is almost unanimous support among Jains
Moreover, the need for land to produce grain and for not consuming meat, poultry, fish, and eggs.
forage for animals has resulted in forest The basis for Jain vegetarianism is two-fold.
destruction throughout the world; as older
pastures are destroyed through overgrazing, new First, Jains consider that eating these products land is cleared to replace them. It takes much violates the foundational principle of Ahimsa.
more land to feed an average meat-eater than a Jains are forbidden from committing intentional vegetarian. violence against all mobile beings, whether they have two, three, four, or five senses. The Animal agriculture also consumes enormous mammals, birds, and fish that humans regularly amounts of other resources, such as water and consume all belong in the highest class of those beings with five senses-a class in which humans
• Almost 90 percent of the fresh water belong as well. This prohibition is not limited to
consumed after withdrawal is for agricultural what a person does directly but extends to those
production, including livestock production. causing others to do Himsa as well as to
The production of animal protein requires approving of the Himsa of others.
much more water than is required to produce
plant protein. It takes more than 600 gallons The standard Jain diet not only seeks to eliminate
of water to produce meat for an average violence to animals but also has the effect of
quarter pound hamburger; that same amount minimizing the Himsa to plants, which are one- of water could produce approximately 5 V2 sensed beings, necessary to feed humans.
pounds of wheat or almost 10 pounds of Animals raised for meat consume more plant
potatoes. protein than they produce:
The average amount of fossil energy used for • For every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of animal animal-protein production is more than eight
protein produced, animals consume almost six times the average for grain-protein production. kilograms, or over thirteen pounds, of plant protein from grains and forage.
In addition to the consumption of huge amounts More than 50 percent of U.S. grain and 40 of water and energy, animal agriculture results in percent of world grain is fed to animals to
serious water pollution because animals in the produce meat, rather than consumed directly United States produce approximately 1.5 billion by people.
tons of waste per year-many times more than is Livestock in the United States are fed enough
produced by the human population. Much of this grain and soybeans each year to feed the waste is not recycled but is dumped into our entire human population five times over.
waters, with the result that the nitrogen in the
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