Jain Spirit 2000 03 No 03

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 47

CREDITS: JAYU SHAH
ENVIRONMENTA
Vegetables are tasty, healthy and nourishing. In the next millenium, they will become a major part of global food.
MEAT WILL DIE
The scientific evidence of the adverse impact of nonvegetarianism on our health, environment and society is staggering. The world will have no choice but to become predominantly vegetarian, argues Ed Ayres.
W
Then Julius Caesar made his triumphal entrance into Rome in 45 BC, he celebrated by giving a feast, at which thousands of guests gorged on poultry, seafood and game. Similar celebrations featuring exorbitant consumption of animal flesh have marked human victories - in war, sport, politics and commerce - since our
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Jain Spirit March-May 2000 Jain Education International 2010_03
species learned to control fire. Throughout the developing world today, one of the first things people do as they climb out of poverty is to shift from their peasant diet of mainly grains and beans to one that is rich in pork and beef. Since 1950, consumption of meat per capita has more than doubled around the globe.
Meat, it seems, is not just food but reward as well. However, in the coming century that will change. Much as we have awakened to the full economic and social costs of cigarettes, we will find we can no longer subsidize or ignore the costs of mass-producing cattle, poultry, pigs, sheep and fish to feed our growing population. These costs include the hugely inefficient use of freshwater and land, heavy pollution of livestock faeces, rising rates of heart disease and other degenerative illnesses, and the spreading destruction of forests on which much of our planet's life depends.
First, consider the impact on supplies of freshwater. To produce llb of feedlot beef requires 7lb of feed grain, which takes 7,000 lb of water to grow. Pass up one hamburger, and you will save as much water as you save by taking 40 showers with a low-flow nozzle. Yet in the US, 70 per cent of all the wheat, corn and other grain produced goes to feeding herds of livestock. Around the world, as more water is diverted to raising pigs and chickens instead of producing crops for direct consumption, millions of wells are going dry. India, China, North Africa and the US are all running freshwater deficits, pumping more from their aquifers than rain can replenish. As populations in water-scarce regions continue to expand, governments will inevitably act to cut these deficits by shifting water to grow food, not feed. The new policies will raise the price of meat to levels unaffordable for any but the rich.
That prospect will doubtlessly provoke protests that the direct consumption of grain cannot provide the same protein as meat. Indeed it cannot. But nutritionists will attest that most people in the richest countries do not need nearly as much protein as they are currently getting from meat. There are plenty of vegetable sources including the grains now squandered on feed - that can provide the protein we need.