________________
MEAT WILL DIE
Unfortunately, this is
wildland hunting and not just a matter of
gathering to systematic productive capacity. Mass
herding and farmingwe production of meat has also
changed the natural balances become a staggering source
irrevocably. The shift enabled of pollution. Maybe cow
us to produce food surpluses, pies once were just a
but these surpluses also pastoral joke, but in recent
allowed us to reproduce years livestock waste has
prodigiously. When we did, it been implicated in massive
became only a matter of time fish kills, and outbreaks of
before we could no longer such diseases as pfiesteria,
have the large area of wildland which causes memory loss,
per individual, which is confusion and acute skin
necessary to sustain a topburn in people exposed to
predator species. contaminated water. In the
By covering more and US, livestock now produce
more of the planet with our 140 times as much waste as
cities, farms and waste, we people do. Just one hog
have jeopardized other topfarm in Utah, for example,
predators that need space as produces more sewege than
well. Tigers and panthers are the city of Los Angeles.
being squeezed out and may These megafarms are
not last the coming century. proliferating, and in
We, at least, have the flexibility populous areas their waste is
- the omnivorous stomach and tainting drinking water. In
creative brain - to adapt. We more pristine regions, from
can do it by moving down the Indonesia to the Amazon,
food chain: eating foods that tropical rain forest is being
use less water and land, and burned down to make
that pollute far less, than cows room for more and more
and pigs do. In the long run, cattle. Agriculture is the
we can lose our memory of world's biggets cause of
eating animals, and we will deforestation, and the
discover the intrinsic increasing demand for meat
satisfaction of a diverse, plantis the biggest force in the
based diet as millions of people expansion of agriculture. A meat diet has a direct and dramatic adverse impact on our already have.
What has proved an food, water, land and air. Such natural beauty is rare and at I am not predicting the unsustainable burden to the times even deceiving as the pollution and damage to land and end of all meat eating. But the life of the planet, is also water systems is not visible to the naked eye.
era of mass-produced animal proving unsustainable for
flesh, and its unsustainable the planet's dominant species. In China modified organisms, hormones and costs to human and environmental a recent shift to meat-heavy diet has antibiotics.
health should be over before the next been linked to increase in obesity, These concerns may seem counter- century is out. cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and intuitive. We evolved as huntercolorectal cancer. American and World gatherers, and ate meat for a hundred Ed Ayres is editorial director of the Health Organization researchers have millennium before modern times. It is Worldwatch Institute, and author of announced similar findings for other natural for us to eat meat, one might say. God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a parts of the world. There is growing But today's factory-raised, transgenic, Sustainable Future? This article is concern about what happens to people chemical-laden livestock are a far cry reprinted from the 8th November 1999 who eat the flesh of animals that have from the wild animals our ancestors issue of Time magazine. been pumped full of genetically hunted. When we cleverly shifted from
March - May 2000 • Jain Spirit
47
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