Food for thought from Joe Rooney (the conversation on are these numbers right has already been had over on his timeline. The 150,000,000,000,000 figure more likely has three 0s less.) The excellent and thoughtful Steve Cooke posted this today: According to the news this morning, we (the world) face a meat shortage because we are eating so much of it. We (by which I mean other people) are eating more meat that we can produce. When I last looked at the figures (2010), 75,000,000 tonnes of bovine, sheep, and goat meat are produced in farms yearly. The UKs contribution to that figure (according to DEFRA) was 100,000 cattle, sheep, and pigs slaughtered every day. When you add in fish and birds you end up at at least 150 billion animals killed for food yearly (in 2003). The thought that more than 150 billion animals per year is insufficient to satisfy our desires is pretty damned disturbing. I almost wrote satisfy our needs there - thats how culturally programmed I am, urgh. Let me write that in numbers: more than 150,000,000,000,000 animal lives per year is not enough to satisfy our desires. Thats sickening. I cannot help but agree. The notion that, each and every year, 150,000,000,000,000 animal lives are ended for human consumption is just mind-bogglingly horrible. Especially in a world where, at least for those of us in the relative luxury of the developed world, it is increasingly easy to acquire plant-based nutrition of a taste and quality that equals and surpasses that of animal-based nutrition, it seems nonsensical that we would make such a decision. I am not interested in jokes to the effect of oh, are you vegan, I didnt realise on this post. I am certainly not interested in people talking about how much they like the taste of meat (I did too. Then I went ovo-lacto-vegetarian because the ethical argument won over the personal gratification argument.). If you find yourself desperately unable to resist posting such comments, please save us both the hassle and just hit Unfriend instead. By all means think it, by all means post such thoughts elsewhere, just dont post them here. If you feel you could never give it up, for whatever reason, thats cool. You dont need to justify yourself to me. Im not asking you, personally, to be vegan or even veggie. I just wish we lived in a world where compassion was given priority over commodities.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 09:43:29 +0000
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