The World Socialist Movement does not hold an official position on what people should eat or wear. Some members are vegetarians or vegans, but others are not. We have never seen a reason to take a stand on this issue as a party, however strongly some individual members may feel. Whether you may be a meat-eater, vegetarian or vegan will not determine your socialist credentials. Without a global revolution in the way society collectively owns and controls its resources people are never going to get the luxury of choice over this or any other resource question. Unless and until the welfare and humane treatment of humans is first attended to the question of the ethical treatment of animals must remain an issue waiting for its moment. The advocacy of animal rights needs to become part of a wider movement that challenges the economic system and all its accompanying hierarchies, domination and exploitation.
But we do think that when we reach a socialist society this topic will quickly be raised to the forefront of discussions on how we produce our food to feed the world. We do not need to eat meat or animal products in order to live, therefore we may choose not do so. Vegetarianism is not sufficient, since the production of both milk and eggs involves cruelty (e.g. cows must constantly be kept pregnant in order to provide milk). Veganism, which involves making no use of animal products at all, may form the foundation of daily practice.
The author of Animal Farm, George Orwell, commenting on the genesis of this work, stated: “Men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat”. Just as slavery involved some humans being the property of others and hence treated just as means to the end of the owners, so animals are under the power of humans. They are bought and sold, kept and killed in appalling conditions, experimented on, and used to provide milk, meat and eggs. This is speciesism, vegans will argue, little different from the other unwelcomed isms of racism and sexism. In February 1926 the Socialist Standard wrote “Cruelty to animals will go the way of all forms of cruelty, when a real civilised existence becomes a possibility to everyone”
The journalist, Chris Hedges has produced an article with some views and facts that will be an interest to many.
Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all worldwide transportation combined—cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes. Livestock and their waste and flatulence account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51 percent of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock causes 65 percent of all emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 296 times more destructive than carbon dioxide. Crops grown for livestock feed consume 56 percent of the water used in the United States. Eighty percent of the world’s soy crop is fed to animals, and most of this soy is grown on cleared lands that were once rain forests. All this is taking place as an estimated 6 million children across the planet die each year from starvation and as hunger and malnutrition affect an additional 1 billion people. In the United States 70 percent of the grain we grow goes to feed livestock raised for consumption.
A person who is vegan will save 1,100 gallons of water, 20 pounds CO2 equivalent, 30 square feet of forested land, 45 pounds of grain and one sentient animal’s life every day.
The natural resources used to produce even minimal amounts of animal products are staggering—1,000 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of milk. Add to this the massive clear cutting and other destruction of forests, especially in the Amazon—where forest destruction has risen to 91 percent—and we find ourselves lethally despoiling the lungs of the earth largely for the benefit of the animal agriculture industry. Our forests, especially our rain forests, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and exchange it for oxygen: Killing the forests is a death sentence for the planet. Land devoted exclusively to raising livestock now represents 45 percent of the earth’s land mass.
Richard A. Oppenlander in his book, “Comfortably Unaware: What We Choose to Eat Is Killing Us and Our Planet,” notes that we can save more water by refusing to eat a pound of beef—which takes more than 5,000 gallons of water to produce—than by not showering for a year and that half the water in the United States is used to sustain livestock. “How can we best use our resources?” Oppenlander asks in “Comfortably Unaware.” “What foods will have the very least effect on our planet? Which foods best promote our own human health and wellness, and which are the most compassionate? Do we really need to slaughter another living thing in order for us to eat? Or, sadly, is it because we want to?”
In the United States alone, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows in factory farms produce over five million pounds of excrement per minute. These are the animals raised each year so that people can continue eating meat, and they produce 130 times more excrement than the entire human population in our country. This manure sewage is responsible for global warming, water and soil pollution, air pollution, and use of our resources. The waste produced by the animals raised for food includes with it all the antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and other chemicals used during the raising and growing process. Accompanying this is methane released by the animals themselves, as well as the carbon, nitrous oxide, and additional methane emissions produced during the whole raising, feeding, and killing process.
On any given acre of land we can grow twelve to twenty times the amount in pounds of edible vegetables, fruit, and grain as in pounds of edible animal products. We are essentially using twenty times the amount of land and crops and hundreds of times the water, as well as polluting our waterways and air and destroying rainforests, to produce animals to kill and eat.
“So many more people have a connection to animal agriculture, both in society and government, than have a direct connection to the oil industry,” Keegan Kuhn co-director of “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret,” a new documentary that examines the power of the animal agriculture industry, said.said. “The oil industry employs, relatively speaking, a very small percentage of people and is controlled by a very small percentage of people. The agricultural industry, both animal agriculture and commodity grains fed to those animals, involves a much bigger demographic. Politically it is a lot more challenging. Corporations such as Cargill, one the largest commodity food corporations in the world, is able to create U.S. policy. The government says it needs to have affordable food, which means giving massive subsidies to these corporations. The belief is that we have to eat animal products to survive. It is not something that is even questioned. The fossil fuel industry is more easily challenged with the argument that there are alternatives. People do not feel there is an alternative to eating animals.”
“Hiding the animals, hiding the farms, hiding the entire issue is a marketing tool that is used by the industry,” Kuhn explained “Their attitude is, if you can’t see it, it’s not there. There are upwards of 10 billion farm animals slaughtered every year in the United States. But where are these 10 billion animals? We live in a country with 320 million humans. We see humans everywhere. But where are these billions of animals? They are hidden away in sheds. It allows the industry to carry out these atrocities, whether it’s how they treat the animals or how they treat the environment.”
The animal agriculture industry has used the excuse of national security, public safety, trade agreements and the need for business secrets to pass laws that prohibit the photographing or filming of how we handle our livestock in what are known as ag-gag laws in about a dozen states and, on the federal level, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, all enhanced with anti-terrorism laws to criminalize anyone who investigates or challenges the industry. It is illegal under the Patriot Act to issue statements or carry out actions that harm the profits of the animal agriculture industry.
You also have the marketing of grass-fed animals on smaller farms,” Kip Andersen, who co-directed “Cowspiracy” said, “and while it initially appears better, it is actually worse. The factory farming is horrific for the animals, but it is better for the environment than pasture-fed beef because of methane emissions, feces excretion and all the horses and wolves that are killed so cattle can graze on public land, which we pay for with our public dollars. We didn’t focus in the film on the factory farms. Everyone knows about that. We wanted to look at these so-called sustainable farms, as if this so-called humane farming is the answer. In most situations, these farms are worse for the environment, although it is better for the animals.”
Don’t expect politicians, bought off by agro-business money, to advocate for a diet that can have a massive impact on global warming. And don’t expect the mass media, which depend on advertising dollars from the industry, to inform us about what this industry is doing to the planet. The animal agriculture industry is one of the most powerful industries on the planet. There can be no dispute that animals are treated abominably under capitalism due to its demands for profit and for constantly cheapening the costs of production.
But we do think that when we reach a socialist society this topic will quickly be raised to the forefront of discussions on how we produce our food to feed the world. We do not need to eat meat or animal products in order to live, therefore we may choose not do so. Vegetarianism is not sufficient, since the production of both milk and eggs involves cruelty (e.g. cows must constantly be kept pregnant in order to provide milk). Veganism, which involves making no use of animal products at all, may form the foundation of daily practice.
The author of Animal Farm, George Orwell, commenting on the genesis of this work, stated: “Men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat”. Just as slavery involved some humans being the property of others and hence treated just as means to the end of the owners, so animals are under the power of humans. They are bought and sold, kept and killed in appalling conditions, experimented on, and used to provide milk, meat and eggs. This is speciesism, vegans will argue, little different from the other unwelcomed isms of racism and sexism. In February 1926 the Socialist Standard wrote “Cruelty to animals will go the way of all forms of cruelty, when a real civilised existence becomes a possibility to everyone”
The journalist, Chris Hedges has produced an article with some views and facts that will be an interest to many.
Animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all worldwide transportation combined—cars, trucks, trains, ships and planes. Livestock and their waste and flatulence account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51 percent of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Livestock causes 65 percent of all emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 296 times more destructive than carbon dioxide. Crops grown for livestock feed consume 56 percent of the water used in the United States. Eighty percent of the world’s soy crop is fed to animals, and most of this soy is grown on cleared lands that were once rain forests. All this is taking place as an estimated 6 million children across the planet die each year from starvation and as hunger and malnutrition affect an additional 1 billion people. In the United States 70 percent of the grain we grow goes to feed livestock raised for consumption.
A person who is vegan will save 1,100 gallons of water, 20 pounds CO2 equivalent, 30 square feet of forested land, 45 pounds of grain and one sentient animal’s life every day.
The natural resources used to produce even minimal amounts of animal products are staggering—1,000 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of milk. Add to this the massive clear cutting and other destruction of forests, especially in the Amazon—where forest destruction has risen to 91 percent—and we find ourselves lethally despoiling the lungs of the earth largely for the benefit of the animal agriculture industry. Our forests, especially our rain forests, absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and exchange it for oxygen: Killing the forests is a death sentence for the planet. Land devoted exclusively to raising livestock now represents 45 percent of the earth’s land mass.
Richard A. Oppenlander in his book, “Comfortably Unaware: What We Choose to Eat Is Killing Us and Our Planet,” notes that we can save more water by refusing to eat a pound of beef—which takes more than 5,000 gallons of water to produce—than by not showering for a year and that half the water in the United States is used to sustain livestock. “How can we best use our resources?” Oppenlander asks in “Comfortably Unaware.” “What foods will have the very least effect on our planet? Which foods best promote our own human health and wellness, and which are the most compassionate? Do we really need to slaughter another living thing in order for us to eat? Or, sadly, is it because we want to?”
In the United States alone, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows in factory farms produce over five million pounds of excrement per minute. These are the animals raised each year so that people can continue eating meat, and they produce 130 times more excrement than the entire human population in our country. This manure sewage is responsible for global warming, water and soil pollution, air pollution, and use of our resources. The waste produced by the animals raised for food includes with it all the antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and other chemicals used during the raising and growing process. Accompanying this is methane released by the animals themselves, as well as the carbon, nitrous oxide, and additional methane emissions produced during the whole raising, feeding, and killing process.
On any given acre of land we can grow twelve to twenty times the amount in pounds of edible vegetables, fruit, and grain as in pounds of edible animal products. We are essentially using twenty times the amount of land and crops and hundreds of times the water, as well as polluting our waterways and air and destroying rainforests, to produce animals to kill and eat.
“So many more people have a connection to animal agriculture, both in society and government, than have a direct connection to the oil industry,” Keegan Kuhn co-director of “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret,” a new documentary that examines the power of the animal agriculture industry, said.said. “The oil industry employs, relatively speaking, a very small percentage of people and is controlled by a very small percentage of people. The agricultural industry, both animal agriculture and commodity grains fed to those animals, involves a much bigger demographic. Politically it is a lot more challenging. Corporations such as Cargill, one the largest commodity food corporations in the world, is able to create U.S. policy. The government says it needs to have affordable food, which means giving massive subsidies to these corporations. The belief is that we have to eat animal products to survive. It is not something that is even questioned. The fossil fuel industry is more easily challenged with the argument that there are alternatives. People do not feel there is an alternative to eating animals.”
“Hiding the animals, hiding the farms, hiding the entire issue is a marketing tool that is used by the industry,” Kuhn explained “Their attitude is, if you can’t see it, it’s not there. There are upwards of 10 billion farm animals slaughtered every year in the United States. But where are these 10 billion animals? We live in a country with 320 million humans. We see humans everywhere. But where are these billions of animals? They are hidden away in sheds. It allows the industry to carry out these atrocities, whether it’s how they treat the animals or how they treat the environment.”
The animal agriculture industry has used the excuse of national security, public safety, trade agreements and the need for business secrets to pass laws that prohibit the photographing or filming of how we handle our livestock in what are known as ag-gag laws in about a dozen states and, on the federal level, the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, all enhanced with anti-terrorism laws to criminalize anyone who investigates or challenges the industry. It is illegal under the Patriot Act to issue statements or carry out actions that harm the profits of the animal agriculture industry.
You also have the marketing of grass-fed animals on smaller farms,” Kip Andersen, who co-directed “Cowspiracy” said, “and while it initially appears better, it is actually worse. The factory farming is horrific for the animals, but it is better for the environment than pasture-fed beef because of methane emissions, feces excretion and all the horses and wolves that are killed so cattle can graze on public land, which we pay for with our public dollars. We didn’t focus in the film on the factory farms. Everyone knows about that. We wanted to look at these so-called sustainable farms, as if this so-called humane farming is the answer. In most situations, these farms are worse for the environment, although it is better for the animals.”
Don’t expect politicians, bought off by agro-business money, to advocate for a diet that can have a massive impact on global warming. And don’t expect the mass media, which depend on advertising dollars from the industry, to inform us about what this industry is doing to the planet. The animal agriculture industry is one of the most powerful industries on the planet. There can be no dispute that animals are treated abominably under capitalism due to its demands for profit and for constantly cheapening the costs of production.
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