If the rest of the world caught up to the United States –
where meat consumption averages 125.4 kilograms per person annually, compared
with a measly 3.2 kilograms in India – the environmental consequences would be
catastrophic.
According to recent research, if the world stopped producing
crops for animal feed or diverting them to biofuels, it could not only end
global hunger, but also feed 4 billion extra people – more than the number of
projected arrivals before the global population stabilizes.
At any given time, the global livestock population amounts
to more than 150 billion, compared to just 7.2 billion humans – meaning that
livestock have a larger direct ecological footprint than we do. Livestock
production causes almost 14.5 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions and
contributes significantly to water pollution. Meat consumption actually leads
to more greenhouse-gas emissions annually than the use of cars does. Meat
production is about 10 times more water-intensive than plant-based calories and
proteins, with one kilogram of beef, for example, requiring 15,415 liters of
water. It is also an inefficient way of generating food; up to 30 crop calories
are needed to produce one meat calorie. Moreover, livestock production consumes
one-third of the total water resources used in agriculture (which accounts for
71 percent of the world's water consumption), as well as more than 40 percent
of the global output of wheat, rye, oats and corn. And livestock production
uses 30 percent of the earth's land surface that once was home to wildlife,
thereby playing a critical role in biodiversity loss and species extinction. Beef
production alone requires, on average, 28 times more land and 11 times more
water than the other livestock categories, while producing five times more
greenhouse-gas emissions and six times more reactive nitrogen.
In order to ensure that their animals gain weight rapidly,
meat producers feed them grain, rather than the grass that they would naturally
consume – an approach that is a major source of pressure on grain production,
natural resources and the environment. Making matters worse, the livestock are
injected with large amounts of hormones and antibiotics. 80 percent of all
antibiotics sold are administered not for treatment but as a preventative to
livestock. Yet this has been inadequate to stem the spread of disease. In fact,
with many of the new and emerging infectious diseases affecting humans
originating in animals.
Though the environmental and health costs of our changing
diets have been widely documented, the message has gone largely unheard. With
the world facing a serious water crisis, rapidly increasing global temperatures
and growing health problems like coronary disease, this must change – and fast.
This is not to say that everyone must become vegetarian. But
even a partial shift in meat consumption habits – with consumers choosing
options such as chicken and seafood, instead of beef – could have a
far-reaching impact. Adopting a balanced, largely plant-based diet, with
minimal consumption of red and processed meat, would help conserve natural
resources, contribute to the fight against human-induced global warming and
reduce people's risk of diet-related chronic diseases and even cancer
mortality.
Some Socialists are vegetarians, 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. What will become of the meat and dairy
industry in socialism? At present the socialist case focuses necessarily on the
emancipation of the human species from capitalist-induced oppression and
suffering, while the ethical question of how we should regard and treat animals
remains as one of the iceberg of other issues submerged below the waterline.
What is clear to socialists if to nobody else is that humanity’s relationship
to nature was never really anthropocentric but in fact ‘oligocentric’. Nature
and everything in it including the vast majority of the human species existed
for the sole purpose, use and disposition of the few members of the ruling
elites. In the view of those elites, we humans were simply clever animals. Once
this highly destructive oligocentric principle is overthrown, a new ethical
framework will inevitably emerge in relation to resource exploitation. Quite
what this will be and whether it will become genuinely anthropocentric or
alternatively expand to encompass considerations beyond the species barrier is
at present an open question. If socialists expect a large-scale meat industry
they will have to face the fact that there is no ‘ethical’ way to do this. At
all events, 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. Livestock are
raised in ways designed to cut production costs to the bone, with little or no
regard for the consequent suffering. There
can be no dispute that many animals are treated abominably under capitalism.
One question is to what extent their treatment is due to capitalism’s demands
for profit and for constantly cheapening the costs of production. For it does not follow that mistreatment is a
hallmark of all use of animals for food. It is perfectly possible that a
Socialist society would involve less eating of meat and eggs, and any animals
kept for food purposes would certainly be treated as humanely as possible. The
author of Animal Farm, George Orwell stated: “Men exploit animals in much the
same way as the rich exploit the proletariat”. The Socialist Party would agree
with William Morris that “a man can hardly be a sound Socialist who puts
forward vegetarianism as a solution of the difficulties between labour and
capital, as some people do”. Cruelty to animals will go the way of all forms of
cruelty, when a real civilised existence becomes a possibility to everyone.
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