Food for Thought: Does Meat Cause Hunger?

Pune Maharahtra is a writer for Beauty Without Cruelty (BWC), she says the world is on the verge of a global food crisis. Economists are questioning how fair it is to use land to grow corn, etc., for the production of bio-fuel when people increasingly don't have enough to eat. Fuel is, but a lesser reason for this deep-rooted problem.

"The main reason for the growing shortage of food needs to be tackled: animals specially bred and fattened to be killed for meat. If the crops fed to them were to be consumed by humans, there would be no shortage of food. As much as one-third of the approximately 2000 million tons of annual global food production is used for feeding these animals for their flesh." Claims Pune Maharahtra.

The feed-to-meat ratio varies depending upon species (poultry, pigs, cattle, sheep & goats) and whether produced in a developed or developing country, but on an average 4 kilograms of feed yields only 1 kilogram of meat.

Moreover, the FAO has stated that the world's livestock production is 18% more responsible for global warming than all transport emissions. It causes wide-scale land degradation, uses large quantities of the earth's increasingly scarce water resources, pollutes land, water and air, and is responsible for excessive use of energy, all of which are downright harmful to our environment.

Pune Maharahtra says the environmentalists are not the only ones who are showing deep concern. "Emerging markets' central banks and governments are no longer ignoring rising food prices coupled with low stocks of rice and wheat (inflation and hoarding) and protests of shortages resulting in social tensions. They know that converting land produce to meat is an expensive business, the direct effect of which is a steep rise in grain prices which hits the poor most."

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