(Jean Ziegler)
Yesterday was the first demonstration against world hunger in Cologne, organised by a couple of local AR groups as well as attac.What for?
- producing one unit of meat require an average of 8 units of plant based food (mainly grains and soy)
- that means 35 % of the world's total grain crop is used to feed cattle
- meanwhile, 840 million humans world wide do not have access to enough food... we're not talking about "I could eat something" hungry, but about being nowhere near to meeting the required 1000 calories a day that keeps the metabolism going
- every minute, 11 children world wide die because of malnutrition
If the crops used to feed cattle would be used to feed humans, we could easily nourish double of today's world population.
I'd better not even start talking about the waste of water and other natural ressources.
Even if you're 150% cold hearted about animals and animal rights- can you ignore those facts when it comes to humans, dear omni reader?
There were about 150 people at the demo which was really well-mannered and quiet for an AR thing from my experience, but there's a bigger one planned in Nuremberg on 13 September.
That living a cruelty-free life that respects both humans and animals is possible was shown by the ever popular nearly vegan restaurant/takeaway Sattgruen from Düsseldorf as well by a bake sale.
soy tomato stew with rice and loads of parsley:
apple-something cake, another non-definable one and strawberry cream goodness!
That living a cruelty-free life that respects both humans and animals is possible was shown by the ever popular nearly vegan restaurant/takeaway Sattgruen from Düsseldorf as well by a bake sale.
soy tomato stew with rice and loads of parsley:
apple-something cake, another non-definable one and strawberry cream goodness!
5 comments:
Hey Steffi, great post! I do think too many people ignore environmentalism and world hunger as reasons behind being a vegetarian -- most folks assume all veggies simply are into animal rights, and that's all.
To add more fuel to your fire, (and I'm sure you already know this,) but having a world full of vegetarians wouldn't solve world hunger, unfortunately. War/civil unrest and lack of infrastructure in many developing nations is a huge cause for starvation, too. I saw it firsthand when I was in Haiti in April -- there were tons and tons of crates of USAID food sitting in port in Port-au-Prince, but the food was left to rot due to lack of infrastructure. There was no way to distribute the food to the hungry, especially the rural hungry, since the roads are so poor. There's also a huge clean water shortage, a huge gas shortage, and very little cooking fuel. Even if you got the rice to people, how are they going to cook it? It's such a shame, really.
We should all think veg, but think about what else we can do, too!
Jean Ziegler is a wonderful person. Have you heard him talking about world hunger? I watched "We feed the world" and loved how he expresses himself, how passionate he is...
Well done!
It's amazing to me how many factors all point towards eating veg...whether it's for health, or the environment, or world hunger, or...
Nice post. It's so disheartening to read the facts about meat + world hunger, but it's nice to know there are people at least trying to do something about it!
Great read thank you
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