The Expensive Business of being Poor in the RSA Print E-mail
Dorothy Ngenelwa’s ambition is to own her own waste recycling company. As a resident of Nomzamo township on the outskirts of Cape Town, Ms Ngenelwa has always believed that chickens are sold live in Nomzamo in order to provide the poor with cheaper food.
However, research by Animal Voice has revealed that the poor pay as much for live chickens as middleclass South Africans pay for neatly packaged chickens in supermarkets.
On Friday, 19th September 2008, for example, live broiler chickens were sold in Nomzamo for R35.00 while live end-of-lay chickens were sold for R40.00.
On the same day, an average-sized (1.48 kg) Woolworths top-of-the-range Free Range chicken sold for R42.76 and a factory farmed broiler for R35.00.
Ms Ngenelwa said she would not have believed the similarity in prices if she had not seen Woolworths’ prices with her own eyes. “I thought the food in Nomzamo was much cheaper than
anything I could buy at Woolworths,” she said.
• Note from Ed: The immense suffering of chickens sold live for slaughter in informal and
low-income townships is justified by the poultry industry on the grounds that South Africa’s poor need to eat as cheaply as possible.
 
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Water Footprint

On World Water Day (22nd March) and on every other day, for that matter, we need to remember that meat-eating carries a giant water footprint.
Did you know? It takes 13 million litres of water to raise and convert one cow or ox into meat!
Did you know? To produce one portion of beef (250g) requires the same amount of drinking water that one person needs (at one litre a day) for 34 years of life!
For further info, go to: http://www.waterfootprint.org/