Factory Farming has Failed the Poor - new UN-sponsored report

 Animal Voice May 2008 Page 1 177.94 Kb

A street vendor in Khayelitsha uses a twig to fight the flies that plague her wares as they defrost in the hot sun. Huge volumes of frozen tripe, lung and liver are off-loaded by the bakkie-load in townships. Even the price of offal is on the up and up. Hygiene requirements are non-existent. See story inside: “Is Dump Food the new Junk Food?”

A midst soaring food prices and growing environ-mental problems world-wide, a UN-sponsored re-port released on 15th April 2008, has called for a radical change in world farming methods. The 2500-page report entitled International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, suggests that greater emphasis should be placed on small-scale, ecologically-sound farming.

Apart from the impact of industrial agriculture on water resources, land degradation and climate change, there were additional health concerns, the report said, in the presence of “pesticide residues, heavy metals, hormones, antibiotics and various additives in the food system as well as those related to large-scale livestock farming”. It suggested that greater emphasis should be placed on “the importance of dietary quality… and not merely on quantity or price”.

Robert Watson, director of the report and chief scientist at the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, commented: “Business as usual will hurt the poor. It will not work… Continuing with current trends would mean the earth’s haves and have-nots splitting further apart. It would leave us facing a world nobody would want to in-habit. We have to make food more affordable and nutritious without degrading the land.”

Compassion in World Farming’s Chief Executive, Philip Lymbery said, "For the sake of animals, people and the planet, it is absolutely vital that the world moves away from industrialised farming."

Read more: http://www.agassessment.org/