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Magazine Articles If You Care About Hunger, Eat Less Meat - Environmentalist
Magazine Articles If You Care About Hunger, Eat Less Meat - Environmentalist | If You Care About Hunger, Eat Less Meat - Environmentalist |
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In 1995, President Nelson Mandela presented best-selling author and journalist, George Monbiot with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. In this article, Mr Monbiot suggests that anyone who cares about world hunger should eat less meat. South Africa is just one of 37 countries where food price hikes are pushing people deeper into poverty. But, says award-winning environmentalist George Monbiot, it’s not a shortage of food that is causing the price hikes. On the contrary: last year’s global grain harvest of 2.1 billion tonnes, broke all previous records. “There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs,” said Monbiot in his weekly column in The Guardian, in April. He added that while 100 million tonnes of grain would be diverted this year to fuel cars, 760 million tonnes would be “snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals” for meat and dairy. For both environmental and humanitarian reasons, beef was out, he said. “Pigs and chickens feed more efficiently, but unless they are free range you encounter another ethical issue: the monstrous conditions in which they are kept.” With the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation calculating that livestock production is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, the only reasonable answer to the question of how much meat we should eat, Monbiot suggested “is as little as possible”. “If you care about hunger,” he said, “eat less meat. Let’s reserve it - as most societies have done until recently - for special occasions.” Read more at: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2000/ |
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