[Prev][Next][Index]
Vegetarianism is more Economical
-
To: alt-hindu@cis.ohio-state.edu
-
Subject: Vegetarianism is more Economical
-
From: susarla@rice.edu (H. Krishna Susarla)
-
Date: 22 Jan 1995 17:03:09 GMT
-
From news@larry.rice.edu Sun Jan 22 11: 50:33 1995
-
Newsgroups: alt.hindu
-
Organization: Rice University, Houston, Texas
Vegetarianism: A Means to a Higher End
>From the book "The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking"
By Adiraja Dasa
(c) 1989 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International
Used with permission
Economics
Meat feeds few at the expense of many. For the sake of producing meat,
grain that could feed people feeds livestock instead. According to
information compiled by the United States Department of Agriculture,
over ninety percent of all the grain produced in America goes to feed
livestock-cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens-that wind up on dinner tables.
Yet the process of using grain to produce meat is incredibly wasteful.
Figures from the U.S.Department of Agriculture show that for every
sixteen pounds of grain fed to cattle, we get back only one pound of meat.
In Diet for a Small Planet, Frances Moore Lappe asks us to imagine
ourselves sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. "Then imagine the room
filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in from of them. For the 'feed
cost' of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of
cooked cereal grains."
Affluent nations do not only waste their own grains to feed livestock, they
also use protein-rich plant foods from poor nations. Dr. Georg Borgstrom,
an authority on the geography of food, estimates that one-third of
Aftrica's peanut crop (and peanuts give the same amount of protein as
meat) ends up in the stomachs of cattle and poultry in Western Europe.
In underdeveloped countries, a person consumes an average of four
hundred pounds of grain a year, most of it by eating it directly. In contrast,
says world food authority Lester Brown, the average European or American
goes through two thousand pounds a year, by first feeding almost ninety
percent of it to animals for meat. The average European or American
meat-eater, Brown says, uses five times the food resources of the average
Colombian, Indian, or Nigerian.
Facts such as these have led food experts to point out that the world
hunger problem is artificial. Even now, we are already producing more
than enough food for everyone on the planet-but we are allocating it
wastefully.
Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that bringing down meat
production by only ten percent would release enough grain to feed sixty
million people.
Another price we pay for meat-eating is degradation of the environment.
The heavily contaminated runoff and sewage form slaughterhouses and
feedlots are major sources of pollution of rivers and streams. It is fast
becoming apparent that the fresh water resources of this planet are not
only becoming contaminated but also depleted, and the meat indusrty is
particularly wasteful. Georg Borgstrom says the production of livestock
created ten times more pollution than residential areas, and three times
more than industry.
In their book Population Resources, and Environment, Paul and Anne
Ehrlich show that to grow one pound of wheat requires only sixty punds of
water, whereas production of one pound of meat requires anywhere from
2,500 to 6,000 pounds of water.
And in 1973 the New York Post uncovered a shocking misuse of this most
valuable resource-one large chicken-slaughtering plant in the United
States was using one hundred mission gallons of water daily, and amount
that could supply a city of twenty-five thousand people.
But now let's turn from the world geopolitical situation, and get right
down to our own pocketbooks. A spot check of supermarkets in New York
in January 1986 showed that sirloin steak cost around four dollars a
pound, while ingredients for a delicious, substantial vegetarian meal
average less than two dollars a pound. An eight ounce container of cottage
cheese costing sixty cents provides sixty percent of the minimum daily
requirement of protein. Becoming a vegetarian could potentially save you
at least several thousand dollars a year, tens of thousands of dollars over
the course of a lifetime. The savings to America's consumers would
amount to billions of dollars annually. And the same principle applies to
consumers all over the world. Considering all this, it's hard to see how
anyone could afford not to become a vegetarian.
