Famine can only be avoided if the rich give up meat,  fish and dairy
                       from The Guardian December 24, 2002

The Christians stole the winter solstice from the  pagans, and capitalism
stole it from the Christians. But one feature of the  celebrations has  remained
unchanged: the consumption of vast quantities of meat. The practice  used to
make sense. Livestock slaughtered in the  autumn, before the grass ran out,
would be about to decay, and fat-starved people  would have to survive a  further three months. Today we face the opposite problem: we spend the next  three
months trying to work it off.

Our seasonal excesses would be perfectly sustainable, if we weren't doing the
same thing every other week of the year. But,  because of the rich world's
disproportionate purchasing power, many of us can feast every day. And this
would also be fine, if we did not live in a finite  world.

By comparison to most of the animals we eat, turkeys  are relatively efficient
converters: they produce about three times as much meat per pound of grain
as feedlot cattle. But there are still plenty of reasons to feel uncomfortable
about eating them. Most are reared in darkness, so  tightly packed that they
can scarcely move. Their beaks are removed with a hot knife to prevent them
from hurting each other. As Christmas approaches,  they become so heavy that
their hips buckle. When you see the inside of a turkey broilerhouse, you  begin
to entertain grave doubts about European civilisation.

This is one of the reasons why many people have returned to eating red meat
at Christmas. Beef cattle appear to be happier  animals. But the improvement
in animal welfare is offset by the loss in human  welfare. The world produces
enough food for its people and its livestock, though  (largely because they
are so poor) some 800 million are malnourished. But as the population rises,
structural global famine will be avoided only if the rich start to eat less  meat.
The number of farm animals on earth has risen fivefold since 1950:  humans
are now outnumbered three to one. Livestock  already consume half the
world's grain, and their numbers are still growing almost exponentially.

This is why biotechnology - whose promoters claim that it will feed the world
has been deployed to produce not food but feed: it allows farmers to switch
from grains which keep people alive to the production of more lucrative crops
for livestock. Within as little as 10 years, the  world will be faced with a
choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world's animals or it
continues to feed the world's people. It cannot do both.

The impending crisis will be accelerated by the depletion of both phosphate
fertiliser and the water used to grow crops. Every  kilogram of beef we
consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and
Robert Goodland, requires around 100,000 litres of water.  Aquifers are
beginning to run dry all over the world, largely because of  abstraction by
farmers.

Many of those who have begun to understand the finity of global grain
production have responded by becoming vegetarians.  But vegetarians who
continue to consume milk and eggs scarcely reduce  their impact on the
ecosystem. The conversion efficiency of dairy and  egg production is generally
better than meat rearing, but even if everyone who now eats beef were to eat
cheese instead, this would merely delay the global  famine. As both dairy
cattle and poultry are often fed with fishmeal (which means that no one can
claim to eat cheese but not fish), it might, in one respect, even accelerate it.
The shift would be accompanied too by a massive deterioration in animal
welfare: with the possible exception of intensively reared broilers and pigs,
battery chickens and dairy cows are the farm animals which appear to suffer most.

We could eat pheasants, many of which are dumped in landfill after they've
been shot, and whose price, at this time of the  year, falls to around £2 a bird,
but most people would feel uncomfortable about subsidising the bloodlust of
brandy-soaked hoorays. Eating pheasants, which are also fed on grain, is
sustainable only up to the point at which demand meets supply. We can eat fish,
but only if we are prepared to contribute to the collapse of marine ecosystems
and - as the European fleet plunders the seas off West Africa - the starvation of
some of the hungriest people on earth. It's impossible to avoid the conclusion
that the only sustainable and socially just option is for the inhabitants of the rich world to become, like most of  the earth's people, broadly vegan, eating meat
Only on special occasions like Christmas.

As a meat-eater, I've long found it convenient to categorise veganism as a
response to animal suffering or a health fad. But,  faced with these figures,
it now seems plain that it's the only ethical  response to what is arguably
the world's most urgent social justice issue. We stuff ourselves, and the
poor get stuffed.