3559. How Veganism Can Help Save the World (Farsi Edition)

 By Kamran Nayeri, Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism, June 12, 2014 

Photo: Kamran Nayeri

Farsi Edition Critique of Political Economy, translated by the Telegram channel "We animals." November 26, 2021 For a PDF copy click here. 

3370. America’s Obsession With Cheap Meat

By Jane Ziegleman, The New York Times, May 15, 2020

To the slaugtherhouse...

In the hierarchy of essential things in America, it appears, cheeseburgers rank near the top. The president’s recent declaration that meatpacking plants are “critical infrastructure” and meat is “essential” under the Defense Production Act speaks volumes about this country’s attachment to an abundant supply of beef and pork even amid a pandemic.

That President Trump rushed to issue an executive order that aims to keep meat processors on the job, while hesitating to take similar action to ramp up the manufacturing of protective gear for medical workers, no doubt reflects the influence of lobbyists for the meat industry. But there’s something else to consider. The perceived essentialness of cheeseburgers (and other meat products) is also a function of certain distinctly American food habits and beliefs.

Both have deep roots. Though strongly influenced by Britain, 19th-century American cuisine differed from the motherland in at least two important respects. In her 1832 travel book, “Domestic Manners of the Americans,” the English writer Frances Trollope describes the breathtaking quantities of food on American dinner tables. Even tea, she reports, is a “massive meal,” a lavish spread of many cakes and breads and “ham, turkey, hung beef, apple sauce and pickled oysters.”

Equally impressive to this foreign observer were the carnivorous tendencies of her American hosts. “They consume an extraordinary amount of bacon,” she writes, while “ham and beefsteaks appear morning, noon and night.”

In the hierarchy of essential things in America, it appears, cheeseburgers rank near the top. The president’s recent declaration that meatpacking plants are “critical infrastructure” and meat is “essential” under the Defense Production Act speaks volumes about this country’s attachment to an abundant supply of beef and pork even amid a pandemic.

That President Trump rushed to issue an executive order that aims to keep meat processors on the job, while hesitating to take similar action to ramp up the manufacturing of protective gear for medical workers, no doubt reflects the influence of lobbyists for the meat industry. But there’s something else to consider. The perceived essentialness of cheeseburgers (and other meat products) is also a function of certain distinctly American food habits and beliefs.

Both have deep roots. Though strongly influenced by Britain, 19th-century American cuisine differed from the motherland in at least two important respects. In her 1832 travel book, “Domestic Manners of the Americans,” the English writer Frances Trollope describes the breathtaking quantities of food on American dinner tables. Even tea, she reports, is a “massive meal,” a lavish spread of many cakes and breads and “ham, turkey, hung beef, apple sauce and pickled oysters.”

Equally impressive to this foreign observer were the carnivorous tendencies of her American hosts. “They consume an extraordinary amount of bacon,” she writes, while “ham and beefsteaks appear morning, noon and night.”

Americans were indiscriminate in their love for animal protein. Beef, pork, lamb and mutton were all consumed with relish. However, as pointed out by the food historian Harvey Levenstein, it was beef, the form of protein preferred by the upper class, “that reigned supreme in status.” With the opening of the Western frontier in the mid-19th century, increased grazing land for cattle lowered beef prices, making it affordable for the working class.

Dietary surveys conducted at the turn of the 20th century by Wilbur Atwater, father of American nutrition, revealed that even laborers were able to have beefsteak for breakfast. As Atwater was quick to point out, a high-protein diet set American workers apart from their European counterparts. On average, Americans ate a phenomenal 147 pounds of meat a year; Italians, by contrast, consumed 24.

“Doubtless,” Atwater wrote, “we live and work more intensely than people do in Europe.” The “vigor, ambition and hopes for higher things” that distinguished the American worker, he argued, was fed by repeated helpings of T-bone and sirloin steak.

During World War I, the idea that American vitality was tied to a meat-heavy diet dictated how the troops were fed. To give them a fighting edge, tremendous quantities of beef and pork were shipped overseas, enough to provide soldiers with 20 ounces of beef a day or 12 ounces of bacon. The cost was staggering, but the Army refused to trim meat rations. As one newspaper reported: “There will be no meatless days in the army. The Huns are going to find themselves up against beef-eaters and pork-fed fighters full of that savage strength that come from fried steak and boiled ham and crisped bacon.”

It’s no coincidence that the archetypal American hero, the cowboy, is a cattle herder, or that we claim hamburgers as the quintessential American food. Or that when Mr. Trump welcomed the 2019 football college champions to the White House, he offered them Big Macs and Quarter Pounders. Much of what has defined us as Americans is expressed through our meat consumption.

When the coronavirus began sweeping through meat plants in Colorado, South Dakota and Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump acted quickly. The specter of meat shortages and higher prices — along with some friendly persuasion from groups like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association — prompted him to open the way to, in effect, forcing slaughterhouse employees to show up for work in a patently unsafe environment.

Mr. Trump’s move places inexpensive meat over the health and safety of the workers who produce it. Ever since the publication of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” in 1906, we have known about those perils, and too often left them unchecked, our way of keeping meat prices down and profits up.

In more ways than one, our access to cheap meat has worked to our disadvantage. With a large piece of protein in the center of the plate, most often cooked in a frying pan, Americans never had to test their powers of culinary creativity.

We never developed preparations, so common in other cuisines, that turn humble, plant-based ingredients into high culinary art. A meat-rich diet also meant that Americans were disproportionately plagued by what people used to call “dyspepsia,” what we know today as indigestion.

For the benefit of all concerned, both workers and consumers, we should take this as our cue to rethink old eating habits and look at alternative traditions. We don’t have to look far for inspiration. In fact, it’s all around us, in the many immigrant cuisines that rely chiefly on vegetables, starches and legumes, and use meat strategically, as a kind of condiment.

Think, for example, of Chinese-American stir fries in which a few ounces of beef, a one-person serving for some of us, is cut into bite-size morsels, flash-cooked with snow peas and used to feed a family of four. Or consider the magic that Italian-American home cooks produce with a handful of beans and some macaroni. We have options that don’t require making workers risk their health.

Is a well-stocked meat freezer really more “essential” than a human life? Unfortunately, Mr. Trump’s decision suggests that for Americans, it is.

3369. The End of Meat Is Here

By Jonathan Safran Foer, The New York Times, May 21, 2020

Meat piled in a delivery truck in Manhattan on May 9.Credit...Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Is any panic more primitive than the one prompted by the thought of empty grocery store shelves? Is any relief more primitive than the one provided by comfort food?

Most everyone has been doing more cooking these days, more documenting of the cooking, and more thinking about food in general. The combination of meat shortages and President Trump’s decision to order slaughterhouses open despite the protestations of endangered workers has inspired many Americans to consider just how essential meat is.

Is it more essential than the lives of the working poor who labor to produce it? It seems so. An astonishing six out of 10 counties that the White House itself identified as coronavirus hot spots are home to the very slaughterhouses the president ordered open.

In Sioux Falls, S.D., the Smithfield pork plant, which produces some 5 percent of the country’s pork, is one of the largest hot spots in the nation. A Tyson plant in Perry, Iowa, had 730 cases of the coronavirus — nearly 60 percent of its employees. At another Tyson plant, in Waterloo, Iowa, there were 1,031 reported cases among about 2,800 workers.

Sick workers mean plant shutdowns, which has led to a backlog of animals. Some farmers are injecting pregnant sows to cause abortions. Others are forced to euthanize their animals, often by gassing or shooting them. It’s gotten bad enough that Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has asked the Trump administration to provide mental health resources to hog farmers.

Despite this grisly reality — and the widely reported effects of the factory-farm industry on America’s lands, communities, animals and human health long before this pandemic hit — only around half of Americans say they are trying to reduce their meat consumption. Meat is embedded in our culture and personal histories in ways that matter too much, from the Thanksgiving turkey to the ballpark hot dog. Meat comes with uniquely wonderful smells and tastes, with satisfactions that can almost feel like home itself. And what, if not the feeling of home, is essential?

And yet, an increasing number of people sense the inevitability of impending change.

Animal agriculture is now recognized as a leading cause of global warming. According to The Economist, a quarter of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 say they are vegetarians or vegans, which is perhaps one reason sales of plant-based “meats” have skyrocketed, with Impossible and Beyond Burgers available everywhere from Whole Foods to White Castle.

Our hand has been reaching for the doorknob for the last few years. Covid-19 has kicked open the door.

At the very least it has forced us to look. When it comes to a subject as inconvenient as meat, it is tempting to pretend unambiguous science is advocacy, to find solace in exceptions that could never be scaled and to speak about our world as if it were theoretical.

Some of the most thoughtful people I know find ways not to give the problems of animal agriculture any thought, just as I find ways to avoid thinking about climate change and income inequality, not to mention the paradoxes in my own eating life. One of the unexpected side effects of these months of sheltering in place is that it’s hard not to think about the things that are essential to who we are.

We cannot protect our environment while continuing to eat meat regularly. This is not a refutable perspective, but a banal truism. Whether they become Whoppers or boutique grass-fed steaks, cows produce an enormous amount of greenhouse gas. If cows were a country, they would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.

According to the research director of Project Drawdown — a nonprofit organization dedicated to modeling solutions to address climate change — eating a plant-based diet is “the most important contribution every individual can make to reversing global warming.”

Americans overwhelmingly accept the science of climate change. A majority of both Republicans and Democrats say that the United States should have remained in the Paris climate accord. We don’t need new information, and we don’t need new values. We only need to walk through the open door.

We cannot claim to care about the humane treatment of animals while continuing to eat meat regularly. The farming system we rely on is woven through with misery. Modern chickens have been so genetically modified that their very bodies have become prisons of pain even if we open their cages. Turkeys are bred to be so obese that they are incapable of reproducing without artificial insemination. Mother cows have their calves ripped from them before weaning, resulting in acute distress we can hear in their wails and empirically measure through the cortisol in their bodies.

No label or certification can avoid these kinds of cruelty. We don’t need any animal rights activist waving a finger at us. We don’t need to be convinced of anything we don’t already know. We need to listen to ourselves.

We cannot protect against pandemics while continuing to eat meat regularly. Much attention has been paid to wet markets, but factory farms, specifically poultry farms, are a more important breeding ground for pandemics. Further, the C.D.C. reports that three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic — the result of our broken relationship with animals.

3368. Creating Abundance By Occupying Your Plate

By Kamal Prasad, People Powered Peace, No date

The Occupy Movement came about partly because we realized that we had given away too much power to government and industry that do not always have the best interest of the people in mind in their actions. Once power is given away, it can be very difficult to get back.  That is why we have yet to see the one percent pay their fair share. There is one power, however, which we all have that hasn’t been taken away from us and that is what we put on our plates to nourish our bodies every day. Here is why it matters.

The largest receiver of farm subsidies in the U.S. is the corn industry. However, according to the USDA, over 95% of the corn grown is fed to cows, pigs and chickens. In fact, majority of the edible grains grown are fed to livestock, which if they were fed to people directly would feed over 800 million people. Taking these factors into account, the livestock industry is the largest receiver of government farm subsidies.

We are told that we need GMOs because they can be made pesticide and drought resistant to produce larger yields to feed a growing population. If we weren’t using the food we grow now to feed animals who return only a fraction of that food back with even lower nutritional value, we would have enough food to feed everyone without the need for GMOs.

Instead of subsidizing raising foods that promote heart disease, diabetes and cancer, why don’t we support those same farmers to grow vitamin, phytonutrient, and antioxidant producing foods that enhance life, fight diseases and increase longevity?

Animal agriculture is also responsible for a large portion of world’s environmental problems, emitting more greenhouse gases than all modes of transportation combined. As can be deduced from the food grown to feed animals, animal agriculture is a huge consumer of fossil fuels. The livestock industry is also responsible for the largest use of farm land and water as well being the largest polluter of these resources.

If one were to take a poll, almost everyone would condemn cruelty to animals, including farm animals. Yet, by US Dept of Agriculture’s own account, over 95% of all animal products that we consume daily come from factory farms; where sentient beings are intensively confined, suffer both physical and mental abuse before meeting a horrible death. Even so-called humanely raised animals are typically sent to the same inhumane slaughterhouses that also process factory-farmed animals.

There isn’t one good reason to give up eating animals, there are several. The details of each of the things listed above could fit volumes. I encourage you to do your own research, to empower yourself against the industries and the government beholden to them, that use our tax-dollars to exploit our land, water and living creatures capable of loving and feeling. Perhaps you will come to the same conclusion I came to 4 years ago.

Giving up eating animals is not about deprivation; it is about creating abundance, an abundance of resources, an abundance of food to feed the hungry, an abundance of health, for people and the planet, and an abundance of compassion. And when there is abundance, there is sharing, and sharing makes it a better world to live in, for us, them, our children and generations yet to come.

One of the easiest way to be a part of the Occupy Movement is by occupying your plate. You still have this power, so be powerful.

Resources

• Cowspiracy
• Over 95% of corn production and use is for animal agriculture.
• U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat.
• Genetically modified crops as animal feed.
• Forks Over Knives.
• UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet.
• Earthlings (free documentary veiwable online).

3062. Veganism on the Rise in Britain and the World

By Ceylan Yeginsu, The New York Times, November 1, 2018

LONDON — It seemed like the perfect pitch to a popular British food magazine that had recently reported on an increase in sales of plant-based food: a new series about veganism.

But the editor of the magazine, Waitrose Food, was not at all impressed by the idea put forward last week by the freelance writer, and he responded with a proposal of his own that led to howls of outrage and his swift resignation from the magazine.

“How about a series on killing vegans one by one,” the editor, William Sitwell, wrote in an email seen by The New York Times. “Ways to trap them? How to interrogate them properly? Expose their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat? Make them eat steak and drink red wine?

Selene Nelson, the vegan food writer who had sent the pitch to the upscale grocery store’s magazine ahead of World Vegan Day on Thursday, said that while she frequently came across people with hostile attitudes toward veganism, she had “never seen anything like this.”

“I’ve written about many divisive topics, like capital punishment and murder cases and domestic violence, and I’ve never had a response like that to any of my articles or pitches,” she said in an interview with Buzzfeed News.

The email stirred up enough outrage that Mr. Sitwell apologized, said it was all a joke and stepped down from his position on Wednesday.

On Instagram, he offered an apology “to any food- and life-loving vegan who was genuinely offended by remarks written by me as an ill-judged joke in a private email and now widely reported.”

But Waitrose said in a statement, “Even though this was a private email, William’s gone too far, and his words are extremely inappropriate, insensitive and absolutely do not represent our views.”

The spat came at an awkward time for the food retailer, which recently announced an exclusive range of vegan products after reporting that it sales of vegan and vegetarian products had risen 85 percent since last year.

Mr. Sitwell’s comments, said in jest or not, appear to be out of touch with shifting attitudes of the British public. Britons are increasingly substituting meat with plant-based products.

In Britain, which had a population of 66 million in 2017, about 600,000 people identify as vegan, up from 540,000 in 2016, according to the Vegan Society, though some groups put the figure higher. (A widely reported statistic of more than 3.5 million vegans in Britain sprang from the comparison website Compare the Market. Published this year, it was based on a survey of 2,000 people.)

“Just the fact that the Brits have made vegan fish and chips show that veganism is being accepted by the mainstream,” said Dan Butler, a vegan who traveled an hour across London to try the city’s first Vegan fish and chips shop.

“There has been a shift in attitudes,” Mr. Butler said. “People don’t dismiss veganism or mock vegans like they used to.”

Vegans don’t consume any animal products, including eggs and dairy. More than 60 percent of vegans (and 40 percent of vegetarians) surveyed for a Waitrose report said they had adopted their new eating habits over the past five years out of concern for their health, the environment, and animal welfare. That tracks with other reports on the growing global shift away from meat-based products.

Research published in the journal Science this year says that avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to curb environmental damage to the planet. The loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife, scientists say.

Mr. Sitwell had his defenders, such as the food critic at The Times, Giles Coren, who said that while the email was “stupid,” it should not have been a “career ender.”

“Vegans are not a race or a gender or a sexual orientation or a differently abled group,” he wrote in a tweet. “They just choose to eat plants.” He said someone should be able to poke fun at vegans “and not lose your job.”

It is not the first time that Mr. Sitwell has been critical of the uptick in veganism. In an article published in The Times of London in January, he wrote:

“It had slow beginnings among shampoo-averse hippies in the 1970s, but now vegans are parking their tanks on all of our lawns and their instruction manuals are coming like propaganda pamphlets dropping from the sky.”

1941. Giving Up Beef Will Reduce Carbon Footprint More Than Cars, Says Expert

By Damian Carrington, The Guardian, July 21, 2015

beef being prepared for the kitchen

Beef’s environmental impact dwarfs that of other meat including chicken and pork, new research reveals, with one expert saying that eating less red meat would be a better way for people to cut carbon emissions than giving up their cars.

The heavy impact on the environment of meat production was known but the research shows a new scale and scope of damage, particularly for beef. The popular red meat requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions. When compared to staples like potatoes, wheat, and rice, the impact of beef per calorie is even more extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11 times more greenhouse gases.

Agriculture is a significant driver of global warming and causes 15% of all emissions, half of which are from livestock. Furthermore, the huge amounts of grain and water needed to raise cattle is a concern to experts worried about feeding an extra 2 billion people by 2050. But previous calls for people to eat less meat in order to help the environment, or preserve grain stocks, have been highly controversial.

“The big story is just how dramatically impactful beef is compared to all the others,” said Prof Gidon Eshel, at Bard College in New York state and who led the research on beef’s impact. He said cutting subsidies for meat production would be the least controversial way to reduce its consumption.

“I would strongly hope that governments stay out of people’s diet, but at the same time there are many government policies that favour of the current diet in which animals feature too prominently,” he said. “Remove the artificial support given to the livestock industry and rising prices will do the rest. In that way you are having less government intervention in people’s diet and not more.”

Eshel’s team analysed how much land, water and nitrogen fertiliser was needed to raise beef and compared this with poultry, pork, eggs and dairy produce. Beef had a far greater impact than all the others because as ruminants, cattle make far less efficient use of their feed. “Only a minute fraction of the food consumed by cattle goes into the bloodstream, so the bulk of the energy is lost,” said Eshel. Feeding cattle on grain rather than grass exacerbates this inefficiency, although Eshel noted that even grass-fed cattle still have greater environmental footprints than other animal produce. The footprint of lamb, relatively rarely eaten in the US, was not considered in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Prof Tim Benton, at the University of Leeds, said the new work is based on national US data, rather than farm-level studies, and provides a useful overview. “It captures the big picture,” he said, adding that livestock is the key to the sustainability of global agriculture.

“The biggest intervention people could make towards reducing their carbon footprints would not be to abandon cars, but to eat significantly less red meat,” Benton said. “Another recent study implies the single biggest intervention to free up calories that could be used to feed people would be not to use grains for beef production in the US.” However, he said the subject was always controversial: “This opens a real can of worms.”

Prof Mark Sutton, at the UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, said: “Governments should consider these messages carefully if they want to improve overall production efficiency and reduce the environmental impacts. But the message for the consumer is even stronger. Avoiding excessive meat consumption, especially beef, is good for the environment.”

He said: “The US and Europe alike are using so much of their land in highly inefficient livestock farming systems, while so much good quality cropland is being used to grow animal feeds rather than human food.”

Separately, a second study of tens of thousands of British people’s daily eating habits shows that meat lovers’ diets cause double the climate-warming emissions of vegetarian diets.

The study of British people’s diets was conducted by University of Oxford scientists and found that meat-rich diets - defined as more than 100g per day - resulted in 7.2kg of carbon dioxide emissions. In contrast, both vegetarian and fish-eating diets caused about 3.8kg of CO2 per day, while vegan diets produced only 2.9kg. The research analysed the food eaten by 30,000 meat eaters, 16,000 vegetarians, 8,000 fish eaters and 2,000 vegans.

Further reading:  How Veganism Can Help Save the World

1790. Book Review: The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock

By Jonathan Rutherford, March 30, 2015

Tony Weis’ new book, the Ecological Hoofprint is an outstanding work of activist scholarship. Even though, at a personal level, I was already aware of some of the problems associated with the industrial livestock industry, the book helped to both deepen my understanding and increase my moral and intellectual concern about the issues involved. I found Weis’ central contention – that ‘the deindustrialsation of livestock and the demeatificaiton diets are central to the hope of a more sustainable, just, and humane world,’ (p.12) – to be overwhelmingly persuasive.

The central aim of the Ecological Hoofprint is to challenge and expose the many unrecognized costs and problems associated with what Weis calls the growing ‘meatification’ of diets. The title is, of course, an allusion to the now well-known ecological footprint, which has successfully raised awareness about the unsustainable nature of high consumption lifestyles more generally. In the same vein, the Ecological Hoofprint seeks to draw ‘attention to the resource budgets and pollution costs that are embedded and under-accounted for in production and consumption’ of livestock (p. 129).

A related aim is to challenge the way in which dominant development narratives uncritically take for granted high-meat consumption. The livestock industry has used a range of strategies – most noticeably the (misleading) claim that meat is an indispensible source of quality protein – to reinforce the association between high meat consumption and successful societal development. Weis shows how this has influenced future development goals, such as the widely promoted imperative to ‘double food production’ by 2050. Such projections come with embedded assumptions about the continual ‘meatification’ of diets. As Weis points out ‘the scale of chronic hunger (nearly one billion) and malnourishment today, and expected population growth (more than two billion) still does not come close to adding up to a doubling scenario, which also must be understood to contain an uncritical expectation that meat consumption will continue to rise rapidly’ (p.3). 

The context for the book is the explosive, albeit geographically uneven, rise in meat consumption across the world, in the second half of the 20^th century. In 1961 just over three billion people ate an average of 23 kg of meat and 5 kg of eggs a year, but by 2011, 7 billion ate an average of 43 kg of meat and 10kg of eggs a year – in other words, there has been a quadrupling of meat consumption, and an even greater rise in egg consumption, in a mere half-century (p.1). At the same time, Weis shows that the meatifcation of diets is very unevenly spread across the globe. The global-regional inequalities are massive: average meat consumption in the U.S, for example, was 121 kg in 2010, compared to 7kg in South Asia. This picture, however, needs to be tempered by the fact that meat-consumption is growing most rapidly in some of the so-called ‘emerging economies’ – China, for example, saw per capita meat consumption grow from 4kg to 61 kg between 1961 and 2010.

The great value of the book is that it situates the growth of the industrial livestock industry within the context of critical political economy – that is, Weis seeks to show how the competitive pressure acting on producers in a capitalist market economy has shaped each stage in the growth of the industry. For example, in the early 20^th century economic competition had compelled U.S grain farmers to make a series of productivity enhancing technological innovations designed to simultaneously maximize agricultural yields while reducing labor costs. This, however, soon led to a food ‘glut’, as more food was being produced than could be sold, which threatened to undermine prices and agricultural incomes. Weis is quick to point out that this ‘glut’ did not mean that everyone in the U.S was being adequately fed: rather there was an imbalance between supply and effective demand – the latter referring to both the desire and ability to purchase a commodity. In a market economy, Weis reminds us, ‘the hungry people who can’t pay don’t register’ (p.72). Still, from a commercial perspective the glut was a major problem and while government purchasing of grain surpluses or third world food aid (designed to establish long term markets) could alleviate the problem for a while, a longer-term solution was needed. This was found, Weis shows, in the funneling of grain surpluses into livestock – animals which were increasingly separated from traditional farms, and systematically reared for food in specialized factory farms, warehouses and feedlots – in order to produce meat, eggs and dairy. Although the funneling of grains through livestock involves a net nutritional loss, still, the resulting meat could be sold at higher prices, enabling a new source of income and future growth for the sector. In this way, the growth of what Weis calls the industrial grain-oilseed complex, was increasingly tied to the industrial livestock complex: the growth of each reinforcing the other, to the point where, today, nearly 1/3 of all world arable land is used to grow grains for animal feed (p.148). 

Once established, capitalist growth imperatives have, of course, compelled the livestock industry to systematically increase and speed up the production of meat. This has particularly favored poultry production, with chickens especially well suited to the ‘technological innovations’ of industrialized livestock production. Poultry are also the most ‘efficient’ at turning feed into meat in the quickest time possible – their short lives lasting only a matter of months – even if the process inevitably involves, in the words of Bob Torres, neglecting ‘their interests to not suffer, their desires to be free and to live as beings in the world,’ and instead, subjugating them to the ‘productive ends of capital’ (quoted in Weis, p.142). 

In a powerful chapter, Weis shows the contradictory nature of this process. In a variety of ways the attempt to speed-up and intensify meat-egg-milk output, undermines basic biophysical processors. These then have to be ‘over-ridden’ by additional application of resources – most noticeably fossil fuel energy – which in turn generate mounting pollution and/or other problems. To give just one example, the sheer volume of often-contaminated biowaste generated at large (labor saving) factory farms, cannot easily be recycled back into the soil as was the case with traditional farms. Instead a variety of energy and water intensive processors are needed in order to remove the waste from factories and either transport off-site or funnel it into massive, often leaching, neighboring ‘lagoons’. 

The final chapter is an appropriately devastating summary of the true ‘hoofprint’ generated by the grain-oilseed-livestock industrial complex. At its heart, this is a challenge to the narrow conception of capitalist ‘efficiency’, which has shaped the development of the industry. In the search for profit, the industry has very ‘efficiently’ sort to increase meat-egg-dairy output while minimizing costs, especially labor costs. However, looked at through the lens of ecological and social impacts, the industry has been appallingly inefficient, generating multiple and mounting problems. These include, but are not limited to: 

• Magnified GHG emissions (livestock production is involved in nearly 1/5 of all anthropocentric GHG emissions);
• Increased land devoted to monocultural feed crops, which in several ways accelerates the decline and fragmentation of eco-systems;
• Increased water use, as well as pollution of waterways from fertilizer and pesticide runoff and leaching bio waste;
• Increased chronic diseases associated directly with high meat diets, and indirectly from the disease risks associated with livestock factory farms;
• The domination, abuse and violence inflicted on livestock animals; 
• The mundane, degrading and psychological unhealthy conditions experienced by animal industry workers. 

Weis concludes the book by discussing alternatives and strategies for change. On the supply side he argues for a gradual dismantling of the industrialized grain-livestock complex, to be replaced with bio-intensive organic farming. Bio-intensive farming, he argues, is capable of producing more ‘total nutrition per land area than monocultures owing to their capacity to grow a bigger range and overall number of plants, even if individual plants are lower yielding’ (p.148). The more direct use of agricultural land for (mostly plant based) food could open up space ‘for the renaturalization of forests, native grasslands, wetlands, riparian zones, streams and rivers’ (p.149). On the demand side, Weis encourages individuals to adopt more plant-based diet and discusses the debates that rage between meat minimizers, vegetarians and vegans. Still, he cautions against exaggerating the ‘impact of individual consumer choices’ worrying that ‘this could lead to self-gratification when what is needed is far more critical reflection and political engagement’ (p.154).

I felt this section could have done with further elaboration and discussion of the hugely difficult socio-political issues involved. Weis does not go into detail on some of the inevitable trade-offs that would come with such a societal shift. For example, while a transition to labor intensive bio-intensive farming may well have the advantage of increasing employment and defusing the ecological hoofprint, the costs would involve not just reduced meat availability, but also a less lucrative agricultural sector generally, as reduced labor productivity would eat into both profits and per capita incomes. Furthermore, a labor-intensive agricultural sector could undermine many sources of modern economic growth. Personally, I think these are costs worth making but the point is, when viewed in these terms, the immensity of the political challenge becomes clear. Which capitalist society today – all of which consider economic growth to be a fundamental societal goal, and most of whom are fully integrated into today’s neoliberal global economy dominated by huge Trans-National Corporations – are going to consider making the radical shifts Weis wants? 

Ultimately, Weis’ systemic analysis points towards the need for a new anti-systemic movement. This is especially clear when the hoofprint is understood as just one more set of problems that global-consumer-capitalist society is generating, and particularly when viewed in light of the emerging (savage) limits to growth. The book, in short, provides further ammunition for those who see a need for a reconceived ‘eco-socialism’, which, for this reviewer, might look something like Ted Trainer’s inspiring, albeit challenging, vision of a ‘Simpler Way’. 

Weis’ book stands as a fine achievement and a must read for anyone working for transition to a democratic, sustainable and peaceful world order. 

1490. About the Shrimp on the Menu

By Mangrove Action Project, April 9, 2013

Portion of a mangove forest

Introduction: This a short, educational clip about how shrimp farming destroys mangroves key to integrity of ecosystems on which much life and livelihood depends.  Also, it shows how farmed shrimp is bad for your health.  I urge you to give up eating shrimp entirely, however. A vegan diet is best for your health and for the world. For a a discussion see "How Veganism Can Help Save the World".  KN.

1441. How Veganism Can Help Save the World

By Kamran Nayeri, June 12, 2014

1. Introduction
In 2011, more than 58 billion chicken (more precisely, 58,110,000,000), nearly 3 billion ducks (2,917,000,000), more than billion pigs (1,383,000,000) were slaughtered worldwide. Other farm animals slaughtered for food numbered in hundreds of millions each: 654,000,000 turkeys, 649,000,000 geese and guinea fowl, 517,000,000 sheep, 430,000,000 goats and 296,000,000 cattle (Meat Atlas: Facts and Figures About Animals We Eat, Heinrich Böll Foundation, January 3, 2014, p. 15).

The great majority of these animals are raised in industrial farms under horrendous condition (see, for example, how chicken, pigs, sheep and cattle are raised in American industrial farms).  

Of course, consumption of non-human animals as food is not limited to farm animals. In 2011, over 156 million tons of seafood (capture and aquaculture) was consumed worldwide (FAO, “World Fisheries Production,” accessed June 2, 2014). There is also “exotic food” that in the United States includes alligator, alpaca, armadillo, bear, beaver, bobcat, caiman, crocodile, camel, coyote, capon, dove, frog, iguana, kudu, lion, llama, monkey, muskrat, opossum, otter, ostrich, pale, quail, turtle, venison and zebra meat (see, for example, this marketplace mail order for exotic food).  Other countries and cultures have their own choice of meat. In China, Korea and the Philippines cats and dogs are eaten.  Japanese prize whales as food.  The French eat horse meat. In Africa, bushmeat is treasured.  

In contrast, vegetarianism and veganism are spreading slowly across the world (John Davis, World Veganism: Past, Present and Future, 2010-2012).  Young people and an increasing number of older people are taking up vegetarian or vegan diet for a healthy life style, some for ethical reasons as well.  In the U.S. 4% of men and 7% of women describe themselves as vegetarians; in European Union it is 2% and 10% respectively. However in India, because of the influence of Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism, 30% (375 millions) of the population are vegetarians (Meat Atlas, 2014, p. 56). 

Even if one interprets this trend as a fad, it differs from most other current fads as it is directed to an essential human activity that has become both a key industrial sector of the world economy and a fetishized orgy of eating all that can be eaten. While, of course, a significant part of humanity goes without adequate access to nutrition.  

Moreover, those who take up vegetarianism or veganism often consume locally produced food that use organic, agroecological or permacultural methods and employing “fair labor practices.”  Vegetarians and vegans tend to be critical of agribusiness conglomerates that practice high-input large-scale intensive monoculture that use chemicals or genetically modified crops, bust unions and super-exploit workers. These facts should make present day veganism of interest to anyone concerned with radical social change.  

However, in his recent letter written in response to my criticism of his claim that the Great Recession was caused by natural limits to growth, ecological socialist Saral Sarkar takes a skeptical attitude towards vegetarianism and veganism. 

Criticizing my proposition that “…ecological socialism and anarchism or any other emancipatory movement should be based … on a positive world movement to reintegrate ourselves with the rest of nature,” Saral writes:

“That is too much for even the best eco-socialist or eco-anarchist. I wrote to you in my comments on an earlier essay of yours that going back to a hunter-gatherer way of living (that is what is required to reintegrate ourselves with the rest of nature) is for the time being impossible/unimaginable. It may be possible or even necessary after a great collapse, when human numbers have gone back to perhaps just one million or two. But for today, we should concentrate our discussion upon what is imaginable in the next 100 years. Even a theoretical ethical discussion must take note of the limits to what is technically possible and what not. One may then go further and issue ethical commandments: e.g. eat vegan or at least vegetarian, use for lighting only lamps that need only vegetable oil etc. But of what use are such discussions today? Such discussions (and possible decisions) have nothing to do with the question whether there are limits to growth or not. They may be carried on separately. The crisis we are facing today have little to do with such questions.” (All emphases in bold letters are mine, the italic is Saral’s emphasis) 

The entire set of propositions in the paragraph above are flawed, individually and taken as a whole.  

First, Saral objects to my proposition by asserting that it requires “going back to a hunter-gatherer way of living.”  But how could any ecological socialist deny that reintegrating humanity in the rest of nature is both desirable and necessary to overcome present-day world crisis?  Is not our estrangement (alienation) from nature the problem?  If Saral denies the need or desirability of such de-alienation he should simply explain himself instead of claiming that it requires a hunter-gatherer existence. I have never suggested this leap in logic. Why does Saral suggest it as if it is my point of view?  What I have proposed is a return to ecocentric world views similar to those of our forager ancestors but have offered modern ecocentric world views such as Deep Ecology and Darwinian evolutionary theory as examples from philosophy and from science. I have never held that there is either one ecocentric world view or that there is a best one.  What I have argued is that an ecocentric worldview is necessary for transiting to ecological socialism.  And I can vouch for its desirability the more I make progress in opening myself up to the rest of nature.  If Saral disagrees with the need or desirability for ecocentrism—and I will show below that he actually does disagree with it—he should simply explain and motive his point of view to move our discussion forward.

Second, Saral’s proposition that veganism or vegetarianism falls outside the“limits to growth paradigm” tells us more about his own interpretation of the causes of humanity’s problems than the alleged irrelevance of veganism for the emancipatory movement.  We know that Saral’s ecological socialism is inspired by the Club of Rome’s limits to growth simulations.  As I have argued earlier (see, Part 4 of my “Limits to Limits to Growth perspective”), as informative as these simulations are about the problems of the present day capitalist civilization they really are technical arguments without any explicit social theory, moral philosophy or policy prescriptions.  

Furthermore, it is  not really hard to see that the carnivore diet violates these technical boundaries that Saral surely respects.  Take, for example, global warming.  “Depending on how you count, livestock are responsible for 6 to 32 percent of greenhouse gases. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), it’s 14.5 percent. (Meat Atlas, p. 34, see, also EPA, Agriculture gas emissions).  For another example take fresh water scarcity: 70% of all fresh water is used in agriculture, one third of it for livestocks. So clearly, veganism if practiced universally will alleviate the problem of global warming and fresh water shortage. Why should Saral dispute its relevance to natural limits to growth “paradigm” and postpone a discussion of it for 100 year? 

Third, as Saral’s adopted “paradigm” of limits to growth is merely technical we can understand why he views veganism as an “ethical commandment;” because it does not follow from the findings of the simulation models.  But that tell us more about limits to limits to growth “paradigm”and Saral’s own conception of ecological socialism than the actual reasons why people become vegan: their own health, welfare of farm animals, and for the environment that is being poisoned by the meat industry and species and ecosystem diversity that is being reduced daily (think of emptying oceans of many fish species). Clearly, these concerns are valid (Saral has not objected to them so far and I doubt if he objects to them at all). So, why call veganism an “ethical commandment” that has nothing to do with the “crisis we are facing today?” 

Thus, the problem with Saral’s misjudgment lies in part in his limits to growth paradigm.  However, there is one more foundational conceptualization in Saral’s theorizing that contributes to such poor judgment. It is his humanist anthropocentrism.  Allow me to explain.

2. Ecocentric ecosocialism or anthropocentric ecosocialism? 
In the opening chapter of his Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism (1999), Saral offers foundational concepts of his version of ecological socialism.  Included is a discussion of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism on pages 10-15. There he adopts humanism as his own standpoint. Humanism, including socialist humanism, is a variety of anthropocentrism. Thus, Saral writes:

“Since we are humans, our main (not our only) concern is the suffering of humans…This might be called anthropocentrism. But the reason for this anthropocentrism is very simple. It is because we are humans that we are anthropocentric. No philosophising is necessary, and no religion or mythology—no species wants its own extinction or increased suffering.” (ibid., p. 10). 

But the argument that humans view the world as humans so their worldview must of necessity be anthropocentric is flawed. In “Anthropocentrism versus Ecocentrism Revisited: Theoretical and Practical Conclusions” (SATS: Northern European Journal of Philosophy, volume 14, number 1, November 2013, pp. 21-37), Teea Kortetmäki finds two “conceptual confusions” to defend anthropocentrism.  One is the conceptual confusion “that is used to defend anthropocentrism is the view that as we can have only a human viewpoint, we are always anthropocentric.” (ibid. p. 32).  

Let me explain why Saral’s position is “conceptual confusion.”

First, it trivializes anthropocentrism that is in fact an historical and philosophical worldview as I have explained in “Economics, Socialism and Ecology: A Critical Outline, Part 2.”  

Second, it turns a historical phenomenon into a biological, natural one. As anyone who has read my earlier discussion of Saral’s writings knows; from his explanation of the Great Recession to his discussion of the population question he naturalizes the issues under discussion, perhaps because of his adoption of limits to growth as his “paradigm.”  Yet, as I document in “Economics, Socialism and Ecology; A Critical Outline, Part 2," a key conceptual progress in anthropology is the realization that the transition from ecocentrism to anthropocentrism is central understanding our history.  For millions of years our forager ancestors held ecocentrist world views. Anthropocentrism emerged as the ideological basis for the Agrarian Revolution thousands of years ago and became institutionalized by the rise of class societies and civilizations. 

Third, there are modern day counter examples including Darwinian evolutionary theory and Deep Ecology that provide scientific and philosophical basis for ecocentrism respectively. 

Thus not only it is possible for humans to embrace ecocentrism, to do so is essential if we are to initiate the process of de-alienation from nature, part of the process to transcend the capitalist civilization and all vestiges of class society and to end the 10,000 year old war against nature, so that we can begin to healing our bonds with it.  Ecocentrism is not an option but a necessity for transition to an ecological socialist society or any other social formation that hopes to exist in harmony with the rest of nature.

In Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism, Saral engages in some discussion of James Lovelock’s Gaia theory and Deep Ecology and at time seems to feel at peace with them. However, Saral’s discussion involves other confusions and concludes with affirmation of his humanist anthropocentrism.  Thus, after admitting some scientific confirmation of the Gaia theory he writes: “But in matters relating to us humans and our societies, it cannot replace anthropocentrism.” (ibid., p. 11).  Saral also alludes to the animal liberation literature and Deep Ecology as other sources for ecocentrism.  He does not discuss the former and his discussion of the latter is mired in confusion (e.g., his discussion of Deep Ecology its reference to “species” as if it means “animals” only; or interpreting the evolutionary and ethical reference to “equality” among species to mean having equal power; see the quotation below).  He begins with the Deep Ecology’s proposition that arguments for human superiority are frivolous, a view that actually can be based on Darwinian evolutionary theory; that is, it has scientific basis. But he concludes: 

“One thing is clear: only at the beginning of our evolution were we really equals of other species. At present, this equality is only a wish and a theory. In practice, it is only a moral duty of ours. Even so, let us not arrogantly think the whole of the rest of nature is at our mercy. The enemy bacteria that we thought  we had eradicated—those that cause cholera, malaria, plague—are all coming back, and we have to kill them, otherwise they will kill us.” (p. 13).   

Though obviously sympathetic to ecocentrism, Saral’s theory of ecological socialism remains anthropocentric.  

However, anthropocentric ecological socialism will lead to wrong policies (as Saral’s paragraph quoted at the opening of this writing clearly demonstrates). Ecological socialism can only be meaningful if it is squarely based on ecocentrism. Let Kortetmäki explain what this ecocentrism is and how it would differ from anthropocentrism in everyday policy decisions we must make:

“In contrast to anthropocentrism, ecocentrism is then characterized by the carnality of ecosystems or biosphere, varying degrees of egalitarianism between species and valuing the nonhuman species, ecosystems and life itself regardless of its use-value for us.  Reasons for environmental concern arise not only out of human interests, but also from seeing the biotic community as having moral standing in itself.  The difference from anthropocentrism is obvious when we consider the notion of ‘sustainability’ in an ecocentric sense: as all life forms and their flourishing are valuable in themselves, exploiting nature cannot be called sustainable when it threatens the flourishing of other life forms and species, though not yet human flourishing.  This argument has practical implications also to climate policy: at the moment some emission mitigating practices (for example, producing certain types of biofuel crops) can be accepted by anthropocentrists due to their carbon emission mitigating impacts, but ecocentrism cannot accept a practice that so greatly reduces biodiversity in the crop area and, in addition, is merely a short-sighted tool that does not advance changing the unsustainable practices that actually cause the problems.” (Kortetmäki, 2013, pp. 33-34). 

3. Anthropocentrism and political economy of food
Political economy of food deals with how food is produced, transported, retailed and consumed in the capitalist economy (For a pictorial history of the meat industry in the U.S., see, A History of the Meat Industry).  Radical political economy of food addresses larger issues neglected by mainstream analysis such as the wellbeing of workers in the industry, its impact on peasants and small farmers, issues of hunger and food security, its effects on the environment and health, and perhaps even ethics of raising and slaughtering industrial farm animals.  Dealing with these topics are outside the scope of this writing.  Here I merely like to point to the fact that radical studies of the present-day food system show that no radical social transformation is possible without building an alternative food system from the ground up (see, for example, Peter Goering, Helena Norberg-Hodge and John Paige explain in From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture, Zed Books, 1993, Vandana Shiva, The Violence of Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology and Politics, Zed Books, 1992, Michael Pollen’s Omnivore Dilemma, The Penguin Press, 2006). 

There are valid concerns with healthy diet and food safety (see, for example, “Meat Consumption and Cancer Risk,” ,”Antibiotics, the Meat Industry and Superbugs,” “Film Review: Forks Over Knives,” and The China Study) and environmental sustainability and ethics (Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 1975, Gary L. Francione’s Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation, 2008).  

Today's meat industry is a highly centralized capitalist industry with relatively few giant firms operating worldwide. Among the top ten are the following firms listed with their “home country” and latest available revenue figures: JBS (Brazil, $38.7 billions), Tyson Food (USA, $33.3 billions), Cargill (USA, $32.5 billions), Vion (Netherlands/Germany, $13.2), BRF (Brazil, $12.7 billions), Nippon Meant Packers (Japan, $12.8 billions), Smithfields Food (USA,  $13.1 billions), Marfrig (Brazil, $12.8 billions), Danish Crown AmbA (Denmark, $10.3 billions) and Hormel Food (USA, 8.2 billions). 

Closely tied to these is the animal genetics industry that literary manufactures prototype animals for meat. The largest are Charoen Pokphand Group (Thailand), EW Group (Germany), Genus (U.K.), Groupe Grimaud (France), Hendrix Genetics (The Netherlands), Smithfield Foods (U.S.) , and Tyson Foods (U.S.).

Industrialization of meat production, distribution and retailing has spread a culture of meat eating to the entire population in the industrial capitalist economies and more recently to middle class layers of the rest of the world.  It has done so by making meat more available to the world and by reducing its market price. Thus, according to the National Chicken Council, dressed chicken was retailed in the U.S. for $6.48 a pound in 1930 (in today’s dollar) but retails these days for $1.57 a pound.  

Why such a drop in price of chicken? 

“Costs came down partly because scientific breeding reduced the length of time needed to raise a chicken to slaughter by more than half since 1925, even as a chicken’s weight doubled. The amount of feed required to produce a pound of chicken has also dropped sharply.” (“Industrial Farming and Your Diet”, March 12, 2014)  

Poultry Science journal has calculated that if humans grew at the same rate as modern chickens, a human by the age of two months would weigh 660 pounds! 

Among the scientific techniques used to raise farm animals in increasingly cramped spaces is the intensive use of hormones and antibiotics. 

Meanwhile, there has been a rapidly expanding mega-retail chains, conditioning, responding to and consolidating demand from the expanding middle classes worldwide.  

Thus, the rapid rise in meat consumption worldwide even though consumption of meat in the West has stagnated or declined due to recent awareness of health and environment issues and a sense of compassion for the farm animals. 

“Meat, a luxury in many parts of the world only 10 or 20 years ago, is now a part of the daily diet for a growing number of people in developing countries. Big supermarket chains such as Walmart from the USA, France’s Carrefour, the UK’s Tesco and Germany’s Metro are conquering the globe. Their expansion has sparked huge investments by domestic supermarket companies. The process has been well researched. The first wave began in the early 1990s in South America, in East Asian tiger economies like South Korea and Taiwan, and South Africa. Between 1990 and 2005, the market share of supermarkets in these countries rose from 10, to 50 or 60 percent. The second wave, in the mid-to-late 1990s, focused on Central America and Southeast Asia. By 2005, supermarkets accounted for 30–50 percent of the market share there. The third wave began in 2000 and washed over China and India, as well as big latecomers such as Vietnam. In only a few years, supermarket sales in these countries were growing by 30 to 50 percent a year. 

“Why this huge shift? It is not only due to the rising purchasing power of the middle classes, but also to more fundamental changes in society. In Pakistan, for example, cities are expanding so quickly that traditional methods of supplying meat and dairy products cannot keep up with the demand. The city of Lahore is growing by 300,000 people a year. The result is product shortages and poor quality, factors that drive the middle classes into the supermarkets, says the Express Tribune, a Pakistani daily. Working women, who are still responsible for cooking for their families, have no time to go from shop to shop to check the meat quality or haggle over prices. (Meat Atlas, p. 16)

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the prevailing anthropocetic culture that justifies a carnivorous diet and the violence that goes along with it.

4. The Anthropocentric culture and treatment of non-human animals
Almost all the animals served on the dinner plate have long been considered sentient, that is, they are shown to have feelings and capable of experiencing pain and suffering (see, Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, 1975). Clearly, systematically raising or capture of trillions of non-human animals to kill for food each year exceed all accounts of genocide  committed in human history—unless, of course, one trivializes these animals’ lives and magnifies our own.  And yet, all political currents, almost all intellectual traditions, including Marxists, and most world religions are silent or otherwise complacent in this abominable violent culture.  

Our culture prettify animal slaughter and meat eating.  As a child growing up in Tehran, Iran in the 1950s, I vividly recall a poster framed on the wall of butcher shops of an angel delivering a sheep to prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) who looked about to sacrifice his son (presumably Ishmael) to God.  The suggestion was evident even to a child: Why not sacrifice the sheep?  Thus, the idea that killing other animals is better than killing humans or eating other animals is fine but cannibalism is a sin.  Meanwhile, the half butchered skinned carcass of a cow or a sheep hanged from a nail secured on the butcher shop’s ceiling.  I also recall seeing how the butcher slaughtered a sheep, her legs tied with a rope and the blood running into the street’s gutters.  Of course, with the “progress” of modernity in Iran it was increasingly rare to see such violence in public. Instead, I recall when riding the city bus on a particular route there was a stop called Koshtargah (Slaughterhouse). Those days, the slaughterhouse was inside Tehran.  These days slaughterhouses are moved into far corners of rural areas hiding the violence that goes on inside every moment.  Today, worldwide “…ten corporations slaughter 88 percent of the total number of pigs. The global capacity of the companies is hard to believe: Tyson Foods…slaughters 42 million chickens, 170,000 cattle and 350,000 pigs – every week.” (Meat Atlas, p. 14)

In the 1980s, some of my fellow socialists worked on the “kill floor” of the American slaughterhouses.  This was part of our strategy to root ourselves in industrial unions to build a fighting labor movement capable of taking power and ushering in the socialist alternative. It never occurred to anyone involved how a working class that does not object to such violence against other animals would be capable of ending all violence we have endured in class society.

How do we account for our complacency?  I suggest it is our alienation from nature.  We can empathize with fellow human beings (unless they belong to the “other” group with which we are in conflict). But we cannot empathize with hundreds of species that we kill to eat.  If my argument for human alienation from the rest of nature is correct—that it is helped cause and became a consequence of the Agricultural Revolution--it is that alienation that explains common acceptance of the blood thirsty society we call civilization.  

In Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism Saral points to two traits of human beings that he suggests are unique to humans: to kill other human beings and altruism of taking care of our sick and old.  If it was not well known in the 1990s, it is commonly understood now that other species kill members of their own species (e.g., chimpanzees, lions, even not-neutered domestic male cats fighting for turf for food and females) and that other species are capable of altruist behavior (see, the wikipedia entry).   However, is it not amazing that Saral did not notice what is truly a unique trait of us humans: the very violence we commit daily on such colossal scale to support our carnivorous habit?  Similarly, no other species commit anything like genocide.  Again, key to understanding this behavior is alienation.  In the case of other species, it is alienation from nature. In case of genocide or other systematic act of oppressing and exploiting groups of humans it is social alienation. African slave trade was part of the primitive accumulation of capital that helped institutionalized capitalism not only in Western Europe but also the United States.  Germans participated in or kept silent when fascists systematically sent 6 million Jews to their death. A century later, Turks still deny genocide against Armenians committed by the Ottoman empire.  Most white South Africans tolerated or actively participated in the Apartheid regime.  Jewish people who fled fascism in Europe colonized Palestine and have systematically driven out or oppressed millions of Palestinians. These criminal acts have been/are only possible by claiming moral superiority for the oppressor and relegating the oppressed to a subhuman status. We do the same to non-human animals to justify their subordination, oppression, exploitation and systematic killing. 

Of course, our focus is on food. But how many other ways are there that we abuse non-human animals? Each year hundreds of millions of “laboratory animals” are systematically subjected to what amount to torture and large majority finally killed. This is done in the name of human welfare (however, evidence is mounting to the contrary. For example, recent research show that animal models in laboratory medicine are not generalizable to humans. See, John J. Pappin, “”The Failing Animal Research Paradigm for Human Disease,” May 20, 2014). Less benevolent is the military use of animals. U.S. military uses live pigs for shooting practice and dolphins to detect underwater explosives. It’s use of sonar hurt whales and dolphins. How about the “pet industry?”  Not only dogs and cats are bred to fit human fancy (think about “toy dogs” or “Persian cats”), but each year a “residual” of untold hundreds of millions that have gone feral are estimated to be put to death worldwide. There is also a growing “exotic pet” industry. In the United States they include African wild dogs, armadillos, Asian small-clawed otters, bears, bobcats, coyotes, dolphins, foxes, giraffes, hedge hogs, lemurs, lions, lynxes, monkeys, penguins, porcupines, raccoons, sloths, tigers, wallaroos, wolves and zebras (for a marketplace for exotic pets see here).  Bullfighting and cockfighting are consider entertainment and in the case of the former, a tourist attraction.   Hunting and fishing are considered "sport" supported by large industries.  More socially acceptable are the zoos and circuses.  But animals suffer in captivity and circus animals are routinely mistreated (“trained”) to preform tricks.  Let’s not forget roadkills.  These are animals who have managed to cope with human population expansion (“development”) but remain at risk of getting hit when they cross a road. We also routinely exterminate other animals simply because they are inconvenient or at cross purpose to human activity as in gardening and in agriculture.

As humans increase in number and expand geographically we occupy more living space on Earth. Increases in our per capita consumption, including of fresh water and land drive other species out of existence.  Tens of thousands of chemicals are released into the environment allegedly at levels safe for humans but without any consideration of their toxicity for other species. The same is true of human waste. The anthropogenic climate change, ocean acidification, and nitrogen and phosphorus release into the environment all threaten untold number of species. 

We have turned the planet into our play ground that is in effect depleting it of biodiversity that is the basis of life itself.  I submit none of this is possible without an anthropocentric culture that regards the rest of nature at best as “our natural resources.”  The problem of production and consumption of food is one aspect of how present-day civilization views the rest of nature. 

5. History of food, lifestyle choices and emancipatory world views
Never our species consumed so much meat as we do today in the industrialized capitalist.  Estimated current per capita meat consumption in kilograms for industrialized capitalist countries/regions follows: beef (U.S. 26.5; Australia 22.9; Canada 20.2; New Zealand 19.1; EU 11.1; Japan 6.8); pork (EU 32.4; U.S. 21.1; Australia 20.0; Canada 16.7; New Zealand 15.5; Japan 14.9); chicken (U.S. 44.4; Australia 38.8; Canada 32.6; New Zealand 31.6; EU 20.8; Japan 12.8); lamb (New Zealand 8.8; Australia 8.4; EU 2.0; Canada 0.9; U.S. 0.4;  Japan 0.2). While the rest of the world consumes much less meat, their meat consumption is increasing fast due to the expansion of the middle classes.  (Meat Atlas, p. 47). That is, on average in a year an American eats an estimated 26.6 kilograms of beef, 21.1 kilograms of pork, 44.4 kilograms of chicken, 0.4 kilograms of lamb.  That is 92.5 kilograms or 203.5 pounds of meat a year!  

For millions of years our forager ancestors relied on gathering food from plants. Paleontologists know this because of the wear and tear of teeth of such foragers that can be only caused by plant fiber.  

However, it is also true that eventually humanoid foragers ate meat as well; first as scavengers and then as occasional hunters.  

“During the 400 millennia in which Homo erectus evolved into Homo sapiens… gathering did lose some of its importance, perhaps because of climatic conditions (the period concerned is 430,000 to 40,000 BC), only to recover it again as game became scarcer.” (Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food, Blackwell, 1992, p. 72). 

Still, an increasingly carnivorous diet with high calorie animal proteins contributed to population growth, emigration and spread of our ancestors across the world.  An increasingly varied diet contributed to more developed intellectual capacity.  With the discovery of fire, cooking food became possible. There is still dispute about a gender division of labor in food gathering and hunting (ibid. pp. 39-40). But there is no dispute that proportion of plant food vs. meat varied by geography and across time.  Where little greenery existed, more meat was consumed and vice versa.  Still, for hundreds of thousands of years hunting provided almost everything to the foragers: the principal food, clothing and tools and instruments like the fat-burning lamps. (ibid., p. 72)  But, hunting itself went through a period of expansion and then decline as the game became scarcer. 

Stock-breeding emerged from hunting.  The earliest indications from archeology is from the region that is now the Negav desert north of Siani some 30,000 years ago where gazelles and fallow deer were herded.  For practical and cultural reasons (there was aversion to eating scavenger animals like hyenas who Egyptians tried to eat) herbivores rather than carnivores were herded, tamed and then domesticated. (ibid. p. 94) As stock-breeding took hold, hunting for food was gradually given up. 

Except for herders who relied heavily on their animals for food and for fishing cultures, meat was never a large part of the diet of most people until recently.

So, given what I have outlined above why should an ecological socialist or anyone who adheres to an emancipatory vision for humanity refuse to become a vegan?  Is there no relationship between lifestyle choices and our worldview?  

Instances when modern humans or our ancestors were mostly carnivores are few and relatively brief: several hundred thousand years when hunting predominated among hunter-gatherers, among herding and fishing cultures throughout history and in the industrial capitalist societies and among the middle classes worldwide. From what we know from archeology, anthropology, history and nutrition science, there is no grounds for meat eating being integral to human life.  For millions of years hunter-gatherers lived on a vegetarian diet and today hundreds of millions of people live on vegetarian and vegan diets and enjoy  active and healthy lives.  In fact, there is considerable evidence that a vegan diet is healthiest for people and a carnivorous diet can cause serious illnesses. 

At the same time, bioethics and moral philosophy, the animal rights movement, Deep Ecology and some religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism hold that it is immoral to enslave and/or kill other animals for food.  

Ecology and environmental science tell us that industrial agriculture and the meat industry that provide the bulk of meat, dairy and seafood worldwide are destroying the ecosystems and poisoning the environment. 

Given all this, becoming vegan and advocating veganism become an obvious choice. 

Of course, anthropocentric ecological socialists like Saral, may still feel not quite convinced. But if we advocate reducing wasteful world consumption, as Saral does, veganism should be among his top policy choices. 

As Saral know well, ultimately, all species live off energy that arrives on Earth via sunshine.  Through photosynthesis green plants (primary producers) convert solar energy into sugars. They consume about half of it for their own livelihood. What remains is called Net Primary Productivity (NPP).  The NPP is the basis for all animal life. Herbivores eat plants to gain energy for their livelihood (primary consumers). Finally, some carnivores live off herbivores (secondary consumers).  Some omnivores eat secondary consumers (tertiary consumers).  The final link in the food chain is the decomposers that live off the organic matter of plants, herbivores and carnivores.  In each step in the food chain about 90% of the energy is lost. 

Thus, by going vegan much more food will be available for humanity. If we get rid of the capitalist production, distribution and consumption of meat, dairy and seafood and adopt a vegan diet, not only there will be more food per capita produced, it will require fewer resources, making more vital resources available to other species.  By adoption of cruelty free permacultural methods (even the best permaculturists can be anthropocentric, see, my Book Review: Gaia’s Garden, March 15, 2012), methods that mimic how nature works, by producing locally and by involving the community in growing their own food, we will be taking key steps to a simpler, ecologically, environmentally and ethically more sound and more communal way of life.  In the process more of us will also adopt an ecocentric worldview. That would be the key requirement for an ecological socialist society.  In the 1970s, we used to proclaim that women liberation is human liberation. Today, we should also proclaim that without animal liberation there would be no human emancipation. And live our lives accordingly.  

Related posts:

1311. Understanding the present-day World Economic Crisis: An Ecosocialist Approach

1332. Limits of the Limits to Growth Perspective: A Discussion of Saral Sarkar's Explanation of the Great Recession

1338. Letter from Saral Sarkar: In Defense of the Limits to Growth Explanation of the Great Recession

1375. Did Natural Limits to Growth Cause the Great Recession?

1385. Karl Marx or Club of Rome?: Why Naturalizing Causes of the Great Recession Undermines Efforts to Transcend the Capitalist Civilization

1393. Are paradigms, theories, methods value neutral?

1417. On the Population Question: Malthus, Marx and Beyond