by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The biggest problem with animals reared for food is, as said, that they must be fed, watered and housed somewhere, and the feeding of them alone takes about 50% of all the crops grown on the Planet. Water use for animals is another issue.
As indicated at least half of all food that is grown goes to feed our food, that is to say half of all arable crops grown is used to feed livestock for meat. When we add to that the grazing land – and, fair enough some may be so-called marginal lands that may or may not be good enough to grow food for humans and is only suitable for grazing – then there is an awful lot of land that produces far less per acre on food as it would do were vegetables for human consumption grown there. For it takes a great amount of calories in the form of grass and other fodder stuffs to produce but one calorie of meat. Not every economic, is it?
In addition, aside from the issue of water usage, and the housing of the animals, there is also the issue of run off of slurry into water courses and the issue of slurry per se. The latter needs to be kept somewhere and then it needs to be gotten rid off.
In the days of animal manure being spread onto the fields, also upon those where food crops for human consumption were grown, the disposal of it was a little different. But then so was the way the animals were being kept. It was in much smaller units with a lot less of waste produced.
Today the world has become obsessed with eating meat and in some countries, Britain included, with a great majority, it has to be meat for every meal, almost and that seven days a week. It is madness that is not good for us or the Planet.
Not so long ago meat was expensive, at times very expensive, and was reserved to Sundays, high holy days and if someone came to visit, maybe, and that was about it. The rest of the week it was predominately vegetables, bread and butter, and such, but no meat, and we all lived much better and healthier than we do today.
The obesity epidemic did not exist and while there were some people who were overweight, adults mostly who ate too much, most were no where near anything like what we see today. Already toddlers are severely overweight to obese and let's not even talk about older youngsters. And, due to this, this could be the first generation in recorded history where the children die before their parents due to being overweight.
© 2014
