"There are over one billion cows alive today. They are grazing on six
continents. A quarter of the earth's landmass is used as pasture for cattle
and other livestock....nearly 29 percent of the landmass of the United
States is currently used as grazing land, primarily to feed cattle."
Jeremy Rifkin
Beyond Beef
"....the world's output of meat increased fivefold in
the second half of the 20th century. We now have 22 billion farm animals,
including 15 billion chickens and 1.3 billion cattle. And the industry is
girding its loins for a 50% increase in the next two decades. By 2050, the world's
livestock population will, on present trends, have grown to the point where
the plant food it consumes could feed an extra 4 billion people, if it
wasn't hived off for meat production.
The environment is already suffering and will
further if the extra beasts continue to be raised intensively in
"factories". Million-head "pig cities" already exist in
the US and are now planned for Poland when it becomes part of the expanded
European Union. Collectively, the world's livestock produce 10 per cent of
all the greenhouse gases, including 25 per cent of the methane, among the
most potent of all. Then there is water, which is rapidly becoming the
greatest check on overall food productivity. It takes 4=500 litres to raise
a kilo of potatoes; 900 for a kilo of wheat; nearly 2000 for rice or soya;
3500 for a kilo of chicken; and a staggering 100,000 litres for a kilo of
beef."
Colin Trudge
So Shall we Reap
"While agriculture prospers all other arts alike are
vigorous and strong, but where the land is forced to remain desert , the
spring that feeds the other arts is dried up."
-Xenophon (440-355 B.C.)
"For every one of the 18,000 days of the past 50
years, some 218 Farms in the U.S. closed'
"Eating can bind a pair together more effectively than
sex, simply because people eat more often and predictably than they have
sexual relations."
-Peter Farb & George Armelagos
Consuming Passions: The Anthropology of Eating
"Unless It can rejuvenate itself, the hamburger may be wiped out by
a combination of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE, or mad cow disease)
and jaded palates.
In France, McDonald’s is pinning its hopes on a burger gastronomique,
injecting more a la France and less best of America. McDonald’s in
the U.S. has been cutting prices to boost flagging sales. In Britain, burger
sales plummeted during the BSE crisis. It has been the slowest meat product
to show a recovery.
The Irish burger, for its part, is holding its own. Sales dropped during
the BSE crisis but have nearly recovered. McDonald’s plans to open 20 new
restaurants in Ireland within three years."
Kevin O’Sullivan, Irish Times, Dublin, March 29, 1997
"Europe’s farms have become highly productive in the last 20
years, thanks to mechanization, fertilizers, and pesticides. But these
improvements are threatening the environment in some agricultural regions,
rain now carries off up to 10 tons of soil per hectare each year, reports a
multinational research project called EUROSEM (European Soil Erosion Model).
The project has created a model of Europe’s climate and other conditions
to evaluate the effects of specific soil-conservation measures (such as
plant cover) on reversing erosion and saving Europe’s farms."
EUROSEM, R.P.C. Morgan, Cranfield University, Silsoe College
"Bruce Hannon of the U of Illinois says: 80 million acres would be
freed of for other uses (If we had one meatless day in 3). Only 5% of this
are set aside for growing vegetables, soy beans, would make up for the lost
protein.
The raising of timber, sugarcane, or sunflowers on the remainder would
supply enough fuel for 225,000 new one-thousand-megawatt power stations.
1 / 2 of the world’s fish catch is fed to livestock.
About 45 million beef cattle roam some 870 million acres-more than 2/3 of
the land mass in our 17 western states.
Over 80% of the corn, oats and soybeans are eaten by livestock. (in the
US)
Each year the world’s farmers are expected to feed 86 million more
people with 24 billion tons less topsoil.
If we were simply to grow food for people we would need 30% of the yield
we now require from an acre. To supply one meat eater – 3 ¼ acre
Lacto-vegetarian – ½ acre Pure Vegetarian – 1/6 acre."
Lester Brown
"Within 10 years we will have a moderate to large scale ecological
or economic catastrophe, because there will be so many (genetically
engineered) products being released."
Norm Ellstrand
The Butterfly People
"They first appeared among poor Spanish shepherds in the eighteenth
century. But it didn't stop there, and the so-called "butterfly
people" were soon seen everywhere: dazed peasants marked on the bridge
of the nose with a curious butterfly design, which soon spread to the rest
of their body in huge throbbing scabs. Some drowned themselves to stop the
itching. Others went slowly insane. By 1881 an estimated one hundred
thousand people in Italy were affected, and corn, which had become a staple
among the poorest of the poor, was fingered as the cause. Some said the
vegetable's "impure Indian" nature lay at the root of the horrible
disease. Others claimed moldy kernels were the culprit. In America, where
the disease was rampant among the poorer people in the South, South Carolina
actually put the vegetable on trial. "Corn stands indicted!" wrote
the state's agricultural commissioner in 1909, "the original wild grass
of Aztecs and given to us by the Indian. You are here assembled to try the
case and render a verdict...for the charge of murder..." It wasn't
until the mid-1900s that Nobel nominee Joseph Goldberger proved that the
disease, now called pellagra (rough skin), was caused by the absence of
vitamin niacin in corn. The mystery, however, was why there were no cases of
pellagra among the Indians, who for centuries had been so heavily on the
stuff. The answer lay in how the plant was processed. Indians always soaked
the kernels overnight in a bath made of water and lime or wood ashes before
grinding it into meal. The European invaders had assumed this was merely to
make the maize easier to grind and had taken it as an example of
"Indian laziness." It turned out that the step of soaking the
grain with ash, called mixamalization, was what released the niacin
"bound up" inside corn and turned the plant into a kind of
universal superfood that met almost all nutritional requirements. The
Indians were well aware of this-they used a similar process with coca
(cocaine) leaves to activate its chemical stimulants-But the European
invaders were apparently so arrogant they hadn't bothered to ask."
Stewart Lee Allen
In the Devil's Garden
"Even when I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our
songs, our language, and eventually our souls. I know that it was a rare
home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother's cooking was with rare
exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits
of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with
aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn
was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he
grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly
change for the better."
-John Steinbeck
Book: The Last Harvest: The Genetic Gamble that Threatens to Destroy
American Agriculture …..by Paul Raebara
Book: "Fast Food Nation:The Dark Side of the All-American
Meal." By Eric Schlosser
Article: "Food Processor" by Joan Acocella,New Yorker, Aug
19-26,2002
"Half the food grown for sale worldwide rots before it goes to
market. That’s the belief of the agriculture estimators."
Denmark has more food per person than any other country.
"Food to stave off starvation is the grim and primary demand of a
misery-ridden world. Does it seem a little irrational that, while we can’t
even keep 3 billion fed today, we cheerfully plan to keep 6 to 7 billion ‘adequately
fed’ tomorrow?"
Robert Rienod & Leona Renow
Movement in the Sun
"Food for all is a necessity. Food should not be a merchandise, to
be bought and sold by those who have the money to buy. Food is a human
necessity, like water and air, and it should be available."
Pearl S. Buck
"Maybe the technologists are right; maybe they can create conditions
that will support ten billion people on planet earth, or even more…it
might be possible, for example, to farm the entire land surface and the
oceans, too. We could process sewage into bouillon cubes, eat algae,
seaweed, plankton. All of these things are theoretically possible. But…it
seems like it would be a wretched world to live in – billions of humans
packed into some sort of planetary food factory. Buckminister Fuller thought
it could be done. But the question is, Should it be done? Who would want to
live in such an ugly world?"
Edward Abbey
"For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the
degradation of charity."
Charlotte Bronte
"The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a
god."
Nietzche
COST OF BEEF
To produce one pound of steak, a steer consumes five pounds of grain and
2500 gallons of water and erodes about 35 pounds of topsoil.
Portion of land on the North American continent devoted to grazing: one
third.
Percentage of cropland in the United States planted with livestock feed:
more than 50.
Percentage of water consumed in the United States that’s consumed by
livestock: more than 50.
"What is happening in the sub-Saharan Sahel is only a dress
rehearsal for encroaching world famine. This is but the application of a
general law: When more than a certain proportion of value is produced by the
industrial mode, subsistence activities are paralyzed, equity declines, and
total satisfaction diminishes. It will not be the sporadic famine that
formerly came with drought and war, or the occasional food shortage that
could be remedied by good will and emergency shipments. The coming hunger is
a by-product of the inevitable concentration of industrialized agriculture
in rich countries and in the fertile regions of poor countries.
Paradoxically, the attempt to counter famine by further increases in
industrially efficient agriculture only widens the scope of the catastrophe
by depressing the use of marginal lands. Famine will increase until the
trend towards capital-intensive food production by the poor for the rich has
been replaced by a new kind of labor-intensive, regional, rural autonomy.
Beyond a certain level of industrial hubris, nemesis must set in, because
progress, like the broom of the sorcerer’s apprentice, can no longer be
turned off."
Ivan Illich
Medical Nemesis
"The supporters of organic farming, bio-agriculture, alternative
agriculture and optimum production are beginning to make themselves heard,
and not before time. I am convinced that the only steps that can be taken
are to explore methods o production which make better and more effective use
of renewable natural resources."
Prince Charles
"As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to
steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it
out."
Alice Walker
"If the body is not sacred, what is?"
Walt Whitman
"The world was for long divided into three major empires,
of roughly equal size, based on the three main staple foods, wheat, rice and
maize. But what separated people even more was the sauce of spice they added:
olive oil in the Mediterranean, soya in China, chili in Mexico, butter in
northern Europe, a whole variety of aromas in India. The Russians rioted in the
1840s when the government tried to persuade them to grow potatoes; being used to
living mainly on rye bread, they suspected a plot to turn them into slaves and
force a new religion on them; but within fifty years they were in love with
potatoes. The explanation is that they added the same sourness-kislotu-which
had always given savor to their food, and which was what they were ultimately
addicted to. Every people puts its own scent on its food, and it accepts change
only if it can conceal the change from itself, by smothering each novelty in its
scent. Optimism about change, whether in politics, economics or culture, is only
possible if this premise is accepted."
Theodore Zeldin
An Intimate History of Humanity
See: "Terminator Technology…The Killing Fields of the
Future?" by Martha L.Crouch
www.bio.indiania.edu/people/terminator.html
See: "Victims of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease" Le Monde
See: "No Credit to Politicians" by Reinhard Wandtner,Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung Nov 27,2000
"Rarely have the experts looked more helpless, and rarely have
politicians been so scorned by the public."
"No plant is licensed to dispose of confirmed BSE-infected material
in the republic. In July last year, government scientists said arrangements
for disposal, particularly burial of BSE-infected cattle, were
unsatisfactory. The latest solution-putting BSE carcasses in fridges-is not
ideal. It still does not get rid of the material. As with clinical waste, it
is not appropriate for it to be used for landfill or recycled. Exporting
such waste is an Irish solution to an Irish problem and not sustainable. The
ultimate solution is thermal treatment with an incinerator shown to operate
to the highest standards, as exists in many countries and within the Irish
industry."
Patrick Wall The Irish Times, Dublin, Nov 29,
The Green-back Revolution
by Seth Shulman
“Bona
Fide or not, concerns about the safety of genetically modified crops have been
grabbing headlines. But a far bigger story looms in agricultural biotechnology:
that of an industry choking on its own patent claims. For a powerful example,
consider recent patent activity at Monsanto.
First, the company won a patent-number 6,174,724 for those keeping
score-that covers a seminal technology in transgenic plant research: the use of
antibiotic-resistant genes as markers. It works like this: when researchers want
to insert new genes into plant cells, say to create a drought-tolerant variety,
they couple these ingoing genes with such a genetic marker. By then exposing the
target cells to antibiotics to see if they die (they don’t if things got to
the right place), scientists can easily test whether the gene transfer was a
success. There is probably no one in transgenic plant research who doesn’t
make use of this technique. But now, thanks to the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office’s woeful ineptitude, they will all have to beg permission from Monsanto
to use this fundamental technology, not mention pay an royalties the firm sets.
Amazingly, however, an even worse intellectual-property nightmare is
brewing. A pending Monsanto patent claims exclusive rights to a pivotal, widely
used germ called Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This was the very first
Trojan horse that scientists employed to sneak foreign genes into plants way
back in 1983. And if Monsanto wins exclusive control over it, the field will be
rocked even harder.
The real tragedy here is that both these patents (one
granted, one pending) would confer monopolies on technologies that fall way too
far upstream of the market to deserve patent protection. As many scholars have
noted, patents are supposed to be a compact between the public and the inventor:
in exchange for allowing the inventor a limited monopoly, the public gets access
to a new product. But in these cases, there is no new product. Instead, Monsanto
has essentially grabbed a piece of the ag biotech “info structure”-claiming
exclusive rights to a technological technique that every one in the field needs
to compete.
The problem is even worse in the Agrobacterium case. This patent
was filled nearly two decades ago but has been tied up in a purgatory called
“interference.” With four competing research teams claiming to have invented
essentially the same thing, the torturous case has already taken a mind numbing 18 years to adjudicate, with, not one, but two administrative-law judges
retiring during the process!
Thankfully , new rules will prevent the worst excesses of such situations
by starting the clock ticking on a patent’s life when an application is filed.
But under the rules operating in this case (and all pre-1995 filings), the clock
doesn’t start until a patent is granted. Which means that Monsanto is poised
to walk away with a spanking-new 17-year monopoly on a technology that has long
since become indispensable.
Which leads me to another gripe: the private capture of public
investment. Several teams that developed this powerful technology included
academic researchers operating partly on government grants. In a collegial
spirit, these scientists freely passed valuable findings to Monsanto, which is
now turning them into an exclusive claim.
The full story is chronicled with great insight by Daniel Charles in Lords
of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money and the Future of Food. The book has a
lot more on its mind that Agrobacterium tumefaciens, , as Charles
examines the outsized ambitions that characterize the whole ag biotech industry.
But to my eye, if Monsanto succeeds in patenting the use of this germ, it will
go down as a classic tale of a collaborative scientific endeavor perverted by a
capricious winner-take-all patent system.
The problems extend far beyond two bad patents. In fact, so many overly
broad patents have issue in agricultural biotechnology that the entire field
will likely suffer. With tremendous consolidation in recent years, warring
fiefdoms of technological know-how have emerged. Firms like Monsanto use their
patents to squelch competitors and leverage control of technology in the
pipeline. Researchers are becoming so hamstrung by proprietary claims to key
conceptual tools-sometimes shut out from using them entirely-that it is becoming
ever harder to bring new inventions to market.
This is bad enough in the commercial sector. But the tangle of exclusive
claims on basic research is also smothering public-sector researchers who, just
a generation ago, launched the Green Revolution to bring high yield crop
varieties to the famine-plagued developing world. That revolution was spawned
not only by new technology but by a commitment to use new seed varieties as
building blocks to breed even better varieties in the future. With proprietary
claims like Monsanto’s, we’re tilling a far less fertile field. Maybe we
should call it the Greenback Revolution."
