- Nov
- 7
Feeding the Hungry Without Hurting Animals
Posted by Guest Blogger at 5:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)
We’ve all met people who, despite their other fine qualities and good works, just “don’t get it” when it comes to animals. Perhaps regarding animals as tools and resources is too deeply and culturally ingrained in them. Maybe they fear that what seems to us the logical extension of “rights” to all sentient creatures would require a disorienting upheaval in law, government, business, culture, and even religion. Or perhaps they are so distressed by the scope of suffering and injustice within human society that they feel the plight of nonhuman animals has to remain at the bottom of any agenda.
For me, the truth is that the well-being of all life is indivisible. It is possible that if the facts are presented that way to our otherwise charitable and responsible friends, they, too, might “get it.” I’m a longtime member of PETA, and I am grateful for the opportunity that PETA has given me to write this message.
Treating animals as slaves or products does not improve the human condition beyond a temporarily filled stomach and does great harm to people in the long run. But when people are starving, displaced, and hopeless, or even fighting over rapidly vanishing potable water and arable land (as news reports about Darfur prove is happening now), who can blame them for accepting whatever food is offered, even if it is the flesh of a fellow creature?
Yet raising animals for food is the surest way for humans, even well-intentioned ones, to bring on environmental disaster. Even the production and burning of dirty coal or the heedless use of gas-guzzling cars, tankers, and airplanes, as bad as they all are, do not pollute as much as raising millions of cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs.
“Producing” animals for food causes more misery for humans and the environment than anything else. “Farm” or “ranch” animals produce methane gas, which is the number one cause of pollution (will someone remind Al Gore of that?). Raising animals for food turns arable land into desert, and thus, wars are being fought over rapidly shrinking arable land and supplies of water, and ever more people die because of that conflict.
Aid agencies, like CARE and Oxfam, try with a good heart to relieve the suffering that they see (and do work that most of us have not the heart for), but they don’t seem focused on a truly sustainable strategy. Heifer International claims to help people develop a sustainable living, but how does it help people to give them livestock to raise who damage crop land and produce more animals to compete with humans for grain and water?
Far better, in my opinion, are two small charities, Vegfam and HIPPO, which have a larger and clearer sense of the dimensions of disaster that threaten the earth, humans, and nonhuman animals. Both support a plant-based diet and the liberation of animals by providing seeds, fruit trees, plants, and irrigation projects to improve living conditions for people who are trying desperately to survive on several continents.
By all means, please continue to support PETA in its great work, but when you want to make a contribution to help the most abused among our own human species, pick only those charities that are also working to end exploitation of the environment and the other sentient beings who should be allowed to share this earth with us. And tell your friends who “don’t get it” about those charities. It’s a good way to lead them to understand that the spread of compassion and good work is as interconnected as the spread of exploitation and misery. Who knows? Some of them might “get it” and become members of PETA.
-Posted by guest blogger and PETA member Frank Cullen of Edgewood, New Mexico
Posted to Money | Posted to Tags: charity, Guest Blogger, Heifer International, Oxfam
Phyllis says...
November 7th, 2008, 9:57 am
FANTASTIC! I am so glad to get this information!! I’ve been sending contributions to a feed-the-hungry charity and inclosing a note asking them not to purchase meat with it but never knowing if my donation was causing more harm than good. Thanks so much for sharing this informaion - I’m sure going to pass it along to others.
christine says...
November 8th, 2008, 11:36 am
Thank-you so much for showing the other side of humanitarian aid. I never realized the added destruction caused by simply feeding the people meat and supplying cows etc. From now on when I give I will check first with the animals and environment on my list.
teresa says...
November 11th, 2008, 3:53 am
Dear sir,
thnak you for sharing your insight into this, I write from Italy, I wonder which book you could suggest me (even in english) on this matter…
Thank you again! Teresa
Frank Cullen says...
November 11th, 2008, 10:13 am
Dear Teresa,
I think there are several useful books that explain the connection between a meat-based diet, animal exploitation, poverty and environmental degradation. One of them is John Robbins’ book “Diet for a New America” that he wrote in 1987. I think it has been translated into several languages.
Thank you, Teresa,
Frank Cullen
David says...
November 12th, 2008, 1:04 pm
Frank,
I never knew about these charities before, so I want to thank you for bringing them to our attention!
Also, I wanted to ask you:
As a future social worker, I am wondering if you are aware of any charitable organizations that, like Vegfam and HIPPO, are providing both education and charitable services to feed the homeless and/or hungry in urban settings? I am all too aware of the problems that charities who serve these populations face and it seems to me that feeding the hungry in urban areas with nutritious, environmentally sustainable food could well fill a need that is, as yet, unmet. If you are not aware of any such charities then perhaps that is my cue to take a few more business classes!
Frank Cullen says...
November 13th, 2008, 5:02 pm
Hello Teresa,
Thank you fior writing to the PETA Prime blog. Tim Enstice at PETA suggested these books as well:
“Diet for a Small Planet” by Frances Moore Lappé
“The Food Revolution” by John Robbins
“Feast or Famine: Meat Production and World Hunger” [click on http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/71230
The Case Against Meat [http://www.emagazine.com/view/?142&src]
Hope this helps you.
Frank Cullen
Frank Cullen says...
November 13th, 2008, 5:16 pm
Hi David,
You ask an important question: whether there are organizations in urban areas that provide nutritious, environmentally sustainable food to poor people in urban areas as well as education (I’m assuming education about nutrition and the connections among world hunger, animal exploitation and the degrading of the enviroment).
I recall a number of such projects over the decades, but cannot name a single current project. Hey, David, you may not only have a cue to take a few more business courses but the topic for a thesis!
Can anyone else out there in blogsville give David some current info?
Frank
Luke says...
November 16th, 2008, 9:34 pm
I also know about an organization named Food Not Bombs that feeds vegan food to the homeless on the street, I heard of it when Las Vegas enacted a law banning anything that encourages begging and it severely hurt them
David says...
November 18th, 2008, 1:38 am
Thanks Luke!
I’ll look into it.
Mike says...
November 20th, 2008, 11:53 pm
What is the difference between a vegan and a vegetarian?
Frank Cullen says...
November 22nd, 2008, 1:09 pm
Hi Mike,
There are gradations among vegetarians. Some eat eggs, milk, cheese and their by-products (they’re called lacto-ovo vegetarians) but never the flesh of animals. Some wear leather (shoes, belts), and many wear wool.
There are no such gradations among vegans. All vegans avoid any and all “products” that are the result of the exploitation and slaughter of animals, and that includes leather, silk and wool as well as eggs, milk, butter, cheese and the flesh of all animals: cattle, sheep, pigs, birds/fowl, fish and crustaceans.
Back in the day when geezers like me turned vegetarian (first) the only veggie substitutes were cans of rubbery concoctions made to resemble weiners and cutlets. Options improved by the 1960s when soy products began to become widely available and “fake leather” (urethane products like Naugehyde) was being used to make shoes, belts, bags and upholstered furniture.
By the 1960s, many of us realized that by drinking milk and eating eggs we were supporting the confinement, maternal deprivation and slaughter of calfs to produce veal and the forced laying of eggs by hens destined to be pet food once their laying capacity slackened.
Thanks to PETA, we later became aware that wooly clothing came to market only after the sheep had undergone painful cuttings and hazardous ocean travel during which many perished.
Nowadays there are so many options available to vegans that it is very easy (and far more healthful) to eat and dress cruelty-free—even if you live in the boonies, thanks to web-based marketplaces for vegan products.
Hope this didn’t come off like a rant, Mike. Thanks for thinking and asking.
Frank
Pamela says...
November 23rd, 2008, 7:23 pm
Well said! Thank you so much for your compassionate and logical essay into an ethical quagmire.
Christy says...
November 25th, 2008, 3:21 pm
I wish all the kids in schools had to read the things that Frank writes here. Then maybe they could educate their parents. You’re one smart and informative man!!!!
thanks!
John says...
November 29th, 2008, 4:03 pm
Frank,
Do you really believe a vegetarian diet is sustainable world-wide? Have you seen the abject poverty that people live in within these developing countries? A vegetarian diet is a privilege. Those of us in American and other such countries can and should be vegetarians, but a small village in the cold, mountainous regions of Tibet can’t sustain all the plants they need to live and thus RELY on a sustainable use of water buffalo or oxen. To want to stop these people from using animals at all is not only immoral, but ultimately deadly for such people.
ambika shukla says...
December 7th, 2008, 3:30 am
John,
The animals these people eat — water buffalo and oxen- are vegetarian. So if the soil can produce food for them –10times more than is needed for humans — it can certainly support a human vegetarian diet. There is no place on earth that humans cannot be vegetarian . It is our natural state of being.
John says...
December 8th, 2008, 6:18 pm
Ambika,
But they also use these animals for milk. Where else would they acquire that? Also, What should they do for protein? I just do not believe every climateon Earth, when isolated, provides the adequate nutrients from for it’s inhabitants without the use of animals in some way.
Besides, Heifer International is a very large organization. How many people, that they are helping feed, would just be left to themselves to suffer in poverty and hunger? Can VegFam really cover all the ground that Heifer does? When it comes down to it, this is about the survival people living in extraordinarily harsh conditions.
Kelsey says...
December 11th, 2008, 1:44 pm
John,
Like all other mammals, they would get milk from their mothers rather than from another species. For a list including some of the many sources that you can get protein from, please go here: http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=105.