By Andrew Christie
The Earth Summit II, or more formally, the World Summit on Sustainable
Development, which just convened in South Africa, has a dirty little secret.
After many alarums and excursions, Secretary General Kofi Annan's advisory
Panel of Eminent Persons has determined that the Johannesburg Summit should
result in "strong commitments and practical steps towards achieving the
common goal of sustainable development." Following a meeting in Washington
on July 26, Annan's office said concrete action plans in five areas-water,
energy, health, agriculture, and biodiversity-are expected from the Summit.
Not said is how those plans can have any effect or meaning in at least four
of those five areas if they ignore an issue that weighs heavily on them all:
The production of meat.
The purpose of the Summit is to further Agenda 21, the action plan produced
by the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. But it must be said that 1992 was
ten long years ago, and some things were left out of Agenda 21 that have
since become items of general concern (such as, say, globalization), and
other items that were included are now looking fairly dubious.
But Agenda 21's biggest gaffe may be its single, innocuous utterance on
animal food production: "There is a need for more and better animal products."
That statement must give one pause. According to Cornell University's "China
Project," a long-term study of the relationship between health and diet, a
plant-based diet can help you avoid 80 to 90 percent of all cancers,
cardiovascular diseases, and other forms of degenerative illness. The
consumption of animals, on the other hand, is invariably linked with heart
disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, etc. Do we need more?
The "unbelievable brutality" of slaughterhouses reported by Congressman
George Brown (D-CA) of the House Agriculture Committee, wherein "slaughter
workers admit to routinely strangling, beating, scalding, skinning and
dismembering fully conscious animals," would seem to make it hard to argue
for a cruelty deficit.
Do we need more and better sources of animal waste? In 1996, U.S.factory
farms produced 1.4 billion tons of it-130 times more than humans did. A large
portion of that, more pollution than came from all industrial sources
combined, went into our rivers and streams, and maintained the 7,000-square
mile "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
Do we need more and better outbreaks of pfiesteria, the fish-killing "cell
from hell" that has been linked to runoff from chicken and hog farms and
brings on instant Alzheimer's?
Do we need more Central American and Amazonian deforestation, displacing the
Earth's primary source of oxygen for cattle ranches? More elimination of
plant species worldwide, an ongoing bio-catastrophe in which livestock
grazing is the single largest contributing factor? More Western U.S.
rangeland (currently 85 percent) destroyed by overgrazing?
The World Summit should include a plea-and a plan-for a vegan planet.
This is not a "fringe" or "lifestyle" issue. It is what needs to happen to
achieve anything remotely resembling sustainable development.
Andrew Christie writes for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, 501
Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510.
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