Slaughterhouses and violent crime -more reason to be vege

About three weeks ago at a staff "Christmas" do one of my colleagues -having observed my vegetarian option and exercised a modicum of curiosity about it, confessed to considering becoming vegetarian having come across research showing a link between factory-slaughterhouses and crimes involving lack of empathy in communities surrounding them. It has stayed in my mind and so I decided to do a web search on the matter
Perhaps the quickest and fullest way in is this article reporting the research: Probing the link between slaughterhouses and violent crime | Toronto Star. The basic finding is this:

Criminology professor Amy Fitzgerald says statistics show the link between slaughterhouses and brutal crime is empirical fact.

It seems that the correlation is rock solid. However, as often, the interpretation needs more work.Mainly the interpretive issue is whether working in slaughter houses causes an increase in the categories of crime studied, or whether the work itself attracts the kind of people most disposed to such crimes. The latter seems to me to be less likely given an aspect of the research itself:

“Some residents started to recognize that the crime rates were going up and started complaining, and the slaughterhouse companies were quick to blame the immigrant labour pool they were relying on,” Fitzgerald says. She found that abattoirs still seemed to raise the crime numbers when she controlled for these factors.

My suspicion is also that, taking into account framing and priming, there is a plausibility to work involving high levels of desensitisation to suffering tending to form people more likely to commit crimes where a lack of empathy is likely to be a significant factor. The desensitisation issue is problematised in the article:

"the correlation was not as strong for smaller farms where animals were killed. " Though I actually predicted that when I began to read the article - "“It seems like there’s something about the industrialization process,” says Fitzgerald. “you have people who are actually responsible for slaughtering thousands of animals a day.”

My reason for not eating meat is largely about environmental impact and sustainability: not eating meat reduces ones carbon footprint and there is not enough land to feed meat to the world's population at western rates of consumption. I can however, as something of a peace activist, begin to feel this reason gaining credibility for me.

Turning vegetarian won't stop hunger -but it'll help

A worthwhile article from priyamvada Gopal -whom I'd not heard of before. I liked her sensitivity borne of her Indian background to the way that diet can be used oppressively and belligerently and so she is right to be wary of diet-based moral highground campaigns: we have probably all encountered food fascists. I hope I'm not one of them, but when people ask me why I'm vegetarian I try to convey something of what Ms Gopal says:

...a report from leading scientists warning that catastrophic food shortages can only be avoided if the world switches to a mainly vegetarian diet in the next 40 years. With many regions like the Sahel in Africa already facing near-famine conditions, 2 billion people already malnourished, and an estimated 2 billion increase in the world population by 2050, a global plant-based diet seems not just desirable but inevitable.

And so she does categorically state that:

 there are strong environmental and health reasons to reduce our dependence on animal farming and for the better-off to drastically cut meat and dairy consumption,

And it is hard to see how that implication can be avoided. The economic power of the global north pull resources away from the economically disadvantaged and this costs lives and health. I find it hard to consider eating meat, knowing that by doing so I'd be contributing to a 'supply system' which is skewed to starve the poor to enable us to eat something that is, ironically, killing 'us' through overconsumption.

But she is right when she goes on to say:

we must resist the temptation to abstractly denote a universal vegetarian lifestyle as the sole or simple answer

Because in an interconnected system it is not as simple as that: do my micro decisions really make a difference? Would a 'much-less-meat' culture guarantee that the resources released actually were re-allocated back to the poor? -or would 'we' find further ways to denude the two thirds world of their daily bread? That last couple of questions really points to the necessity to accompany reducing or eliminating meat from our collective diets by political action to address the accumulation of economic power systematically impoverishing the less powerful and already-poor. As Gopal says "the inequitable commandeering of global resources". And then she expresses well what I have just tried to say:

Wealth concentration generates disparate purchasing power that allows richer nations as well as the better-off in every nation to consume – and waste – a disproportionate share of food, fuel, water and other resources. Arable land itself is put towards profit through speculation, mining and logging, rather than feeding people.

And whether I can make a difference: well, in a small way perhaps, but mostly by encouraging others to reduce or eliminate consumption of meat. At least not eating meat is an everyday way to make a contribution to the solution -however indirect and fraught that is in a complex obliquitous world and it is a way that complements -is even an icon and index of- political effort on behalf of the global poor.
So, while I take issue with her article's title: Turning vegetarian will not solve the food crisis because it looks a bit like she's discounting it and offering comfort to the meat-addicted or insouciant. I do however, agree very much with her main thesis:

The excessive consumption of animal products clearly poses an imminent danger to both planet and human existence. But addressing this cannot take the form of a coercive herbivorous moralism. We need a comprehensive reordering of the global economy and our priorities as human beings to end the limitless scandal that is widespread hunger.

I would have to add, as I have written in my book Praying the Pattern, those of us who regularly prayer "Give us today our daily" bread, must recognise that the normal means that God uses to answer that for those of us in the West are mis-serving and so preventing the provision of daily bread for many in the world. How can we pray 'give us our daily bread' without recognising that 'us' includes all who look to God? And so some of us praying it routinely find that this petition is answered inadequately. And, then, how can we recognise that without beginning to do something to try to redress the balance and enable that prayer to be answered for them as well as us.

Veggi tables turned

Someone is wrong on the internet! ;) In this case
Twitter / Search - #analogy: "Vegeterians are to vegans what agnostics are to atheists"
Sounds plausible at first, doesn't it? But that plausibility os built on sand: it presupposes that vegetarians are in it for animal rights and if that's the aim then one should go the full monte. However, quite a lot of us are in it because we believe the ecological footprint of meat production is too high and certainly can't allow 7 billion people to consume meat at the current western rate -we're, as a society over consuming and using our economic muscle and unfair economic structures to sustain it. However, that reason for vegetarianism wouldn't rule out some meat-eating in other conditions and some locavores who do eat meat, might use the same or similar reasoning.

Research says: eat less meat; grow healthier

The research indicates that a more vegetable based diet is healthier for us. The so-called 'Jesus diet' which is basically 1st century palestinian peasant fare would have only had meat once a week maybe a bit more if the there were leftovers and maybe we should take a leaf out of that garden (geddit?).  The research says:

vegetarians had lower triglycerides, glucose levels, blood pressure, waist circumference, and body mass index (BMI). Semi-vegetarians also had a significantly lower BMI and waist circumference compared to those who ate meat more regularly.

I suspect, but the report doesn't say, that the issue is animal fats: if I'm right that means not substituting full-fat cheese for meat, for example ... so something more vegan as well.

So, not only is eating less meat better for the planet (less cattle etc, less resource use) and the food reserves of the world (feed less domestic animals, feed more humans) but it's actually healthier for us.
You know it makes sense; come on people; how can eating less meat NOT be the Christian thing to do?

'Cannibal cafe' in Berlin = a vegetarian campaign

You may have heard of this and though various things. It would certainly make for an interesting ethical discussion. It now turns out it was a ploy by a German vegetarian group (Vebu):

"Vebu wants to draw attention to all of us who are affected by the worldwide consumption of meat,'

And the reason for doing this is something that we should all, indeed, consider:

It pointed out that every 3.6 seconds somebody dies in the world due to undernourishment, while the majority of grain production is used for the feeding of farm animals."

As I keep saying: the world can't sustain our western meat addiction. Reduce or remove meat from your diet!
'Cannibal cafe' in Berlin a vegetarian campaign hoax | World news | The Guardian

By 2020, 80% of men will be overweight

Right: here's a series of snippets: "Eight out of 10 men and almost seven in 10 women will be overweight or obese by 2020, ... the incidence of diabetes, stroke and heart disease will dramatically increase, ... "We are being overwhelmed by the effects of today's 'obesogenic' environment, with its abundance of energy-dense food and sedentary lifestyles.""

I think that there are a couple of things arise from this: what is the actuarial effect of this? With regard to pensions, we've been assuming a continued increased longevity; but surely these figures put that in question. The irony would be that we stop killing ourselves from smoking, overwork etc only to do it by overindulgence.

The other thing that I muse over in the face of these figures is that our meat intake is part of the issue. And I'm not saying you can't be vegetarian and obese but in changing we are likely to be able to build in more healthy choices and to be eating more stuff that is good for us anyhow...

Just thinking out loud really ...

By 2020, 80% of men will be overweight, study shows | Society | guardian.co.uk:

Cut the Cow, pass on the pork, leave the lamb ...

Christmas, as you might imagine, can be a testing time for vegetarians. All that ostentatious consumption of meat along with the mental picture it conjures up of mass-slaughter and factory-farm conditions for the vast majority of hapless victims. It is more particularly testing for those of us who are vegetarian for reasons of environmental impact and planetary justice. We don't have the fairly absolute inner prohibitions in place that our animal-welfare sibling-vegetarians and vegans have. We are merely 'tactically' vegetarian; that is we are not refraining from meat because we think that eating flesh is simply wrong. On the contrary we think that there may be a time for some meat-eating if the world were not so screwed up. So our difficulty is the treacherous sense that we could eat some meat, it's a special occasion, and it does look so nice, and everyone is enjoying it so, and just one little bit wouldn't hurt...

But of course, that would be the slippery slope to rejoining the overconsumption that is now normal in the global-North /West. I've been there and got the t-shirt. You see, I became vegetarian when I was about 22, mostly because I was convinced by Ron Sider's position in Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Basically Sider pointed out that in a world where many died of hunger and malnutrition, it was scandalous that we made meat a regular part of our diet given that it was so expensive, in resource terms to produce. His figures were (if memory serves me aright) that it took roughly 8 units of vegetable protein to produce one unit of beef, 6 for lamb or mutton and 4 for poultry. Our mouthfuls of meat were taking the bread from the mouths of the global poor, as we could outbid them to feed our livestock..

Later on, I got fed up of the way that my diet seemed to inconvenience people in my parish; so I decided I'd eat meat from time to time mainly to not put others out. (It takes a re-vamping of the culinary imagination to be able to menu in vegetarian and a lot of people were clearly flummoxed when their invitation to a meal became a bit more of a drama than they had anticipated). The problem was 'occasionally' slipped into 'regularly' and before long the idea of being a lower meat-consumption body was away with the fairies. So a few years later, I realised what had happened, prompted partly by the keeping company with vegans and vegetarians and partly by my daughter's dislike of most meat, and I re-became vegetarian. It was good, also, to return to the major reason and renounce meat for the ecological footprint reasons.

These reasons are well-stated by Philip Sampson in a recently-published article in Third Way (December 2009, in fact). Let me quote some of his pithy summaries of the argument.

Industrial meat production is a profligate consumer of grain and water. One kilogram of beef requires 16 kilograms of feed and the same volume of water as 200 kilograms of potatoes. Worse, more than one third of the world's grain harvest is fed to livestock, and two thirds of cattle food in the industrial world is imported from countries where there is a shortage of grain. ...

Current meat consumption in the UK requires six times more land than we have available. We therefore import feed, and fatten animals on other people's land. Cattle grazing and animal feed are the main drivers of deforestation worldwide. ...

The livestock industry generates some 18 per cent of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Reducing meat consumption is the most effective single thing a family can do to combat global warming. ...
Our abuse of animals is certainly unsustainable, and it would be foolish to continue a pattern of consumption that robs our children.

There you have it: these seem to me to be huge reasons to reduce, if not eliminate, meat from our diets. You may as well start and get in practice now because when peak oil hits and carbon trading effects kick in, we're going to notice quite big hikes in price of meat and of products which hiddenly rely on meat production. It is a matter of justice for the globally-marginal and precarious. It is a matter of creation care for the beleaguered ecosystem that God has let us have in trust for future generations and the dignity and beauty of what it has become.

Lord when did we see you hungry and fed you? ... When you forewent meat and helped to feed the hungry, you did it to me.

Lord, when did we see you naked and clothed you? ... When you ate only vegetables, you saved forest from the plough; then you clothed me in the verdancy of the planet.

In as far as you did this for one of these little ones and for my creation, you did it to me.

Less meat -better planet - better heart

Eating less meat helps the planet – and your heart - environment - 25 November 2009 - New Scientist: "explored the livestock industry's potential to help the UK halve its carbon emissions by 2030, relative to 1990 levels, and the knock-on effect on the nation's health.

They found that the industry could slash its emissions, but only if the livestock the UK produces, and the meat the nation consumes, drops by 30 per cent. Farms must also optimise their energy efficiency by, for example, capturing carbon in manure.

The health pay-off would be considerable: 18,000 fewer people would die prematurely in the UK each year from heart attacks – a reduction of 17 per cent – as they would eat less of the saturated fats found in meat."

Signs of the flesh

'Flexitarian' may be taking over from 'piscetarian' but what's most interesting is the move towards less meat eating. Come on Christians.... BBC NEWS | Magazine | The rise of the non-veggie vegetarian: "Mintel categorises 23% of the population as meat-reducers, people attempting to eat less meat, probably mainly for health reasons. Another factor is climate change - livestock rearing produces methane, which is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in global warming terms, according to Lord Stern. It identifies 10% as meat-avoiders, people who plan to eat little or no meat but sometimes lapse, and who might well accept the ethical basis of vegetarianism.

'More than a quarter of people say they eat less meat than they did five years ago. There is a shifting change in the diet,' says Ms Gellatley. 'A third of our membership are meat reducers.'"

Eat more plants - environment will like it

Every so often I post stuff like this and I'll continue to do so because the research keeps coming in and the arguments still stack up: if we're serious about our environmental footprints, then we should reduce or remove meat in our diet. This time it's from the New Scientist: "Livestock are responsible for nearly a fifth of all greenhouse emissions, from the methane produced by their guts and manure, to nitrous oxide emissions from the fertilisers used to grow feed for them. Because it takes several kilograms of plant matter to grow a kilogram of meat, producing meat and animal products such as cheese usually greatly multiplies the environmental damage done by farming. The huge amounts of land required are driving the destruction of rainforests, for instance. Even small reductions in consumption, such as making Mondays meat-free, could make a big difference."
To me the argument is simple and I don't eat meat. I find myself how much of a sore spot this is with some people I talk with (when they ask me why I don't eat meat: I don't go around making myself objectionable). It's like I've suggested they give up sex with their spouse or suggested they live on a 50p a day! "I like my meat too much"; come on folks: surely you like your grandchildren more; enough to try to save them from the second dark ages? Enough to hope that when you're old they won't be reproaching you for not doing more? "What did you do in the climate talks times dad/mum/grampa/gramma?" "Oh, I just went on living in denial and expecting other people to make sacrifices." I hope that won't be the epitaph future generations will write for us -when they've managed to work out a way to be civilised again without cheap oil and in the thin strips of fertile land overlooking our drowned coastal cities.
Oh, and remember, this expectation of eating meat every day; it's recent, it hasn't killed anyone not to eat meat for a few days a week.
Better world: Eat more plants - environment - 18 September 2009 - New Scientist

Less meat = less climate costs

I keep pointing it out, but the evidence seems to be surfacing thick and fast. Come on people, get on board. Eating less meat could cut climate costs - environment - 10 February 2009 - New Scientist: "reducing our intake of beef and pork would lead to the creation of a huge new carbon sink, as vegetation would thrive on unused farmland. The model takes into account farmland that is used to grow extra food to make up for the lost meat, but that requires less area, so some will be abandoned. Millions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, would also be saved every year due to reduced emissions from farms."

Meat free health service?

This was always going to be an attractor of adverse comment. However the point is sound and it looks like the idea only amounts to offering more meat-free options. Which, speaking as a vegetarian who has had to spend quite a lot of time in hospitals in the last year, seems a good idea. Particularly as I was looking for options that also weren't going to act badly with my LDL cholesterol count -ie needing not to have a lot of dairy or eggs involved either. So I welcome this and invite readers to take to heart an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint. I must say, I'm also amazed by how addicted to meat so many of my contemporaries seem to be: the thought of not having meat even for a few days seems to terrify.

suggestion that hospitals could cut carbon emissions from food and drink by offering fewer meat and dairy products. Last year, the United Nations climate chief, Rajendra Pachauri, provoked a global debate when he said having a meat-free day every week was the biggest single contribution people could make to curbing climate change in their personal lives, because of the chemicals sprayed on feed crops and the methane emitted by cattle and sheep. Last week, the German federal environment agency went further, advising people to eat meat only on special occasions. Pencheon said the move would cut the relatively high carbon emissions from rearing animals and poultry, and improve health. Last year the NHS served 129m main meals, costing £312m, according to Department of Health figures. "We should not expect to see meat on every menu," said Pencheon. "We'd like higher levels of fresh food, and probably higher levels of fresh fruit and veg, and more investment in a local economy."

Feeding our livestock grass, not grain, will slow climate change ?

Further to my recent posting on meat and climate, this article makes interesting reading. The comments are worth checking out too. Here's an interesting point.Graham Harvey: Feeding our livestock grass, not grain, will slow climate change guardian.co.uk: "And even as Britain's pastures supplied us with healthy foods, they were taking carbon from the atmosphere and storing it away safely in organic material in the soil. Far from damaging the world's climate, grasslands help to stabilise it. There are even plants in traditional grasslands – the yellow-flowering bird's-foot trefoil is one – which reduce the methane emissions of ruminant animals."
Of course, it doesn't address the issue of land use and protein production per hectare under pasturage or arable usage, the only mitigant in that for meat production being raising livestock on land which is too marginal for grain or similar. But it is true that 'proper' field rearing is better and there are advantages to good soil-care in locking up CO2.

Meat by numbers

The Observer has an article on some numbers associated with meat; whole article here: Meat by numbers. Two of the salient numbers are: "7lb The amount of grain it takes to produce just one pound of beef.
36.4kg The amount of carbon dioxide emitted during the production of just 1kg of beef, according to a recent Japanese study. It also releases fertilising compounds equivalent to: 340 grams of sulphur dioxide and 59 grammes of phosphate. It consumes 169 megajoules of energy. In other words, one kilo of beef is responsible for the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 250 kilometres, or the energy required to light a 100 watt bulb fo 20 days."
I was also shocked to discover that consumption of meat in the UK has grow by 50% in the last 40 years. We need to stop eating so much meat people. I've said it before and I say it again; just because you like it doesn't mean it's right to eat so much. Either reduce drastically your consumption or become vegetarian. I've opted for the latter (believe me it keeps things simpler).

Another article in the Observer treats with the issue, their article quotes the UN's Dr Rajendra Pachauri who gives a less drastic piece of advice: "People should have one meat-free day a week if they want to make a personal and effective sacrifice that would help tackle climate change, "
Also note this:

Compassion in World Farming, ... has calculated that if the average UK household halved meat consumption that would cut emissions more than if car use was cut in half. ... [and the Climate Research Network report said that] eating some meat was good for the planet because some habitats benefited from grazing. ... vegetarian diets that included lots of milk, butter and cheese would probably not noticeably reduce emissions because dairy cows are a major source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas released through flatulence.

The Pleasures of the Flesh

Like George Monbiot, I almost feel weary of saying this, but I really do feel it's urgent to say it, because clearly a lot of us are in flesh-addiction denial. The following quote is from The Pleasures of the Flesh � Celsias and says: "there is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer. While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals(9). This could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat."

Here are the comparisons, and later on the calculation is that we should eat no more than 30% of our present meat consumption in order to have a sustainable diet in flesh terms.

a vegan diet grown by means of conventional agriculture would require only 3m hectares of arable land (around half the current total)(13). Even if we reduced our consumption of meat by half, a mixed farming system would need 4.4m hectares of arable fields and 6.4 million hectares of pasture.

We'll save the planet only if we're forced to

I suspect he is right. 'He' being Johan Hari, writer of this Indy article: Johann Hari: We'll save the planet only if we're forced to - Johann Hari, Commentators - Independent.co.uk. I like the parenthetical comment at the end of the quote, here.

"In reality, dispersed consumer choices are not going to keep the climate this side of a disastrous temperature rise. The only way that can ever happen is by governments legislating to force us all – green and anti-green – to shift towards cleaner behaviour. Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily. It is not enough for you to change your bulbs. Everyone has to change their bulbs. It is not enough for you to eat less meat. Everyone has to eat less meat. It is not enough for you to fly less. Everyone has to fly less. (And yes, I hate these facts as much as you do. But I will hate the reality of runaway global warming even more.)"

I'm also interested to note that he makes the case for less meat-eating...

Our meat addiction is raising our carbon footprint

It really is a bit frustrating: one of the single most effective lifestyle changes that could be made to reduce our carbon footprints would be to eats no or at least much less meat (I still recommend the Jesus diet!). So let's go over it again, this time in words from Microclesia.

The Japanese National Institute of Livestock Science estimates that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.
...
It gets even more personal. Stanford professor Rose Naylor shows that roughly 800 million people suffer from malnutrition, while most of the world’s corn and soy is used to feed cattle and pigs. Depending on animal and process, up to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption. For U.S. grain-fed beef, ... By eating fewer large animals, we (1) use far less energy, (2) generate far less CO2, (3) potentially improve our health, and perhaps most importantly, (4) contribute to a more equitable and just distribution of calories into the world’s neediest communities. That, I believe, is Christ’s heart.

Quite so.

Global diet

"Do you eat meat?' asks Jo�o Meirelles Filho, a Brazilian conservationist ... 'Yes,' I reply, ... Filho surprises me with the venom of his next remark. 'Then you are responsible for the destruction of the Amazon,' he says, 'because 95 per cent of deforestation is caused by cattle ranching. I would love it if every one of your readers boycotted Brazilian beef.'"
The rest of the article is about a new fruit which could help the situation in Amazonia.

One of the company's best-selling fruit smoothies contains a small amount of pulped açai (ass-eye-ee), a berry that grows only within 25 yards of the Amazon's banks. To harvest it, the palm on which it grows does not have to be cut down; better still, it thrives in the shade of other rainforest trees such as rubber, Brazil nut, cabbage palm and miriti palm, encouraging growers to mimic nature rather than plant açai in endless regimented rows - the kind of monoculture that destroys biodiversity.

Can the discovery of new fruit used in smoothies save the rainforest? | Food monthly | The Observer:

Evidence growing to favour reduction of meat eating

While there are some benefits to having livestock in the landscape (though we could argue about those mentioned in the article), it is becoming ever clearer that, as I keep mentioning on this blog, eating less meat is something that anyone serious about world environmental and justice issues should consider very strongly and urgently. "To help consumers wade through the confusing advice, Hampton says people who want to reduce emissions should first buy local food that does not need to be transported and choose organic produce and reduce meat and dairy foods. 'A person switching from highest to lowest impact for a year can save 1-2 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent - the same annual saving as conserving £300 worth of gas on heating, [or] cutting down 5,000 miles a year in an average car, [or] avoiding one return flight to Europe,'"
It's not new: Ron Sider in Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity encourage low meat diets for Christians. It really is about time we took notice more generally.
Why eating less meat could cut global warming | Environment | The Observer:

15 Reasons to Stop Hiding from Vegetarianism

Expanding on one of the introductory statements: "Thanks to an abundance of scientific research that demonstrates the health and environmental benefits of a plant-based diet, even the federal government recommends that we consume most of our calories from grain products, vegetables and fruits" this article does what it says. Important reading if the lower ecological footprint of veggie doesn't quite convince you to cut out or at least down on the meat.
AlterNet: Health and Wellness: 15 Reasons to Stop Hiding from Vegetarianism: