SHANNON KELLY
Assistant Perspectives Editor
On Saturday afternoon, I watched two of my friends barbecue eight huge steaks. Mouths watering, Mat tended to the not-so-lean cuts that sizzled on the grill while Adam excitedly marinated the next batch. By the time their plates were licked clean, they had probably devoured the equivalent of one medium-sized cow. It would have been an appalling scene for any vegetarian.
Many meat-free dieters might have used this carnivorous cookout as a chance to convince the cow-killers to put down their steak knives and pick up a vegetable steamer.
They would most likely bring up points like “animals have feelings too, so we shouldn’t kill them for food” or even a simple “I just don’t like the taste.” And while they probably couldn’t convince any college athletes to barbecue tofu after a hard game, at least their arguments are believable.
But I recently heard an argument, from a vegetarian friend of mine, which tops the list of the most nonsensical reasons I’ve ever heard for why people should stop eating meat: “If less Americans eat meat, we can help end world hunger.”
He had to do it. He had to change a simple conversation about food preferences and animal rights in to a world hunger discussion.
He shared statistics similar to some I’ve read on numerous vegetarian support group web sites. The Ethical Vegetarian Alternative’s site reports that about 800 million people in the world are underfed, and 1.3 billion head of cattle, 900 million pigs, 1.8 billion sheep and goats and 14.1 billion chickens are using almost 80 percent of all arable land on our planet. My friend argued that this land should be used, instead, to grow plant food for human consumption.
So instead of eating animals, eat their food?
Later, I was feeling guilty since, after he left, I fixed beef tacos for dinner. If my friend was right, I had somehow just made the world hunger problem worse. Post-taco, I needed to figure out exactly how my dinner choice contributed to the crisis.
Later, with a little help from the Internet and the library, I found a book that helped me feel confident enough to knowledgeably challenge his assertion. Then I went back to the kitchen for a guilt-free second helping.
I came across University of Maryland professor, Julian Simon’s “The Ultimate Resource 2,” which discusses the condition of United States and the world with respect to its resources, environment and population.
The 40-chapter book discusses trends, statistics and scientific evidence to support, among other things, a much less doomed idea about the cause of world hunger. Simon shows how those facts and historical trends support that there is no food shortage in the world and that there is actually an abundance of agricultural land for growing crops.
If a lack of sufficient land and food supply isn’t causing hunger, how are people still starving to death?
Political, social and economic unrest in developing countries are the main culprits of starvation. Most corrupt and underdeveloped governments cannot and will not properly and effectively produce and distribute their food supplies.
As much as Americans want to and should take steps to help improve the world hunger problem, turning down a hamburger won’t help.
Even if America preserves more land and produces more food, underfed people in poor nations are still going to starve because of problems within their own country’s political system, not because of American gluttony.
Simon shows his claims by citing reasons for “food shortages” in countries, including China, India and Africa. China’s history, for example proves how extreme government control causes starvation. In 1960, during a communist-collective agricultural approach, 30 million people died in the worst famine in human history. Millions continued to starve until China’s agriculture became mostly private during the late 1970s. Since then, productivity has improved, and availability has increased.
My vegetarian friend is correct in saying that world hunger is a devastating problem. And while government control, along with political and social turmoil, aren’t the only reasons people are starving, they are important factors that have more to do with world hunger than American meat-lovers do. Americans are in no way responsible for the world’s starving people.
If anything, the United States sets a precedent for progress and productivity in providing, not only massive surpluses of food, but in sharing the technological advances that have saved hundreds of millions from starvation.
If people decide not to eat meat for personal reasons or because they are against slaughtering animals, hats off to them.
But if anyone ever tries to convince me to give up meat as a humanitarian relief effort, I will invite them to Adam and Mats’ next barbecue and bring Simon’s book to read out loud, while we wait for the steaks to cook.
09-29-2005