Meat the culprit in food shortage

Letter from George Jacobs, President, Vegetarian Society (Singapore)
Straits Times Forum 8 Apr 08;

I REFER to Saturday's special report, 'Food shortage causes world eating disorder'. The current food shortage results from a complex combination of causes, and meat production is one of them.

Currently, we 6.6 billion humans eat more than 50 billion of our fellow land animals annually. These other animals consume more food than the entire human population, not to mention the inputs of water, pesticides and energy involved in meat production or the huge quantity of waste products, including greenhouse gases that these creatures produce during their unnatural and short lives.

Meat eating is indeed grossly wasteful of the crops we grow and of the resources required to grow those crops. For instance, more than 10kg of plant food is required to produce just 1kg of beef. Thus, a readily available way to address our current food shortage is to reduce our meat consumption or stop eating meat entirely. Of course, this would not address the chronic food shortage in poor countries that about 800 million of our fellow humans face due to poverty.