The pledge to go veg
Oct 8th, 2008 | Category: FeaturesAppealing to the heart hasn’t swayed consumers from eating meat. Wayne Idas looks at whether appealing to the wallet could be more successful.
Anyone who passed Philosophy 100 knows about the ethics of eating meat. But are there other reasons not to eat meat? Surprisingly, the answer is yes, and the reason is the global food crisis.
In the last year, food prices have risen to crisis level. The public outcry against rising food prices led to protests across the world, including one led by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
Many factors contribute to the rise in food prices. The high oil-price directly affects the food price by increasing costs. It also affects food prices indirectly by stimulating demand for alternative energy sources, such as biofuel. Suddenly, crops are worth much more in the bio-fuel industry. Food is turned into fuel, and producers are competing for the same land. The consumer watches in horror as prices rise.
There is, however, one contributing factor that ranks above the rest. UCT’s professor Don Ross explains. “The single biggest cause [of the food price rise] is people in Asia getting wealthy at an unprecedented rate,” he says. “They are suddenly able to afford middle-class life styles and they are changing their diets and particularly consuming more meat.”
It is now in a farmer’s best interest to follow the trend and produce more meat but meat production is far more costly in terms of input resources than grain production. Much of the grain that is produced and would have been used to feed people now gets used as feed for animals that require so much more.
This means more pressure on the land and less food to go around and so less supply with more demand means a higher price for all. As the largest cause of the food price crisis is an increase in wealth rather than a price shock to the system it is likely that the raised prices will not be temporary and a proactive effort will be needed to quell it. The obvious answer is for everyone to eat less meat. But is it that simple?
The head of UCT’s philosophy department, Professor David Benatar, explains that “the scale of production,” is what makes meat eating so much worse now than in the past. The advent of factory farming has exasperated the situation by industrialising the process. Environmentalists across the globe emphasise the disproportionate water usage and pollution caused by the meat industry. They look to the deforestation of the rainforest for grazing land for livestock and the methane produced by livestock as huge contributors to global warming.
Professor Ross says, “Vegetarianism would absolutely solve the problem, in the sense that the biggest source of the problem is people eating a lot of meat.” He qualifies his statement, however, revealing the cold truth. People aren’t going to end a practice that the developing world is just beginning to enjoy. Practically, he suggests “the single most important policy measure by far,would be to remove trade barriers that cause meat stock to be inefficiently raised in too many places.”
But negotiations among members of the World Trade Organization failed again on 29 July, as agreement could not be reached over the instruments developing nations may use to protect their farmers. It seems almost as hard to remove barriers to the meat trade as to achieve a worldwide turn to vegetarianism. It may indeed never happen. Perhaps it is simply in our own best interest to consume less meat; at least until subsidies to Western farmers end and trade liberalisation is achieved. After all, a vegetarian diet is simply cheaper.
Wayne Idas is a third-year PPE student.
Great article!Just another example of the detrimental effects of mindless, excessive consumption.
I ‘d like to point out that the 1st sentence of this article insults people who passed PHI100 - what they eat is something they should question by the age they had their first pet or at least by high school. People of all walks of life think about the ethics of meat-eating, from the township dweller to the foie-gras consumer; some merely condone it. As someone who spends more time on the ground talking about this topic to strangers than I do on the UCT hill, I can tell you that an astounding proportion of animal lovers have thought about the ethics of speciesism. One day, try to casually ask the cashier about it when you buy your Fry’s or your favourite animal corpse. That they express the same principles as a Philosophy graduate albeit in simpler words, does not make theirs less real. The ethics of it is in fact perhaps more of a concern to the layman than is the environmental issue around meat. Of course there is a majority that is immersed in tradition; but what reinforces the tradition or the meat-eating habits of those who do it with a heavy heart, are medical and social myths, as well as cultural factors like the braai one gets invited to every now and then.
Like you say, food prices are directly proportional to the extent of livestock farming, not only locally but globally. Food shortages in many places is simply due to the fact that the country in question is exporting its grain to a first world country. Europe for instance, imports 70% of its animal feed, mostly from countries with high levels of malnutrition. With the continuing ridiculous population growth, prices will get ridiculously high.
If one only likes animals well-roasted, going vegan is still the best thing one can do for fellow humans, the environment, one’s health and one’s wallet.
Dear The V-gan
Thank you and indeed Yolandi Klein for your comments on the piece. They are much appreciated.
I recognize you position to be pro-vegan but this response will neither argue for or against that subject as it is not the topic of the piece that is being commented on. The piece being very much one on (a part of) vegetarianism. Also I simply don’t think I’m sophisticated enough on the vegan topic; although I imagine many of the arguments would of course be similar but not all. All that I will say on the vegan subject is that it would perhaps be better to suggest vegetarianism to the meat eater and then gradually make the move to a vegan diet.
And now to the response…
Philosophy 100 is a generic term. It means anyone that has read up on or has been exposed to the issue of vegetarianism. It shouldn’t be taken literally as referring to anyone that has taken the course and cannot be taken literally as the course at UCT that explores vegetarianism is philosophy 2037 taught by the brilliant David Benatar.
To say that anyone that has passed phi 100 knows the ethics of vegetarianism is not intended to be insulting and does not preclude laymen from knowing the ethics of vegetarianism. It simply means those that passed the course should know the arguments associated with the issue. To use an analogy. A doctor knows the symptoms of appendicitis as he would/should not be a doctor without this knowledge as it is a part of the education that makes him capable of being a doctor. That does not mean a layman doesn’t know the symptoms of appendicitis as he may have suffered from it or had someone close to him suffer from it. Similarly the student that did the course should know the arguments associated with the course and that does not preclude others from knowing the arguments or even suggest that the students are more sophisticated in the arguments than those not in the class.
I would agree with you that the ethical arguments for vegetarianism are more compelling than the health, environmental and economical arguments. I agree with the Speciesism argument but it is not my favourite. Just because it’s hard to understand as a result of its counterintuitive nature. I would be more inclined to put forth animal sentience as a sufficient condition for moral consideration. Followed by the move that unjustifiable harm is not acceptable when inflicted on sentient beings.
If the ethical arguments are most compelling why then not mention them? Well the purpose of the article is not to discuss vegetarianism as a whole rather just a part thereof. This issue of the Cape Town Globalist is entitled Breaking the Bank. It is then the economic aspect of vegetarianism that the piece seeks to put forward.
Regards
Wayne