Can Vegetarianism Help Reduce Terrorism?
Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D.

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are
horrific acts of dehumanization and failure to recognize the sanctity
of human lives, and visible symbols of an increasingly irrational
world. There is never any justification for acts of terror against
innocent civilians. We join all people of goodwill in expressing our
shock, outrage and sadness at these unspeakable acts of terror, and
our hearts, condolences, and prayers go out to all those affected.

These barbaric acts changed the world in countless ways. Steps must of
course be taken quickly to defend against additional terrorism and to
punish those who plan and carry out these crimes against humanity.

In this context, it might be thought that other considerations, such
as dietary choices, are inappropriate and even offensive. However, it
is essential that these senseless acts of terrorism not further impede
the already fragile global efforts to cooperate in addressing the
world's pressing social, economic, and environmental threats. While
there are no simple solutions to terrorism, perhaps we can look beyond
the horror and productively to utilize our current feelings of
vulnerability and sadness.

Although seldom discussed, animal-based diets and agriculture
constitute what Jeremy Rifkin called "cold evil," a form of indirect,
unconscious terrorism, which may also make future terrorism more
likely. For a safer, more stable and sustainable world, it is
essential that, along with other steps to defend against evil and
irrational acts of terror, the effects of the mass production and
widespread consumption of animal products be considered.

In 1992, over 1,670 scientists, including 104 Nobel laureates – a
majority of the living recipients of the Prizes in the sciences –
signed a "World Scientists' Warning To Humanity." Their introduction
states: Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course.
Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the
environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our
current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for
human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the
living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that
we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the
collision our present course will bring about.

The scientists' analysis discussed threats to the atmosphere, rivers
andstreams, oceans, soil, living species, and forests. Their warning:

"We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific
community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change
in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if
vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet
is not to be irretrievably mutilated."

Many of the problems that the scientists are warning about, including
hunger, water shortages, demand for sufficient energy,
desertification, global climate change, and a culture of violence, are
already having major negative effects and also have the potential of
resulting in future acts of terrorism. Fortunately, these problems can
be substantially alleviated through a shift to plant-based diets:

* The magnitude of world hunger is staggering: More than a billion
people, over one out of 6 people in the world, are chronically hungry
or suffer from malnutrition. Children are particularly victimized by
malnutrition. Throughout the world, over 12 million children under the
age of 5 die every year -- about 34,000 each day -- from diseases
brought on or complicated by malnutrition. Each year, almost 8 million
children die before their first birthday, largely due to malnutrition.
Malnourishment also causes listlessness and reduced capacity for
learning and work, thus perpetuating the legacy of poverty.

* Numerous factors, including rapidly increasing world population and
affluence, environmental strains, climate changes, and significant
decreases in clean water, arable land, fish catches, and land
productivity all threaten the world's food security. Providing enough
food for the world's rapidly increasing population will be a critical
issue for many decades.

* Extensive hunger and malnutrition in so many parts of the world make
rebellion and violence more likely. Professor Georg Borgstrom,
international expert on food science, fears that "the rich world is on
a direct collision course with the poor of the world... We cannot
survive behind our Maginot line of missiles and bombs. Unless the
problem of global hunger is fully addressed soon, the outlook for
global stability is very poor.

Can a shift to vegetarian diets make a difference with regard to world
hunger? Consider these statistics:

* It takes about 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of edible
beef from animals raised in feedlots. Over 70 percent of the grain
produced in the United States and over one-third of the world's grain
production is fed to animals destined for slaughter. If Americans
reduced their beef consumption by 10 percent, it would free up enough
grain to feed all of the world's people who annually die of hunger and
related diseases. According to the Council for Agricultural Science
and Technology, an Iowa-based non-profit research group, the grain fed
to animals to produce meat, milk, and eggs could feed five times the
number of people that it presently does if it were consumed directly
by humans.

* Land that grows potatoes, rice and other vegetables can support
about 20 times as many people as land that produces grain-fed beef.
Feeding grain to livestock wastes 90% of the protein, almost 100% of
the carbohydrates, and 100% of the fiber of the grain. While grains
are a rich source of fiber, animal products have no fiber at all. This
evidence indicates that the food being fed to animals in the affluent
nations could, if properly distributed, end both hunger and
malnutrition throughout the world.

Unfortunately, the world is moving increasingly to animal- based diets
as people in nations that have been becoming more affluent, such as
China, India, and Japan, move up the food chain. Because of a shift
toward meat from grain-fed animals, China shifted in 1995 from a grain
exporter to a major grain importer. If this trend continues, it will
have very serious implications for future food security.

* Due to heavy demand for water, there are serious shortages in about
80 countries (including Israel) which contain 40 percent of the
world's population. According to a report released recently by
Population Action International, over the next 25 years, the number of
people facing chronic or severe water shortages could increase from
505 million to more than 3 billion. The report said water shortages
would be worst in the Middle East and much of Africa. Globally, 2
billion people live in areas with chronic water shortages. A
combination of population growth, drought, desertification, waste of
water, and global warming is causing a serious water shortage in China
that experts say could induce environmental and political crises.
Officials are blaming drought for a 9.3 percent drop in the summer
grain yield, and water rationing has been imposed on residents and
industries in nearly 100 cities.

Pollution of lakes, rivers, and groundwater further limits supplies of
usable water. In the past few decades, industrialization, population
growth, and the heavy use of chemical fertilizers have doubled the
amount of nitrogen in circulation, contributing to environmental
problems worldwide and possibly to human health problems like cancer
and memory failure. Hardest hit are coastal bays and oceans -- deadly
algae blooms are cropping up from Finnish beaches to Hong Kong
harbors, massive unexpected fish kills are occurring from aryland's
Chesapeake Bay to Russia's Black Sea, and coral reefs are in decline
around the globe.

Once again, a shift toward vegetarianism can make a significant
difference. The standard diet of a meat-eater in the United States
requires 4,200 gallons of water per day (for animals' drinking water,
irrigation of crops, meat processing, washing, cooking, etc.) A person
on a purely vegetarian (vegan) diet requires only 300 gallons per day.
Animal agriculture is the major consumer of water in the U.S.
According to Norman Myers, author of Gaia: An Atlas of Planet
Management, irrigation, primarily to grow crops for animals, uses over
80 percent of U.S. water. The production of only one pound of edible
beef in a semi-arid area such as California requires as much as 5,200
gallons of water, as contrasted with only 25 gallons or less to
produce an edible pound of tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, or wheat.
Newsweek reported in 1988 that "the water that goes into a 1,000 pound
steer would float a (Naval) destroyer."

Mountains of manure produced by cattle raised in feedlots wash into
and pollute streams, rivers, and underground water sources. U.S.
livestock produce an astounding 1.4 billion tons of manure per year
(this amount works out to almost 90,000 pounds per second!), or about
130 times the amount excreted by the U.S. human population Food
geographer, Georg Borgstrom has estimated that American livestock
contribute five times more organic waste to the pollution of our water
than do people, and twice as much as does industry.

* About 70 percent of the world's 13.5 billion acres of agricultural
dry lands -- almost 30 percent of the Earth's total land area -- is at
risk of becoming desert. Over a billion people in 135 countries depend
on this land for food. Loss of agricultural land as well as the
destruction of other ecosystems cause an increase of migration into
cities, where increasingly crowded conditions lead to disease, hunger,
and other negative effects of poverty, including greater potential for
crime and violence.

As in every other threat considered in this article, there is a
dietary connection. Grazing animals have destroyed large areas of land
throughout the world, with overgrazing having long been a prime cause
of erosion. Over 60 percent of all U.S. rangelands are overgrazed,
with billions of tons of soil lost each year. Cattle production is a
prime contributor to every one of the causes of desertification:
overgrazing of livestock, over-cultivation of land, improper
irrigation techniques, deforestation, and prevention of reforestation.
According to mathematician Robin Hur, nearly 6 billion of the 7
billion tons of eroded soil in the United States has been lost because
of cattle and feed lot production.

* At current rates of destruction, the world's remaining rain forests
will virtually disappear by about 2031. According to a study published
in the journal Science, as little as 5 percent of the Amazon
rainforest in Brazil may remain as pristine forest by 2020.
Researchers fear that roads, new homes, logging, and oil exploration
will devastate the 1.3 million-square-mile Amazon forest, which makes
up 40 percent of the Earth's remaining tropical rainforest.

Animal-based diets and agriculture again plays a major role in
rainforest destruction. Largely to turn beef into fast-food hamburgers
for export to the U.S., the earth's tropical rain forests are being
bulldozed at a rate of a football field per second. Each imported
quarter-pound fast-food hamburger patty requires the destruction of 55
square feet of tropical forest for grazing. Half of the rainforests
are already gone forever and at current rates of destruction the rest
will be gone by the middle of the next century. What makes this
especially ominous is that half of the world's fast disappearing
species of plants and animals reside in tropical rain forests. We are
risking the loss of species which might hold secrets for cures of
deadly diseases. Other plant species might turn out to be good sources
of nutrition. Also, the destruction of rain forests is altering the
climate and reducing rainfall, with potentially devastating effects on
the world's agriculture and habitability.

* Global climate change may be the most critical problem the world
will face in the next few decades. There is a growing scientific
consensus that we are already experiencing the effects of global
warming, and that human actions are playing a significant role. Global
average temperatures have increased about one degree Fahrenheit since
1900. This doesn't sound like much, but it is causing major changes in
our weather patterns. The warmest decade in recorded history was the
1990s. The ten warmest years on record have all occurred since 1983,
with seven of them since 1990. The global temperature in 1998 was the
warmest in recorded history.

In the year 2000, in its Third Assessment Report, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N.-sponsored
organization composed of leading climate scientists from over 100
nations, made two momentous revisions in its previous forecasts of
global warming. It estimated that by 2100, the average world
temperature could rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit, a
range significantly higher than the 1.8 to 6.3 degree rise predicted
by the IPCC in 1995. Also, the group became far more emphatic that it
is human activities, rather than natural planetary cycles, that are
"contributing substantially" to the increase, and they indicated that
they expect these human contributions will continue to grow. The IPCC
report, which runs to over 1,000 pages, was written by 123 lead
authors from many countries who drew on 516 contributing experts and
is one of the most comprehensive produced on global warming. Hence,
the conclusions of the report represent an unprecedented consensus
among hundreds of climate scientists from all over the world. This
makes their summary statement that "Projected climate changes during
the 21st century have the potential to lead to future large-scale and
possible irreversible changes in Earth systems, with "continental and
global consequences" especially ominous.

While recent increased concern about global warming is very welcome,
the many connections between typical American (and other Western)
diets and global warming have generally been overlooked. Current
modern intensive livestock agriculture and the consumption of meat
contribute greatly to the four major gases associated with the
greenhouse effect: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, and
chlorofluorocarbons.

The burning of tropical forests releases tons of carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere and eliminates the ability of these trees to absorb
carbon dioxide. Also, the highly mechanized agricultural sector uses
an enormous amount of fossil fuel to produce pesticides, chemical
fertilizer, and other agricultural resources, and this also
contributes to carbon dioxide emissions. Cattle emit methane as part
of their digestive process, as do termites who feast on the charred
remains of trees that were burned to create grazing land and land to
grow feed crops for farmed animals. The large amounts of petrochemical
fertilizers used to produce feed crops create significant quantities
of nitrous oxides. Likewise, the increased refrigeration necessary to
prevent animal products from spoiling adds chlorofluorocarbons to the
atmosphere.

In 2001 a series of brownouts (rolling blackouts) in California and
rapidly rising gasoline prices thrust the energy issue back into the
foreground. Announcing the recommendations of his energy task force
headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, President George W. Bush argued
that if America failed to act now, "this great country could face a
darker future, a future that is, unfortunately, being previewed in
rising prices at the gas pump and rolling blackouts in the great state
of California." Bush stated that "America needs an energy plan that
faces up to our energy challenges and meets them." The White House
task force?? report cited a "fundamental imbalance between supply and
demand" and depicted the potential for a very gloomy energy picture,
including high gasoline and electricity prices across much of the
country, soaring natural gas prices causing havoc with farmers and the
possibility of power blackouts in the West and Northeast. Responses to
the Bush task force energy recommendations were predictable, with
Republicans and oil, gas, and nuclear interests strongly supporting
it, and Democrats and environmentalists loudly opposing it.

Whatever methods are used to produce energy, a shift to plant-based
diets can sharply reduce demand for energy. In the United States, an
average of 10 calories of fuel energy is required for every calorie of
food energy produced; many other countries obtain 20 or more calories
of food energy per calorie of fuel energy. To produce one pound of
steak (500 calories of food energy) requires 20,000 calories of fossil
fuels, most of which is expended in producing and providing feed
crops. It requires 78 calories of fossil fuel for each calorie of
protein obtained from feedlot-produced beef, but only 2 calories of
fossil fuel to produce a calorie of protein from soybeans. Grains and
beans require only two to five percent as much fossil fuel as beef.
The energy needed to produce a pound of grain-fed beef is equivalent
to one gallon of gasoline.

* Animal-based diets and agriculture also have implications re the
possibility of the spread of anthrax and other deadly bacteria, as
well as our ability to resist these bacteria through antibiotics. The
October 2001 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reported
that three independent studies found that up to half of supermarket
meat and poultry samples were contaminated with antibiotic-resistant
bacteria that each year kill thousands and sicken millions. All this
is in spite of the implementation of the new, highly touted USDA meat
inspection program and without the workings of anyone wishing us ill.

Now, consider the opportunity that a slaughterhouse provides to a
bio-terrorist. US slaughterhouses have a very large turnover of
undocumented aliens. It would be relatively easy for a bio-terrorist
to enter the country legally or otherwise, join the slaughterhouse
staff, and slip a powerful pathogen into a vat of ground meat destined
for hamburgers or hot dogs (frequently eaten uncooked). The culprit
would be long out of the country before the contaminated product
reaches supermarket shelves and thousands of his victims begin dying.
Anyone really concerned with anthrax or other form of bio-terrorism
would be well advised to lay off meat and poultry for a while.

There are also threats to our ability to respond to diseases because
of the decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics. Over half the
antibiotics produced in the United States are routinely fed to animals
in their feed. It would be impossible to maintain healthy animals
under the cramped conditions of "factory farming" without these drugs.
Further, for reasons which are not fully understood, the antibiotics
also seem to act as "growth promoters" leading to heavier animals and
thus more weight for the market, providing even greater incentive to
administer drugs.

Unfortunately, this practice places enormous "selective pressure" on
the bacteria which inhabit these animals to develop resistance to the
antibiotics in the feed. Genes which neutralize the effects of
antibiotics arise as a result of this selective pressure (i.e., in the
presence of antibiotics, only those organisms which have the
capability of neutralizing the antibiotics will survive). These
resistant genes are easily transferred from one bacterium to another,
and they may protect germs which cause human disease from antibiotic
treatment.

There has already been a tremendous increase in antibiotic resistance
in common food poisoning bacteria like salmonella,45 but the problem
is even worse than simply the antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the
food animals themselves. Bacteria also have the capability of rapidly
transferring and spreading the antibiotic-resistant character to other
bacterial species, including those which cause other diseases.
Therefore, diseases which are not even related to food consumption may
become resistant to antibiotics, and hence a much greater threat. For
example, staphylococcus bacteria have been isolated in recent years
which are resistant to every known commercially available antibiotic.
If this organism gets into one's blood stream, the person will very
likely die.

As a result, there is a scientific consensus that the extensive use of
antibiotics to produce meat and other animal products, along with
their over-use in medicine, has increased resistance among bacteria
and jeopardized human health by causing diseases that are difficult or
impossible to cure. For example, in 1997, the World Health
Organization called for a ban on the routine use of antibiotics in
livestock feed. In 1998, the journal Science called the meat industry
"the driving force behind the development of antibiotic resistance in
certain species of bacteria that cause human disease," and later that
year, the Center for Disease Control blamed the use of antibiotics in
livestock feed for the emergence of salmonella bacteria resistant to
five different antibiotics. Joshua Lederberg, M.D., a Nobel Laureate,
stated "we're running out of bullets for dealing with a number of
these infections. Patients are dying because we no longer in many
cases have antibiotics that work."

The widespread use of antibiotics in animal feed is thus a global
threat to human health for every individual on earth. People need
prescriptions for these drugs, yet the animal industry uses them
casually. This irresponsible misuse of antibiotics is unilaterally
disarming our species from a last line of defense, and devastating
epidemics may well be the legacy of the hunger for inexpensive meat.

* Another benefit of a shift toward plant-based diets is a reduction
in the current widespread violence in the world. Presently 10 billion
animals in the US alone and 45 billion animals worldwide are cruelly
treated on "factory farms" and then slaughtered for consumption. Many
practices are particularly shocking: the force-feeding of huge amounts
of grains to ducks and geese to produce pate de foie gras; the raising
of veal calves who are taken away from their mothers almost
immediately after birth, and are kept in narrow pens, where they are
denied exercise, and fed a diet deficient in iron and other essential
nutrients; the killing of over 250 million male chicks immediately
after birth because they can't lay eggs and have not been genetically
programmed to produce much meat. There are documented studies that
violence towards animals by children is a strong predictor of violent
and criminal behavior in the adults those children grow up to be.

In view of these many negative effects of animal-based agriculture, it
is scandalous that U.S. meat conglomerates, aided by the World bank
and other international financial institutions, are promoting food
policies and trade agreements that would double world production and
consumption of meat and other animal food products in the next 20
years. Most of this expansion would take place in less developed
nations, through massive factory farming operations similar to these
currently being used in the developed world. This would have very
severe consequences for the poor countries and worldwide: more hunger,
more poverty, more pollution, more animal suffering, less
self-determination for the people in low- income nations, and less
water for everyone.

When we consider all of the negative effects of animal- based diets,
it is clear that animal-centered diets and the livestock agriculture
needed to sustain them pose tremendous threats to global survival and
increase the potential for future terrorism. (The direct negative
effects on human health of high fat, high cholesterol, low fiber
animal-based diets should also be considered.) It is not surprising
that the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) ranks the consumption of
meat and poultry as the second most harmful consumer activity
(surpassed only by the use of cars and light trucks). It is clear that
a shift toward vegetarianism is imperative to move our precious but
imperiled planet away from its present catastrophic path and to reduce
the potential for future terrorism.

"Toward a Vegan World" > wrote in message
om
> Can Vegetarianism Help Reduce Terrorism?
> Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D.
(snip)

Tell ya what; when the pathetic AR and vegan types stop terrorizing little
old ladies in mink coats and show up at Daytona Bike Week to spray paint all
the leather, *then* I'll give up meat. Fair enough?

JD

On 28-Jan-2004, "JD" > wrote:

> Tell ya what; when the pathetic AR and vegan types stop terrorizing little
> old ladies in mink coats and show up at Daytona Bike Week to spray paint
> all
> the leather, *then* I'll give up meat. Fair enough?
>
> JD

Right on. And then let the survivors follow up by doing
The 'Black Hills Rally' at Sturgis, SD.

M&M

JD wrote:

> Tell ya what; when the pathetic AR and vegan types stop terrorizing little
> old ladies in mink coats and show up at Daytona Bike Week to spray paint all
> the leather, *then* I'll give up meat. Fair enough?


Please don't feed the trolls.



Brian Rodenborn

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 14:21:51 GMT, "JD" >
wrote:

>"Toward a Vegan World" > wrote in message
. com
>> Can Vegetarianism Help Reduce Terrorism?
>> Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D.
>(snip)
>
>Tell ya what; when the pathetic AR and vegan types stop terrorizing little
>old ladies in mink coats and show up at Daytona Bike Week to spray paint all
>the leather, *then* I'll give up meat. Fair enough?

Why do the idiots keep reponsding to this shit? Everytime you do,
I hear the plink-plink of the killfiles. Including mine.

-sw

On 28 Jan 2004 05:46:23 -0800, (Toward a
Vegan World) told us all how he likes his lamb cooked:

2 racks of lamb (8 ribs each)
1/3 cup Dijon mustard
2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper

Trim racks of all visible fat. Combine remaining ingredients and mix
well. Spread mixture over lamb ans set aside (or marinate in the
refrigerator for up to 1 day). Preheat grill. Place lamb on grill over
medium high heat and sear for a couple of minutes per side, reduce
heat or move off of direct heat and continue grilling until the
internal temperature reaches 140 to 150 degrees (about 10 minutes per
side).


--
Kevin S. Wilson
Tech Writer at a University Somewhere in Idaho
"Anything, when cooked in large enough batches, will be vile."
--Dag Right-square-bracket-gren, in alt.religion.kibology

"Kevin S. Wilson" > wrote in message
...
> On 28 Jan 2004 05:46:23 -0800, (Toward a
> Vegan World) told us all how he likes his lamb cooked:
>
> 2 racks of lamb (8 ribs each)
> 1/3 cup Dijon mustard
> 2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
> 4 cloves garlic, minced
> 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
>
> Trim racks of all visible fat. Combine remaining ingredients and mix
> well. Spread mixture over lamb ans set aside (or marinate in the
> refrigerator for up to 1 day). Preheat grill. Place lamb on grill over
> medium high heat and sear for a couple of minutes per side, reduce
> heat or move off of direct heat and continue grilling until the
> internal temperature reaches 140 to 150 degrees (about 10 minutes per
> side).
>
>
> --

Widdle wambikens? Widdle cuddly wuddly furry wambikens? Just cook widdle
wambikens? And eat him? Mmmmmmmmmmm.....nummy!
Think he'll mind? Nahhhhhhhhh.

--
Fosco Gamgee Whitfurrows
and his 6" boner

"Default User" > wrote in message

> JD wrote:
>
>> Tell ya what; when the pathetic AR and vegan types stop terrorizing
>> little old ladies in mink coats and show up at Daytona Bike Week to
>> spray paint all the leather, *then* I'll give up meat. Fair enough?
>
>
> Please don't feed the trolls.
>
>
>
> Brian Rodenborn

Please don't be a 'netcop.

JD

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 21:56:09 GMT, "JD" >
wrote:

>"Default User" > wrote in message

>> JD wrote:
>>
>>> Tell ya what; when the pathetic AR and vegan types stop terrorizing
>>> little old ladies in mink coats and show up at Daytona Bike Week to
>>> spray paint all the leather, *then* I'll give up meat. Fair enough?
>>
>>
>> Please don't feed the trolls.
>>
>
>Please don't be a 'netcop.
>
Please don't overreact to a reasonable request.

--
Kevin S. Wilson
Tech Writer at a University Somewhere in Idaho
"Anything, when cooked in large enough batches, will be vile."
--Dag Right-square-bracket-gren, in alt.religion.kibology

JD wrote:

> > Please don't feed the trolls.

> Please don't be a 'netcop.



*plonk*



Brian Rodenborn

Default User wrote:
> JD wrote:
>
>>> Please don't feed the trolls.
>
>> Please don't be a 'netcop.
>
>
>
> *plonk*
>
>
>
> Brian Rodenborn

You'll be much happier that way...

BOB wrote:
>
> Default User wrote:

> > *plonk*

> You'll be much happier that way...

I already am!


Brian Rodenborn