The world is on the verge of a global food crisis. Economists are questioning how fair it is to use land to grow corn, etc., for the production of bio-fuel when people increasingly don't have enough to eat. Fuel is, but a lesser reason for this deep-rooted problem.

The main reason for the growing shortage of food needs to be tackled: animals specially bred and fattened to be killed for meat. If the crops fed to them were to be consumed by humans, there would be no shortage of food. As much as one-third of the approximately 2000 million tons of annual global food production is used for feeding these animals for their flesh. The feed-to-meat ratio varies depending upon species (poultry, pigs, cattle, sheep & goats) and whether produced in a developed or developing country, but on an average 4 kilograms of feed yields only 1 kilogram of meat.

Moreover, the FAO has stated that the world's livestock production is 18% more responsible for global warming than all transport emissions. It causes wide-scale land degradation, uses large quantities of the earth's increasingly scarce water resources, pollutes land, water and air, and is responsible for excessive use of energy, all of which are downright harmful to our environment.

Environmentalists are not the only ones who are showing deep concern. Emerging markets' central banks and governments are no longer ignoring rising food prices coupled with low stocks of rice and wheat (inflation and hoarding) and protests of shortages resulting in social tensions. They know that converting land produce to meat is an expensive business, the direct effect of which is a steep rise in grain prices which hits the poor most.

If those living in developed countries do not stop eating meat, and if those of developing countries (who are liable to start eating meat when their incomes rise) include it as part of their diet, they will positively be hastening mass starvation of fellow humans on this planet.

Beauty Without Cruelty (an animal rights organisation) feels that each and every one can easily help solve world hunger... by NOT eating meat, a second-hand food.

- End -

Beauty Without Cruelty -India is an international educational trust for animal rights.

BWC is a way of life which causes no creature of land, sea or air, any terror, torture or death.