European Vegetarian Union

written/translated by: Georgia Blackwell

Press Releases from the EVU

OPEN LETTER to

Dr. Jacques Diouf
Director-General
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome

Bratislava/Brussels - June 2002


Meat Production Creates Misery


Dear Dr. Diouf,

the European Vegetarian Union, the umbrella for 200 European vegetarian organisations and individuals, takes the opportunity of the "World Food Summit: five years later" in Rome to address the problem of famines.

Today, according to the World Food Programme, one out of seven people suffer from hunger, and malnutrition is a significant factor in the deaths of 11,000 children every day, one child every eight seconds. Even though the United Nations Charter mentions food security as a fundamental human right, hundreds of millions of poor people are starving.

In contrast, rich nations invest increasingly and disproportionately in the production of meat from animals whose feed had been imported from developing countries, whose manure had polluted land, groundwater and rivers and whose appetite had brought about destruction and even desertification to huge areas, through overgrazing. Such wasteful procedures do not only put extreme pressure on the environment but lead to a lengthening of the food chain. Through the intermediary of the animal, a majority of precious nutrients from grain and leguminous plants are turned into manure and refuse. However, the growing of high-quality vegetable products for human consumption could yield many times the amount of food, on the same area of land and at much lower cost.

Already the World Food Summit in Rome in 1996 aimed at reducing, by the year 2015, the number of hungry people worldwide to 415 million. However, in your World Food Day Message of October 2001, you had to admit that: ".. sadly, at the dawn of the third millennium, we are still far from ensuring that all people on the planet have enough to eat, when and where they need it."

As a solution for this problem you suggested some months later in Nicosia that European countries should assist by technology transfer, also to be made available to livestock farmers in developing countries.

Dear Dr. Diouf, the latest techniques for livestock factory farming are no safe export items! After all, in the last decade Europeans have experienced several crises of traumatic significance which are by no means over and which have demonstrated very clearly that real food safety stands for less meat production instead of more.

That is why the European Vegetarian Union promotes the vegetarian way: healthy, non-genetically contaminated plant food for people, produced by sustainable agricultural methods, respecting the needs and traditions of the local population, acceptable to followers of all religions and adaptable to specific environmental particularities, prevailing climatic conditions and regional biodiversity.

We call upon you: Please help people helping themselves by growing crops for their own consumption - and not for feeding slaughter animals while their children are starving.

Sincerely,


Dr. Igor Bukovský, President
Herma Caelen, Hon. Secretary General
European Vegetarian Union - Secretariat
e-mail
website: www.european-vegetarian.org

 

© European Vegetarian Union - Contact form