Animal Agriculture and Food Scarcity
In addition to the cruelty involved in breeding, confining and slaughtering animals; meat, eggs and dairy are not resource-efficient ”products”. It takes significantly more land, water, and crops to raise animals for slaughter than it does to grow crops directly for human consumption. It is impossible to grow enough animal feed in the US to meet the nation’s demand for animal products. To solve this problem, the animal agriculture industry imports grain from developing nations, leaving those communities local to the crops with barely enough to survive. A tragic example of this is the Ethiopian famine in 1984, in which people starved while the nation was growing crops to feed to European livestock, who in turn were killed themselves.
80% of children currently going hungry across the globe live in countries with food surpluses that are fed to animals for the consumption of the wealthy. All the while, millions of people in wealthy nations die from diseases of affluence caused by the same animal products that starve others. If the grain that goes into feeding livestock in the US alone were fed directly to humans, it could feed nearly 800 million people. In one way or another, the animal agriculture industry kills thinking, feeling beings, from animals in slaughterhouses, to the impoverished who starve to supply animal feed, to the very people who fund it.To learn more about animal agriculture and food scarcity click here and here
Animal Abuse = Human Abuse
Why is making the connection important?
As animal advocates, we are often met with the claim that our advocacy for animals is somehow less important because human suffering is a priority. We won’t address the hypocrisy of this claim here. However, by clearly illustrating the connection of how animal abuse also leads to human abuse, this not only counteracts this quick dismissal of animal suffering, but it can also make our message easier for others to relate to from a human rights perspective.
This is the 9th release of our new series “Animal Abuse = Human Abuse” designed to help expand the reach of our advocacy for animals to new audiences.
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