Be a Vegan or Else!
By Alan Caruba (09/16/07)
To put it quite simply, unless you and everyone else becomes a vegetarian or adopts the vegan (no animal products, period!) lifestyle, the Earth is going to come to an end or you will probably die from some horrid disease.
Sound extreme? Sound just a bit nutty? Not according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) or a recent study, “Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health” by Professor Tony McMichael of the Australian National University and Dr. John Powles of the Department of Public Health and Primary Care of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
If either of these deep thinkers took a moment to contemplate the success of the human race in terms of survival and expansion, they would find that humans have twenty teeth in their mouth designed exclusively to eat meat, but only twelve for fruit and vegetables. Moreover, the human stomach is, in fact, a carnivorous organ designed primarily to digest lean meat. The small intestine, pancreas, and the liver are mainly herbivorous and designed to digest vegetables, fruits, fats and farinaceous (starch) foods. All this has been known for a very long time.
Why am I telling you this? Because for quite a while, there has been a vigorous campaign by the United Nations agency and by militant vegans to convince people that eating meat is a bad thing. The only way to respond to these “studies” and claims is to examine and debunk them.
First, however, one must ask why the FAO would foster a policy claiming that livestock is a major threat to the environment? Like the insidious Big Brother of George Orwell’s novel, “1984”, the purpose of the UN’s efforts is to exert control over every aspect of people’s lives.
Why else would an organization set up primarily to insure peace among nations create vast bureaucracies whose purpose is to advocate bogus notions such as “global warming” and then branch off with still other bureaucracies to impose restrictions based on idiotic notions such as the “precautionary principle”? Under the latter, any substance or process that might cause harm should be banned, no matter its benefit or known record of safety.
All this affords a nice living to legions of “scientists” and academics that issue reports to support ideas such as those put forth by professors McMichael and Powles. Their latest study, published in the The Lancet, a UK publication, is bound to receive the usual breathless media coverage that accompanies just about every witless environmental claim regarding the climate and every human activity.
Do you really believe that the “Worldwide average meat consumption could be realistically reduced by ten percent to reduce the already substantial impact of livestock production on greenhouse gas emissions”? Do you really believe there are “health risks posed by the rapid worldwide growth in meat consumption, both by exacerbating climate change and by directly contributing to certain diseases”?
At a time when there are more humans than ever before in recorded history, when life expectancy is being dramatically extended, when breakthroughs in genetic modification of crops to enhance both their production and the ability to increase their nutritional value, when diseases of every description are being conquered, would we ever want to return to a time when life was short, disease was rampant, and famine was the rule, not the exception?
This latest study is not about meat consumption. It is one of thousands of such specious claims that the Earth is warming dramatically due to human activity. It is one of thousands designed to alter the improving lifestyle of millions around the world who enjoy a hamburger or any other meat product, whether it be beef, lamb, chicken, or fish.
The Earth is not experiencing a rapid increase in heat. If it does increase or decrease, it will be entirely due to the actions of the Sun, the oceans, clouds, volcanoes, and the other natural factors that determine the Earth’s climate. Man is not causing the climate to change, but the climate most certainly impacts mankind.
The notion that livestock, like mankind, contribute to “global warming” is almost too ludicrous to consider, but that does not deter the FAO, the UN Environmental Programme, and countless “environmental” organizations from foisting these notions on everyone.
Like humans, each of whom exhales about two pounds of carbon dioxide daily, livestock also emit “greenhouse gases” and this is the basis for the latest study being trumpeted. However, the dominant greenhouse gas, estimated to be as much as ninety-five percent of the atmospheric layer that protects the Earth, is nothing more mysterious or threatening than water vapor.
With considerable irony, the latest “study” notes the abundance of food in the world today. If there is famine in parts of the world, it often reflects the mismanagement of agriculture by the corrupt and ignorant people who control nations that otherwise would produce sufficient food for their populations. Droughts and other natural factors contribute to famines, but food is often a weapon used against people as has been seen in Darfur, a section of Sudan where the Islamic fundamentalists in charge have been waging genocide.
Meat and the lies told about it is part of the arsenal of weapons being used to coerce and frighten people into believing that less production will “save” the Earth from the non-existent threat of “global warming” and is responsible for unidentified health threats attributed to it.
This accounts for the latest call that we all become vegetarians or vegans. It is idiotic on the face of its claims. It is a veiled attempt to further control the lives of everyone. Fight back! Have a steak tonight!
© Alan Caruba, September 2007
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