A case against meat
> Australian philanthropist Philip Wollen’s landmark speech in advocating keeping animals off the menu is revisited here
our oceans with acidic, hypoxic dead zones ... by 2048, all our fisheries will be dead”.
Wollen also denounced the billions of animals humanity has killed, adding that “10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one species”.
He said: “We are now facing the sixth mass extinction in cosmological history. If any other organism did this, a biologist would call it a virus.”
He added that the world has changed. “Animal rights is now the greatest social justice issue since the abolition of slavery.”
He lauded the fact that there are over 600 million vegetarians in the world. “That is bigger than the US, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia combined!
“If we [vegetarians] were one nation, we would be bigger than the 27 countries in the European Union.
“Despite this massive footprint, we are still drowned out by the raucous huntin’, shootin’, killin’ cartels who believe that violence is the answer.”
Wollen said that millions today are dying from hunger and malnutrition, and he believed that “cutting meat by just 10% will feed 100 million people and eliminating meat will end starvation forever”.
He stated: “If everyone ate a Western diet, we would need two planet Earths to feed them. We only have one. And she is dying. Greenhouse gas from livestock is 50% more than transport planes, trains, trucks, cars, and ships.
“Poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? …
“Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent?
“The earth can produce enough for everyone’s need. But not enough for everyone’s greed.”
His solution: stop buying meat.
Wollen believed that if we stop eating meat, the farmers will be the ones with the most to gain.
“Farming won’t end. It would boom. Only the product line would change.”
He also stated that health insurance premiums would plummet. On this note, he threw a challenge to meat advocates to name one disease caused by a vegetarian diet while meat has been found to cause a wide range of cancers and heart disease.
He concluded: “Animals are not just other species. They are other nations. And we murder them at our peril. The peace map is drawn on a menu.
“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we wouldn’t need this debate. I believe another world is possible ... Let’s get the animals off the menu and out of these torture chambers.”