Human rights

People have the right to food, shelter, water and safety

The right to a life free from hunger

World grain stocks are now at their lowest in 34 years, and grain consumption has been higher than grain production in the last seven of eight years. (27) Grain prices are increasing which is putting extra strain on the world’s hungry. However, people in developed nations continue to consume grain selfishly by continuing to eat meat. The more meat you eat, the more you are responsible for world hunger.

In India, people eat less than 200 kg of grain per year. Nearly all this grain is eaten directly. In contrast, in the United States each person eats around 800 kg of grain each year but of this, only 100 kg is eaten directly as bread, pasta, breakfast cereals etc while most of it is consumed indirectly by eating meat. (27)

Meat is an extremely inefficient food source, wasting vast amounts of resources to provide food that can only feed a few people. In 2007, 222 million tonnes of soybeans were produced. Of this, around 90% of the soy was fed to animals (27), whilst many communities in soy producing countries suffer from malnutrition (1). How many people could be fed with 202 million tonnes of soybeans considering the average Indian only consumes 200 kg grain per year? Over 1 billion.

We produce plenty enough crops to adequately feed the entire population of the world, yet there are 820 million malnourished people in the developing world (20). How can we justify continuing to feed so much grain to animals?

Deforestation

Forests, particularly in Latin America, are destroyed to make way for cattle grazing and to grow crops to feed animals – most of which fuels the hunger for meat in the North. When we destroy forests we not only contribute to climate change and biodiversity loss, but we also violate human rights by expelling indigenous peoples from their land and taking away their livelihoods. The destruction in these countries only benefits those in the North who enjoy their meat heavy diets, local communities only suffer.

GM crops

Increasing demand for soy is also fuelling the genetically modified crops market which also impacts human rights. Powerful multi-national corporations, such a Cargill, ADM and Bunge, grow mostly GM crops, a huge proportion of which are then fed to animals. It has been proved that GM crops require more pesticides which affects the health of local communities (14). People living near GM plantations often suffer from toxic reactions; which can, and often does, kill children.

Biofuels (aka agrofuels)

There has been a huge outcry from many environmental, social justice and human rights organisations because of the recent boom in biofuels. Oxfam, Amnesty, Greenpeace, World Rainforest Movement, Rainforest Action Network, Friends of the Earth, War on Want and many more are all demanding an end to intensively produced biofuels because it has resulted in 100 million tonnes of crops such as corn, palm and soy to be diverted from the mouths of the hungry to fuel our cars; whilst also destroying rainforests, forcing indigenous peoples from their land and polluting the local area with herbicides so poisonous that they have killed countless children who have come in to contact with them.

However, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 756 million tonnes of grain plus most of the world’s soybean crop are fed to animals. This means that the meat industry is hugely more responsible for crimes against humanity than biofuels.

Climate change is a matter of social justice

Animal agriculture is responsible for around 18% of greenhouse gases (2). The failure of developed nations to take action to reduce their contribution to climate change is a breach of human rights laws.

People around the world are already feeling the impact of climate change and it is the minority and indigenous people, those who contribute to climate change the least, that suffer the most (22). Droughts, rising water levels, the planting of biofuels and natural disasters all threaten these vulnerable communities (22). Of the 443,000 people killed and 2.5 billion affected by weather-related incidents in the last 10 years more than 98 per cent of them came from developing countries (25). Around 1 billion people are estimated to be displaced due to climate change by 2050 (24). We all have a right to food, shelter and safe water, but these basic rights are being taken away because of climate change.

But it is not just communities in developing countries who are already effected by climate change. One example is Selsey, a coastal village in the UK, that is at risk from sea level rises, storm surges and flooding (23).

Read more about the impact of the meat industry on the environment.

Health and safety for workers

Slaughtering animals, or ‘meat processing’ as the meat industry prefer to put it, is one of the most dangerous jobs there is. Of over 200 types of manufacturing jobs, meat processing is the 10th most risky (47). Because of the nature of the work and the low salary, there are often many foreign workers in abbatoirs, whose human rights are often violated.

Respect human rights. Go vegan