A similar lack of concern for human life is revealed in the economic stranglehold which the developed nations have on the third world. Discriminatory import tariffs ensure that impoverished suppliers of cash crops remain that way. The crops they grow are largely high-protein fodder crops destined to feed the West’s animals.
It is a huge industry largely controlled by multinational corporations (MNCs) and it is no coincidence that the countries which produce the bulk of these fodder crops are the most impoverished – those with crushing burdens of landlessness, food insecurity and starvation-related diseases.
Published in 1980, the Brandt report attempted to chart a path to greater equality and fairer trade between nations with an emphasis on global democracy. At that time, MNCs controlled one-third of world trade. Since then their share has increased to two-thirds, helped by the privatisation of third world economies on the insistence of organisations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) was spawned by the same vested interests and whatever its claims at moderating world trade, it is part of the holy trinity of global trade control. All three organisations are essentially
dramatically reducing meat and dairy consumption is now a global necessity
instruments of the MNCs – conceived by them and acting in their interest and, hardly surprising, it is they which prosper at the expense of the world’s poor.
It is farmed animals, their feed and drugs, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and fertilisers which are largely the engines of this exploitation.
Resources sold off by poor nations and largely bought by Western companies include energy, land and water – three elements vital to expansion of the livestock industry for both grazing and fodder production. The outcome has been even greater landlessness and food insecurity amongst the world’s poorest people.
The violence which disfigures so many regions of the world is not unrelated to this destruction of the global environment and people’s essential support networks. The West’s addiction to animal protein carries much of the blame and directly contributes to starvation, disease, death and impoverishment of the world’s already most impoverished people.
German ex-chancellor Willy Brant and his eminent team were obviously deeply moved by their research and warned that ‘business as usual’ was not an option for the West. Unless fundamental concepts of justice were introduced into relationships between the rich nations of the North and poor nations of the South, they said, we would witness conflict and bloodshed on an unprecedented scale.
It has been business as usual and the Brandt team’s dire warnings appear to be coming true. A fundamental start to transforming this desperate situation would be the availability of land for the growing of crops for
10 VIV A! DIET OF DIS A S TER
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