grain and legume production is wasted on feeding animals

Arguments

1. If americans were to stop eating grain fed beef altogher, the grain thus released would be enough to feed 600 million people (1968 figures)
2. "It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the over-population of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat."--Jeremy Rifkin, author of Beyond Beef, The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, and President of the Greenhouse Crisis Foundation, Washington, D.C.
3. "There can be no question that more hunger can be alleviated with a given quantity of grain by completely eliminating animals [from the food production process]. About 2,000 pounds of concentrates [grains] must be supplied to livestock in order to produce enough meat and other livestock products to support a person for a year, whereas 400 pounds of grain (corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, etc.) eaten directly will support a person for a year. Thus, a given quantity of grain eaten directly will feed 5 times as many people as it will if it is first fed to livestock and then is eaten indirectly by humans in the form of livestock products...."--M. E. Ensminger, Ph.D., internationally recognized animal agriculture specialist, former Department of Animal Science Chairman at Washington State University, currently President of Consultants-Agriservices, Clovis, California
4. An immediate and important result of the demands of modern animal farming on the resources of the planet is the apparent worldwide shortage of food and the plight of the "starving millions". Although politics and physical distribution of food are major factors in world hunger, the evidence remains clear that the vast tonnage of food fed to animals to supply the rich countries with their heavily meat based diet is given at the expense of hungry people around the world. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural organisation, the world now grows enough human edible grain to provide each person on earth with 3600 calories per day, more than 1.5 times the recommended amount in a normal diet. However, feeding millions of tonnes of grains to animals and raising billions of animals to feed humans is callously indifferent to the undernourished people in the world, whose sustenance depends on the same basics, wheat, soybeans, vitamins and materials, as the food fed to factory animals.

Objections

Nil

References for the Arguments

1. Animal Liberation, Singer
2. Old Mcdonalds Factory Farm, pp 140-141
3. Old Mcdonalds Factory Farm, pp 140-141
4. Old Mcdonalds Factory Farm, pp 140-141

References for the Objections

This article is based on a GNU FDL Vegan Wikia article: Grain_and_Legume_production_is_wasted_on_feeding_animals,_resulting_in_food_shortages_for_people

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