ANIMAL- EATING PEOPLE:
DIETARY CHOICES AND CLIMATE CHANGE
By Dr. Michael W. Fox
For all of our evolutionary past as gatherer-hunters, we ate all kinds of wild animals, from deer and horse, fish and fowl, to dogs and frogs, as many people around the world still do. The French like their frogs’ legs and horse steaks, and the Chinese and Koreans their dog cutlets. During this long evolutionary epoch of human history our biological nature was shaped by what the regional environment could provide in terms of food, some communities remaining sedentary, others moving with the seasons, migrating with the game. Animal protein was a dietary supplement and not a staple for most early communities except for those in animal-abundant forests, grasslands, the Arctic tundra (where a plant-based diet was impossible), and coastal regions where there was an abundance of sea foods.
While pre-human hominids, like our ape ancestors of today, (with the exception of the chimpanzee), were vegetarians, the first humans were omnivores. With the development of crude weapons, the ability to make fire, and to communicate verbally, the early human species was able to defend itself more effectively against people-eating animals like the Saber-toothed tiger and other large predators, and to become animal-eating people who caught and killed their own prey, and stole larger game killed by other predators whom they learned to intimidate and drive away from their kill. Some scientists theorize that dogs, either domesticated descendants of indigenous wild dogs and/or wolves, became cooperative ‘commensals’, scavenging around human camp-sites and settlements, and serving as guards to warn and ward off predators, and as hunting allies.
Possibly as a result of observing how wolf-packs follow the game, early human gatherer-hunters followed the wolves and learned how to herd and subsequently domesticate, some 4-6,000 years ago, the more tractable game species, like cattle, sheep, goats, alpaca, and llama. Then they turned and exterminated the wolf among other predators that preyed on their domesticated livestock, some of which were turned into beasts of burden, selected for ceremonial and sacrificial purposes, and for use in draft-work and warfare, like the horse, and the largest forest animal, the Asian elephant, now almost extinct in the wild, and never fully domesticated. Domestication of the horse was a major step in facilitating control and management of free-grazing livestock on grasslands and ranges, with the assistance of new breeds of herding, droving, and flock- guarding breeds of dog.
Coupled with the domestication of plant varieties and land cultivation, other more sedentary human settlements also domesticated pigs, cavies, rabbits, wild fowl, and honey bees as sustainable food resources. Some communities, especially in tropical zones, began aquaculture, integrating fish production, like tilapia, with a polyculture of plant and animal production, supplemented by gathering and hunting in surrounding wild habitats of forest, wetland, bush, prairie and savanna
grasslands. These natural ecosystems they managed with varying degrees of sophistication, usually with greater care, respect and understanding than those who sought to colonize, exterminate or assimilate indigenous peoples and exploit their lands and natural resources.
As human population pressure intensified, along with multiplying and forever hungry and thirsty flocks and herds, and the need for more land to cultivate to feed more hungry mouths, conflicts erupted in many parts of the world. Gatherer-hunter tribes became increasingly impoverished, malnourished, and eventually landless, their traditional way of life being obliterated by deforestation to open more land for cultivation and to build cities and make iron, by cattle ranchers who tortured and killed them for poaching livestock. Such has been the fate of the African bushman, the San people, the !Kung, and other gatherer hunter cultures around the world.
The natural world is being turned into what some call a biological desert or industrialized wasteland by various human activities. Our singularly most damaging environmental footprint upon this planet, now recognized and documented by the FAO (1) is caused by our collectively costly and damaging appetite for animal produce. Some 3.2 billion cattle, sheep and goats are now being raised for human consumption, along with billions more pigs and poultry. These extensively and intensively farmed animals produce less food for us than they consume, and compete with us for water; they result in an increasing loss wildlife and habitat, and of good farmlands and grazing lands. Linked with deforestation, loss of wetlands, over-fishing and ocean pollution, our appetite for meat is the number one cause of global warming and loss of biodiversity.
This tragic loss of biological diversity is now being accelerated not only by increasing human numbers and appetites, but also by the collision and conflict of cultures. For example, nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoralists like the Masai in East Africa, who need water and grazing land for their livestock, have violent clashes over access to and use of natural resources, with sedentary Bantu and other tribals who cultivate the land.
This conflict is intensified by the displacement of both cultures by a third colonial culture that began with plantations and cattle ranches, and is now spreading industrial-scale, capital intensive crop and livestock methods of production that are heavily reliant on costly and harmful chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The extinction of indigenous cultures and their once relatively sustainable agricultural and animal husbandry practices means an incalculable loss of cultural and biocultural diversity (unique varieties of domesticated plants and animals), and knowledge. This must be reversed, since the loss would not be inconsequential. It would be an extinction of global consequence, not just local for a few who tried to resist ‘progress’ and modernity’s conspicuous consumption of natural resources(2)
Take, for example, what is happening now to one of the great biological lungs and air conditioners of planet Earth, the Amazon forest, home to diverse indigenous civilizations, cultural wisdom, and medicinal plants from a wild cornucopia of irreplaceable biodiversity. All therein are being obliterated by the timber and cattle industries, and to grow soy beans to feed China’s pigs and Europe’s chickens.
Another example is the dead zone, about the size of Rhode Island, in the Texas Gulf, devoid of marine life primarily because of all the agricultural runoff of animal wastes; from petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers from fields growing feed for livestock instead of organic food for people; and from human wastes, much of which should be recycled for farming purposes if not too contaminated with prescription drugs and concentrated cocktails of contaminating heavy metals, dioxins, and other man-made and man-released environmental toxins.
According to figures from the UK’s Compassion in World Farming, reported in The Economist, ( Dec. 2nd 2006, p. 88), over 50 billion animals are killed for food every year, which comes to almost 100,000 a minute 24/7. In the past 40 year meat consumption per person has risen from 56 kg to 89 in Europe, from 89 kg to 124 in America, and from 4 kg to 54 in China, in spite of the nutritionally inefficient conversion of grass or grain to meat, some 10 kg of feed being needed to produce 1 kg of meat.
It is noteworthy that the UK’s Environmental Minister Ben Bradshaw has advised consumers of the hidden costs of meat and dairy consumption, part of a broad plan to reduce the ecological footprint of agriculture in the British Isles, and address the issue of global warming/climate change. On a new web site for British shoppers, (www.direct.gov.uk/greenerfood) it is stated that the ‘production of meat and dairy products has a much bigger effect on climate change and other environmental impacts than of most grains, pulses, and outdoor fruits and vegetables." It is encouraging that at least one developed nation is taking the initiative to change dietary habits by informing shoppers of the risks and costs of foods of animal origin.
In sum, we can no longer continue to regard meat and other sources of animal protein as a dietary staple because of the enormous costs and harmful consequences of such a diet. Vegetarianism is an enlightened choice, and all people should at least become ‘conscientious omnivores,’ treating food of animal origin more as a condiment than a staple.
1. Steinfeld H, P. Gerber P, Wassenaer T, Castel V, Rosales M, de Haan C, Livestocks Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, Washington, DC, 2006.
2. Fox M.W. Bringing Life to Ethics: Global Bioethics for a Humane Society, Albany NY, State University of New York Press, 2001.