Hunger
"Family farmers are victims of public policy that gives preference to feeding animals over feeding people. This has encouraged the cheap grain policy of this nation and has made the Beef Cartel the biggest hog at the trough."
--Howard Lyman, Executive Director, Beyond Beef campaign, former senior lobbyist for the National Farmers Union
"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.
"A meat-fed world now appears a chimera. World grain production has grown more slowly than population since 1984, and farmers lack new methods for repeating the gains of the `green revolution.' Supporting the world's current population of 5.4 billion people on an American-style diet would require two-and-ahalf times as much grain as the world's farmers produce for all purposes. A future world of 8 billion to 14 billion people eating the American ration of 220 grams of grain-fed meat a day can be nothing but a flight of fancy."
--Alan B. Durning and Holly Brough, Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.
"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
"Changing eating habits in the North is an important link in the chain of events needed to create environmentally sustainable development that meets people's needs. The Beyond Beef campaign is an important step in that direction."
--Dr. Walden Bello, Executive Director, Food First/The Institute for Food and Development Policy, San Francisco, California
"Suppose food were distributed equally. If everyone in the world ate as Americans do, less than half the present world population could be fed on the record harvests of 1985 and 1986. Of course, everyone doesn't have to eat like Americans. About a third of the world grain harvest -- the staples of the human feeding base -- is fed to animals to produce eggs, milk, and meat for American-style diets. Wouldn't feeding that grain directly to people solve the problem? If everyone were willing to eat an essentially vegetarian diet, that additional grain would allow perhaps a billion more people to be fed with 1986 production."
--Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, authors of The Population Explosion, 1990