Quotes Concerning Food
(Distribution, Production, etc.)

(6 Quotations)

• Alan B. Durning and Holly Brough (Worldwatch Institute) - "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-a half 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."

• Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich (The Population Explosion, 1990) - "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."

• Tenzin Gyatso (14th Dalai Lama of Tibet) - "I do not see any reason why animals should be slaughtered to serve as human diet when there are so many substitutes. After all, man can live without meat."

• Frances Moore Lappe (Diet for a Small Planet) - "We got hooked on grain-fed meat just as we got hooked on gas guzzling automobiles. Big cars made sense only when oil was cheap; grain-fed meat makes sense only because the true costs of producing it are not counted."

• John Robbins (Diet for a New America , President, EarthSave) - "Awareness is bad for the meat business. Conscience is bad for the meat business. Sensitivity to life is bad for the meat business. Denial, however, the meat business finds indispensable."

• John Robbins (Diet for a New America", and President, EarthSave Foundation) - "A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter. What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet."