#david nibert

[vegan-sun]

Review of 'Can Eating Insects Save the World?'

This is a guest post by David Nibert, Professor of Sociology at Wittenberg University, USA, and author of Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism and Global Conflict

The 2013 BBC documentary Can Eating Insects Save the World? suggests that the answer to the problem of future global hunger and malnutrition is increasing the consumption of insects as food.

This proposed strategy is ethically and socially unsound.

There is no question that the future will be fraught with food shortages.

Today, while a billion people around the world suffer from chronic hunger, 70 percent of all of the world’s agricultural land is used to generate animal products for people in wealthy countries (who often die prematurely from heart disease, stroke and various forms of cancer caused by consuming sizeable amounts of animal products). Dwindling vital resources such as fresh water, precious topsoil and fossil fuel, all essential for supporting a growing world population projected to reach ten billion by 2060, are being massively squandered in the creation of animal products.

These dire circumstances are exacerbated by climate change. Global warming already is producing violent storms, floods, severe droughts, wildfires and record temperatures, all of which reduce harvests and make future food shortages all but certain. What is more, raising animals for food generates as much as 51 percent of human-generated greenhouse gases. Despite such revelations, agribusiness and the retail food industry are striving to double the consumption of animal products globally by mid-century.  Billions more animals are being raised on factory farms, polluting streams and rivers beyond recovery while also increasing the probability of the outbreak of a deadly influenza pandemic. 

The logical response is a movement calling for the transition to a global plant-based diet. Unfortunately, the film Can Eating Insects Save the World? promotes the continuation, if not the expansion, of the practice of treating living organisms as food – just different living organisms. Instead of cultivating a global respect for all beings, the most probable outcome of such a strategy is that the more affluent will continue to usurp the earth’s resources for the continuation of their socially-engineered diet of products derived from cows, pigs, sheep, goats and other oppressed animals, while growing numbers of people, living in or near poverty, will be encouraged to eat insects. And even if the affluent did in fact begin to accept the idea of treating insects as food, the question of whether these inhabitants of the earth are sentient and can suffer is widely debated.  Moreover, consumption of insects may well contribute to human disease as many will contribute to human health problems, such as high cholesterol.

A global transition to a plant-based diet would create the possibility of producing nutritious food for all as the human population grows. And, to get people around the world to stop eating animals, all living beings must be respected.  Similar to the “solution” of ending the oppression of other animals by purchasing local products derived from animals, increasing human consumption of insects will further impede the development of a more just and peaceful world.

[atarimcgregor]

Between 1950 and 1964 ... Zacapa, Izabal and Chiquimula experienced heavy deforestation and peasant displacement by large cattle ranchers. (...) Discontent quickly ripened into rebellion (...) By the mid-1960s, as in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, a guerrilla organization emerged. Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) formed widespread alliances with desperately poor peasant villages in Zacapa and Izabal to resist the appropriation of their land... In 1966, at the urging of the U.S. State Department, the Guatemalan government declared these eastern districts a counterinsurgency zone, launching a series of merciless attacks on peasant communities to break the resistance. U.S. supplied-and-piloted helicopter gunships, T-3 fighter jets, and B-26 "invader" bombers armed with napalm and heavy bombs assisted the Guatemalan army in the carnage, killing some 6,000 to 10,000 people between 1966 and 1968. By 1972, the number of Guatemalans resisting the appropriation of their land and the exploitation of their labor who were killed was estimated to be over thirteen thousand, and by 1976 (the year of the highly celebrated marking of the United States bicentennial of liberation from British tyranny - millions in the United States observe the occasion by barbecuing "steaks" and "hamburgers") the count in Guatemala exceeded "20,000, murdered or disappeared without a trace."

When the U.S. helped kill thousands of Guatemalans to create land for cheap beef production to boost American corporate gain.

It is believed that the deforestation related to the meat industry in South-America and sub-Saharan Africa that will take place in the next four decades will cover a bigger area than the entire United States, or about a third of the world's tropical and temperate forests. And that's mostly to provide wealthy countries with meat. The meat that scientists advise people to eat less of.

(from David Nibert's "The Promotion of Meat and Its Consequences")

[animalvoices]

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A Piece of the Pie: Selections from the 2011 Thinking About Animals Conference – Part 1

Welcome to Part 1 of select presentations from the 2011 Thinking About Animals Conference at Brock University. While the two day event hosted over 130 presentations by activists, academics and advocates from all over the world we are sadly only able to bring you a very small taste of this giant and tasty conference pie.

First up is Dr. David Nibert on “Conflict, Violence & the ‘Domesecration’ of Animals”- the Animal Voices team has had trouble using the word “domestication” ever since!

Next up, Zipporah Weisberg shares her thoughts on “Animal Monstrosities: Technocapitalism & the Reification of Animal Life.” Zipporah will be sure to get you thinking about our dependence on technological innovation, corporate power and the manufactured separation between humans and “nature.”

Finally, Vasile Stanescu talks about “‘Green Eggs and Ham?: The Myth of Sustainable Meat and the Danger of the Local“, which is his contribution to “Critical Theory and Animal Liberation.” This edited collection of essays is hot off the press and a must read for anyone interested in human/animal liberation. Stay tuned to hear more presentations from the conference on next week’s show.