Dear Editor:
Worldwide, 60 million people-150,000 each day-die of hunger, even though more than enough food is produced to feed everyone. Inefficient use and inequitable distribution of food resources is to blame. In order to end hunger, world leaders must make different political and economic choices, and individual consumers will have to make different choices too.
We often feel helpless when they think about world hunger but there is one thing that each of us can do: reduce or eliminate meat consumption in order to make more food available for the rest of the world. A 10% drop in US meat consumption would make 12 million tons of grain available-enough to feed the 60 million people who are starving to death each year.
The World Resources Institute predicts that by 2025 at least 3.5 billion people will experience water shortages. Animal agriculture uses more water than all other human uses combined and is the number one cause of water pollution.
At the World Food Summit (June 10-13 Rome), political leaders must support the needs of the people and the planet about the desire of corporate agribusiness for more and more profit.
Hunger in the midst of plenty is an obscenity. The majority of people who die due to hunger or malnutrition are children under the age of five. We must all take responsibility for this problem. By eliminating animal-derived foods from our diet, and choosing plant-based foods instead, we can feed the world while preserving the planet.
Alison Gottleib