World Food Summit: EVU’s Open Letter to FAO
”Meat Production Creates Misery”
In June 2002, the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) in Rome organised the
”World Food Summit: five years
later”. By an Open Letter, addressed
to the Director-General of the FAO,
the EVU promoted a vegetarian way
of solving problems of global hunger
and malnutrition. All members and
partners of our organisation, the international
press, radio and TV stations,
relief organisations, animal rights
groups and ecology movements received
copies, which consequently
were distributed on a very large scale.
An excerpt of the English text
(a French and German version had been added):
”Today, according to the World
Food Programme, one out of seven
people suffer from hunger, and malnutrition
is a significant factor in the
deaths of 11,000 children every day,
one child every eight seconds. Even
though the United Nations Charter
mentions food security as a fundamental
human right, hundreds of millions
of poor people are starving.
In contrast, rich nations invest increasingly
and disproportionately in
the production of meat from animals
whose feed had been imported from
developing countries, whose manure
had polluted land, groundwater and
rivers and whose appetite had
brought about destruction and even
desertification to huge areas, through
overgrazing. Such wasteful procedures
do not only put extreme pressure
on the environment but lead to a
lengthening of the food chain.
Through the intermediary of the
animal, a majority of precious nutrients
from grain and leguminous
plants are turned into manure and
refuse. However, the growing of highquality
vegetable products for human
consumption could yield many times
the amount of food, on the same area
of land and at much lower cost.
As a solution for this problem you
suggested (..) in Nicosia that European
countries should assist by technology
transfer, also to be made
available to livestock farmers in developing
countries. Dear Dr. Diouf,
the latest techniques for livestock factory
farming are no safe export items!
After all, in the last decade Europeans
have experienced several crises of
traumatic significance which are by
no means over and which have demonstrated
very clearly that real food
safety stands for less meat production
instead of more.
That is why the European Vegetarian
Union promotes the vegetarian
way: healthy, non-genetically contaminated
plant food for people, produced
by sustainable agricultural
methods, respecting the needs and
traditions of the local population, acceptable
to followers of all religions
and adaptable to specific environmental
particularities, prevailing climatic
conditions and regional biodiversity.
We call upon you: Please help people
helping themselves by growing
crops for their own consumption -
and not for feeding slaughter animals
while their children are starving.”
Reactions
The echo to this campaign was
very positive indeed. Here are some
comments:
From France:
Je trouve cette lettre
entièrement juste et concrète, pour
résoudre le problème de la famine, et
en même temps celui des animaux de
boucherie...
From Germany:
vielen Dank für
Ihren obigen Brief, den wir voll
unterstützen. …
From Switzerland:
Vielen Dank für
Ihr Mail. Wir haben das Schreiben
rund um die Welt weitergeleitet …
From Turkey:
I support this letter 100% ! …
From UK:
I agree wholeheartedly
with the sentiments expressed in the
letter and am happy to add my endorsement…..
From UK:
Thanks for forwarding this. We have given it maximum circulation
in the UK …
From USA (addressed to two mailing lists):
I hope that this brings some
issues into focus for us … Also, perhaps
in North America all announcements
and vegetarian policy statements
should be multilingual and issued
at least in English, Spanish,
French, Italian, and Mandarin (or certainly
AT LEAST in the European
languages that EVU uses).
Summit Result
The FAO announced that, on 13
June 2002, 56 countries signed an international
treaty crucial to food security.
The aims of this treaty are “the
conservation of plant genetic re-
sources, their sustainable use, and the
fair and equitable sharing of benefits
arising from their use, including monetary
benefits resulting from commercialization.”
According to FAO this is
a “binding International Treaty, which
provides for farmers rights, and establishes
a multilateral system to exchange
the genetic resources of some
64 major crops and forages important
for global food security.”
The Director-General of the FAO
stated: “We know that eliminating
hunger is not only a moral imperative;
we know that investing in the reduction
of hunger can only benefit an increasingly
interdependent world. It is
in the interest of all, rich and poor, to
do everything - and quickly - to bring
about a fairer world, to eliminate
chronic hunger and its stigmas of despair
and resignation. Let us waste no
time in starting this race against time,
putting our commitments into effect
and demonstrating that, together, we
will carry the battle against hunger
and poverty, in the denial of scepticism
and self-interest.”
Dorothea Löffler, EVU press office
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsummit
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