Hi Axel,

I see you are a bit idealistic. I sure would also like people to be
more health-conscious, respect the environment, etc, but:

 -You say that you can "educate" people to eat better food. What I see
is that in industrialized countries, education has dramatically
improved over the last 100 years, but average food quality is
deteriorating. People are certainly vaguely conscious of what is good
or bad: ask anyone in the street whether they believe soft drinks,
French fries, candies, alcohol are healthy or not and 90% of them will
say they aren't. Ask smokers whether they think smoking is healthy or
not, and they will likely answer "no" (it's written on all cigarette
packs). But they don't care. They prefer to eat their junk food
because it's convenient, start smoking at young age because they want
to behave like "grown-ups". They prefer to have tasty meals at
restaurants and then take medications for cholesterol or whatever.

 -About the price of organic fruits and vegetables: even in developed
countries, there are many people who earn barely enough to eat even
conventional food (pasta, meat, etc). These people don't care about
quality, they need quantity, and prefer to buy food in supermarkets at
the best prices. Even people who earn a little more prefer to save
their money for something else (like clothes, vacation...). They are
certainly aware that high-quality produce tastes better, but they are
not ready to spend much more money. For cooked meat eaters, quality
doesn't really matter, because a good cook can make a tasty meal with
any raw material, but for raw eaters (and especially raw vegetarians
it seems), it certainly does. So, the result is that high-quality
produce will probably constitute a small part of total production, and
therefore will never become affordable for low-income households. In
addition, you are certainly aware that not many fruits grow in colder
climates, not in the center of cities (and if it did, it would be so
polluted that I wouldn't dare touch it), so transportation is
necessary in temperate climates as well as in large cities. Given that
there is a trend towards urbanization that I don't see how you could
expect to reverse, it means that more and more people won't have
access to high-quality food and therefore any diet close to raw
veganism will be nearly impossible for them.

 -You say "we have no spiritual/natural right to use the land of the
world to produce meat". Well, that's your opinion, but you must be
aware that no one knows which "rights" you have or you don't
have. Nature is blind about rights and duties; the concept of "rights"
has been invented by humans and saying that Nature gives you rights or
responsibilities is anthropomorphic. Humans, like any species, haven't
demanded to be alive, to live on earth. They just happen to be there,
and do their best to survive. The only responsibility we have is to
try to prepare a better world for our grand-children. As long as we
are doing that, we have the right to use the land of the world as we
wish (to produce meat or fruit or whatever).

 -You say "it is very simple to avoid animal products if you
want". Well, I don't think so. The experience of many people proves
that it is in fact very difficult to avoid animal products, especially
if you eat raw (there are very few examples of successful life-long raw
vegans). On the other hand, I agree it would be very simple (although
not optimal healthwise IMO) to _restrict_ animal products if I want,
or to _restrict_ to vegetarian animal products. However, I am not doing
that, because if I do it alone (or even with one million people), that
will only be a drop in the ocean, since it is really implausible that
a significant part of the world population will ever become
predominatly raw vegetarian.

 -You say "nothing in the world is more damaging at all levels than
animal husbandry". Well, it depends on which area of the world you are
talking about, but I am pretty sure that in induatrialized countries,
all the industrial waste dumping in the rivers, air pollution due to
cars and industries and so forth produce at least as much
irreversible damage to the ecology than agriculture altogether. In
Africa, perhaps cattle-raising contributes to desertification, but on
the other hand people are suffering from malnutrition, including
protein deficiency. They certainly won't agree to give up the little
meat they have.

> you know, before humans decided to use the whole world to raise animals,
> there were not so many cows and sheep and poultry in this planet!

I know... There were not so many cereal fields, apple trees... and
humans either. The only viable "solution" is to reduce the world
population... if that can be done at all.


--Jean-Louis Tu <[log in to unmask]>