Greetings,
noble-minded viewers.
Advocacy of
the plant-based diet
as the most ecologically
sensible solution
has been pioneered by
numerous environmental,
animal, spiritual and
scientific publications
throughout the years.
Their efforts
are bearing fruit as
evidenced in the recent
prolific media coverage
highlighting
this important issue.
Through its wide reach,
mainstream media
has catapulted
the vegetarian solution
to climate change
to the forefront
of public consciousness.
From major media
personalities such as
Oprah Winfrey
to Larry King
to Ellen Degeneres,
who became vegan
in the past months,
the millions of viewers
around the world
who tune in daily
to their shows
are exposed to the topic
of meat and its related
harmful effects on the
health of the planet and
one’s personal wellbeing.
On CNN,
the world’s first network
to provide
24 hour news coverage,
with programs available
in over 212 countries
and territories,
Larry King brought in
a panel of experts
on his show,
Larry King Live,
to address
how E. coli found in meat
is life-threatening.
It was revealed that
many young children
have suffered and died
from eating
E. coli-tainted beef, or
from merely contacting
an infected adult.
In 2007,
a 22-year-old woman
became paralyzed
after eating a burger
contaminated with E. coli.
Following is the discussion,
“Should Americans
Banish the Burger?”
aired on CNN and
published on its website
on October 13, 2009.
“One person who
has said "no" to burgers
is Bill Marler, an expert
on foodborne illness
litigation.
"What happens
in hamburger
is the E. coli bacteria
is in the guts of cows.
And during
the slaughtering process,
those guts are nicked
or there's fecal material
on the hides.
It gets on the red meat,"
Marler explained to King.
For Barbara Kowalcyk,
the issue is professional –
- she's director of
food safety at the Center
for Foodborne Illness
Research and Prevention.
But the issue is also
deeply personal –
her 2-year-old son, Kevin,
died of complications
due to E. coli infection
in 2001.
Kevin "went from
being a perfectly healthy,
beautiful child
to being dead in 12 days.
It was unbelievable,"
Kowalcyk told King.
For another guest,
even the promise of
contamination-free beef
wasn't enough.
Dr. Colin Campbell
of Cornell University
advocates a meat-free diet.
Campbell said
he grew up on a dairy farm
and for a long time
held to the belief
that animal protein
was an essential part
of a healthy diet.
He said the results
of years of research
changed his mind.
The conclusion
of his studies:
"The closer we get to
consuming a whole foods,
plant-based diet,
the healthier we're going
to be on all accounts."”
In France, journalist
Fabrice Nicolino published
a 400 page book titled,
“The Meat Industry
Threatens the World”
that thoughtfully and
meticulously evidenced
the adverse effects
factory farms have
on the climate,
human health
and biodiversity.
Le Monde
is the French daily
newspaper of record
that is widely respected
for its journalistic integrity.
On October 13, 2009,
Hervé Kempf published
an article title,
“And if Meat
Was Assassinated?”
on Le Monde
regarding Mr. Nicolino’s
persuasive book.
“Pollution?
By massive discharges
of nitrogen,
livestock farming causes
invasions of green algae
on many coasts.
Soybean production
in Latin America to
provide food for animals,
contributes to
the degradation
of the savannah
and the Amazon.
Deforestation is also
directly linked to the desire
to gain new lands
for cattle in Brazil.
More surprisingly,
the importance of
greenhouse gas emissions
by some 20 billion animals
that we breed:
according to
an FAO report,
“Livestock emits more
greenhouse gas emissions
than all global transport”.
Health?
The massive use
of antibiotics
as growth promoters
has increased the resistance
of many bacteria
to antibiotics.
Furthermore,
it is increasingly clear
that excessive consumption
of “factory” meat
is a source of diseases.
Moreover, as indicated
by a report from the U.S.
Department of Health,
“because the highly
concentrated breeding farms
tend to gather
large groups of animals
on a small piece of land,
they facilitate the transfer
and mixing of viruses”.
Can this system last,
given that it takes about
seven from plants
to produce
one calorie of meat?
No, says the author. …
If you want to feed
nine billion people
by 2050,
it will be necessary
to limit the numbers
of animals raised.
And... eat less meat.”
Forbes magazine,
a popular
US business magazine
that is available worldwide
and in 8 local language
editions, recently
published an article on
the eco-friendly efforts
of Professor
Patrick O. Brown, PhD.,
a pioneering biochemist
at the prestigious
Stanford University.
Dr. Brown, who has been
a vegetarian for 30 years
and a vegan for 5,
is also a member
of the National Academy
of Sciences
and an investigator
for the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute.
In the article titled,
“Drop That Burger,”
published in
Forbes magazine
on November 30, 2009,
Matthew Herper wrote:
“He wants to put an end
to animal farming,
or at least
put a significant dent
in our global hunger for
cows, pigs and chickens.
"There's absolutely
no possibility
that 50 years from now
this system
will be operating
as it does now,"
says Brown.
"One approach
is to just wait, and
either we'll deal with it
or we'll be toast.
I want to approach this
as a solvable problem."
Solution:
"Eliminate animal farming
on planet Earth."
Brown thinks
if he can convince
food manufacturers that
the costs of selling meat
are too high, and rising,
they'll come around.
Seemingly tiny changes
in economics
could make animal farming
a lot less affordable.
At the moment
farmers around the world
are arguing
they should be immune
from taxes and ceilings
on greenhouse gases;
if they are not exempt,
the cost of meat will go up.
Raising the price of water
would have the same effect.
It takes
1,000 liters of water
to produce a liter of milk.
"If you're a big
food producer now,
this is absolutely
inevitable," he says.
"You'd better
start thinking ahead.
You'd better seriously
start investing and trying
to find alternatives
in order to stay alive."”
Please stay tuned to
Supreme Master
Television.
After these brief messages,
we’ll continue our show
highlighting mainstream
media coverage
on the sustainable,
plant-based diet
as a solution
to global warming.
Welcome back to our show
featuring the increasing
amount of press
on the most effective,
efficient, economical
and ethical way
to halt climate change –
the veg lifestyle.
This year,
a significant increase
in books
with wide distribution
have been published
that examine the health,
economics, ecology,
and ethics
of animal consumption.
These include:
“The Face on Your Plate,”
by Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff
Masson, a vegan;
and “The Kind Diet,”
by vegan actress
Alicia Silverstone.
Best selling American
author and vegetarian
Jonathan Safran Foer also
wrote “Eating Animals,”
a non-fiction work
that exposes the cruelty
behind factory farms,
which led him to
raise his young children
on a plant-based diet.
This book has garnered
much media attention
from television
to print mediums
around the nation,
with its truthful contents
being presented
for audiences
to discern for themselves
the morality
in consuming animals.
After reading
“Eating Animals,”
popular actress
Natalie Portman,
who had been
a long time vegetarian,
wrote on October 27,
2009, an article titled,
“Jonathan Safran Foer’s
Eating Animals
Turned Me Vegan,”
for The Huffington Post,
a highly influential
and popular news blog:
“The human cost
of factory farming -- both
the compromised welfare
of slaughterhouse workers
and, even more,
the environmental effects
of the mass production
of animals -- is staggering.
Foer details
the copious amounts
of pig [excrement]
sprayed into the air that
result in great spikes in
human respiratory ailments,
the development
of new bacterial strains
due to overuse
of antibiotics
on farmed animals,
and the origins of
the swine flu epidemic,
whose story
has gripped the nation,
in factory farms.
I read the chapter
on animal [excrement]
aloud to two friends –
one is from Iowa
and has asthma
and the other is
a North Carolinian
who couldn't eat fish
from her local river
because animal waste
had been dumped in it
as described in the book.
They had never
truly thought about the
connection between their
environmental condition
and their food.
The story of the
mass farming of animals
had more impact on them
when they realized
it had ruined
their own backyards.
And as we use food
to impart our beliefs
to our children, the point
from which Foer lifts off,
what stories do we want
to tell our children
through their food?”
In New York Magazine,
Sam Anderson also wrote
of Mr. Foer’s
compelling evidence
for a vegetarian diet
in his article titled,
“Hungry?
The Latest in
a Bumper Crop of Books
about the Ethics
of Eating Animals”
published on
November 1, 2009.
“Foer’s depiction of
the factory-farming system
is brutal and thorough—
strong enough, I imagine,
to win some converts.
He describes genetically
freakish animals,
some of whom
can’t walk or mate,
living in tiny cages
in windowless sheds,
suffering ritual mutilation
and sloppy slaughtering
(many of them
end up getting boiled
or skinned alive).
Unprofitable babies are
immediately disposed of:
electrocuted,
thrown into a chipper,
bashed headfirst
into a concrete floor, or
(in the case of irrelevant
male dairy calves)
sold to veal farmers.
Slaughterhouse workers
go crazy with sadism;
toxic lakes of manure
poison the environment.
None of this is new,
but, as Foer puts it,
“we have the burden
and the opportunity
of living in the moment
when the critique
of factory farming
broke into the
popular consciousness.”
The sheer brutality
of the system
seems to have pushed our
centuries-long stalemate
to a tipping point:
Factory farming has become
its own most powerful
counterargument.
And that transcends
all cutesiness.
As Foer’s guide
at the turkey farm
tells him, “The truth is
so powerful in this case
it doesn’t even matter
what your angle is.””
A recent
government funded report
in the United Kingdom,
which was produced
by the renowned
medical journal,
The Lancet,
once again identifies
the reduction of meat
as a key component
in human and
environmental health.
On November 25, 2009,
Kate Devlin
wrote of this report
in an article titled,
“Eat Less Meat to
Reduce Climate Change
and Save
Thousands of Lives,”
published on
the daily newspaper,
The Daily Telegraph,
which is the UK’s
most circulated newspaper
of record.
“People should
eat less meat
to reduce climate change
and save
thousands of lives a year,
a Government-funded
report has said.
It was released
as Andy Burnham,
the Health Secretary,
warned that
global warming poses a
“real and present danger”
to the health of millions.
The number of animals
farmed for food
should be cut
by almost a third,
experts recommended.
The move would
significantly cut emissions
and save around
18,000 lives a year
from heart disease alone,
they estimate.
Meat production is
estimated to be to blame
for around 18 per cent
of the gases
thought to cause
man-made global warming.
Cutting down production
of chicken, beef and pork
could save
even more lives,
scientists said, if deaths
from other diseases, such
as cancer and diabetes,
are included.
The move could also save
around 200 deaths a year
each from dementia
and breast cancer.
Mr Burnham said:
"Climate change
can seem a distant,
impersonal threat –
in fact the
associated costs to health
are a very real
and present danger.”
Margaret Chan,
of the World Health
Organisation,
warned that “no mercy”
would be shown
for humans’ mistakes
over climate change.”
Aside from
the health aspects,
meat production
and consumption
raises a multitude
of ethical questions.
US Professor
James E. McWilliams
of Texas State University
and a fellow
in agrarian studies
at the prominent
Yale University,
addresses these issues
in his article,
“Bellying Up
to Environmentalism,”
published on
November 16, 2009
for The Washington Post,
the largest and most
established newspaper
in the nation’s capital,
Washington, D.C.
“Now,
if someone told you that
a particular corporation
was trashing the air,
water and soil; causing
more global warming
than the transportation
industry; consuming
massive amounts
of fossil fuel;
unleashing the cruelest
sort of suffering
on innocent and
sentient beings;
failing to recycle its waste;
and clogging our arteries
in the process,
how would you react?
Would you say,
"Hey, that's personal?"
Probably not.
It's more likely that
you'd frame the matter
as a dire political issue
in need of
a dire political response.
Vegetarianism
is not only the most
powerful political response
we can make
to industrialized food.
It's a necessary prerequisite
to reforming it.
To quit eating meat
is to dismantle
the global food apparatus
at its foundation.
Sure, we've been
inundated with ideas:
eat local,
vote with your fork,
buy organic,
support fair trade, etc.
But these proposals
all lack something
that every successful
environmental movement
has always placed at
its core: genuine sacrifice.
Until we make that leap,
until we create
a culinary culture
in which the meat-eaters
must do the apologizing,
the current proposals
will be nothing
more than gestures
that turn the fork
into an empty symbol
rather than a real tool for
environmental change.”
With the planet’s survival
at stake, it is now
ever more pertinent
that the message of veg
as a viable and
sustainable solution
to climate change
be spread throughout
the world’s population.
Through the help
of mainstream media
this message can reach
the public at large
most effectively,
helping to raise awareness
for that day when,
as with other
harmful substances,
meat consumption becomes
socially unacceptable.
With its capability to
reduce greenhouse gases
by as much as 80 percent,
let us pray
all world leaders
at the UN Copenhagen
Climate Conference
seriously regards adopting
the sustainable policy
of a vegan diet.
Our respectful gratitude,
all journalists and media
for your concerted
and noble efforts
in promulgating
the urgent message
to be veg as the key for
the salvation of humanity
and our shared planet.
Gracious viewers,
thank you
for your presence
for today’s program.
Up next is
Words of Wisdom
right after
Noteworthy News
here on
Supreme Master Television.
Blessed be
all dedicated hearts
in bringing about
a sustainable
and peaceful world.