A
report issued by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) recommends levying fees for livestock as a way to reduce this
sector’s emission of greenhouse gases, currently estimated at 7,000
billion tons of CO2 equivalent annually.
Moreover, livestock
raising is known to impact not only human health but also causes
enormous damage to ecosystems, biodiversity, land, forests and water
quality.
“The State of Food and Agriculture” report thus calls
for market-based policies such as taxes and subsidy reductions that
would cause producers to minimize environmental damage by being required
to absorb its costs.
FAO Director-general Jacques Diouf stated
that the rapid growth of the livestock sector has unfortunately thus far
had little oversight, with current estimates forecasting that without a
change in course, the number of livestock cattle alone will increase
70% to 2.6 billion by mid-century.
Director-general Diouf and
United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, we laud your
recommendations for such planet-protecting policies. May governments
across the globe be motivated to implement measures as these for the
benefit of all the Earth’s inhabitants. During an August 2009
videoconference in Thailand, Supreme Master Ching Hai spoke of this very
subject, calling on world leaders to forego livestock raising as a way
to save the planet.
Supreme Master Ching Hai:
I hope the governments would please make it into law to forbid the
killing of animals, to forbid any more animal livestock raising. If they
are truly the leaders that pledge to protect their people, to improve
their country in many aspects, then this is the first step we have to
do. Stop the meat industry, stop the fish industry, stop the dairy
industry, then our planet will be the way it was and even better.
There
are only two ways to do things in our world - the correct way and the
incorrect way. And right now, to save the planet, there is only one way
to stop the cause - that is, the animal industry, by all means, in all
aspects. We have to do it.
Supreme Master Ching Hai: Spread information, encourage everyone, inform everyone to be vegan.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/38154ea0-1cb2-11df-8d8e-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1 http://www.agrimoney.com/news/un-green-crusade-plans-tax-on-livestock-wind--1368.html