A recent front page article in my local New Zealand newspaper disparaging the future on non meat based proteins, prompted me to respond.
In 2016 New Zealand mercilessly slaughtered 28,387,595 lambs, adult sheep, calves, adult steers and cows, pigs, and goats; with young lambs totalling over 18 million of those deaths. Two of the major “meat companies’ in New Zealand respectively had an income from those deaths of just over $10 million and $17 million. Animals are indoctrinated to become used to being shifted from pasture to pasture with dogs and men on farm bikes; and then , when the killing season starts, are herded into tightly packed fenced areas and forced onto truck and trailer units for the long tortuous drive to the ‘meatworks’.
Teara.govt.nz notes that ‘in 2009 there were about 80 meat-processing plants in New Zealand, employing about 26,500 people and exporting to about 150 countries.’
There is undeniable scientific evidence that humankind’s reliance on meat production has contributed significantly to the vast loss of species habitat across the world ( and particularly so in New Zealand ) ,which will if not checked in the near future, along with its impact on climate change, lead to the destruction of all life on this planet.
The other ‘unfortunate truth’ is that there is irrefutable evidence that every new element of human ‘progress’ results in the destruction of more and more species on this planet- species which which humans are in direct connection for our mutual survivability.
Look around, almost every aspect of what we call ‘progress’ is our relentless transfer of the living and vibrant to the inanimate- the concrete, the tar, the electronics, the cut down trees…….we are inexorably deadening the planet with our ‘progress”.
In addition recent studies of insect populations in Europe reveal rapid declines in flying insects likely due to monoculture, deforestation and insecticides. Without insects, we all die ; rapidly
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