World Food Day

Octo­ber 16th, World Food Day is also the 23rd Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against McDon­alds, once again to be marked by Veg­gies in Not­ting­ham, this year with a Veg­an Free Food Give­away at Exchange Walk, and in Lon­don by Veg­an Cam­paigns with a protest at Regents Street.

On 7–8 Octo­ber 2008, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and the Unit­ed Nations marked the anniver­sary of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights which assures every­one’s enti­tle­ment ‘to a stan­dard of liv­ing ade­quate for the health and well-being of him­self and of his fam­i­ly, includ­ing food’.

Six­ty years after sign­ing that dec­la­ra­tion of good will, the Food and Agri­cul­tur­al Orga­ni­za­tion (FAO) is plan­ning the cel­e­bra­tion of World Food Day 2008 to ‘high­light the plight of 923 mil­lion under­nour­ished peo­ple in the world’.

What went wrong?

Why are almost one bil­lion peo­ple still exclud­ed from the most basic of Human Rights in the 21st cen­tu­ry?

“Every child who dies of hunger in today’s world has been mur­dered,” accused Jean Ziegler, for­mer Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the Right to Food. Indeed, how can any soci­ety call­ing itself civ­i­lized accept that while world­wide every five sec­onds a child dies because she or he is hun­gry, around 1.5 bil­lion cows and bulls and an astro­nom­i­cal num­ber of oth­er farm ani­mals are being fed with a huge share of avail­able crops?

More than the pop­u­la­tions of USA, Cana­da and the EU do not have enough to eat

Nation­al and inter­na­tion­al deci­sion mak­ers have ini­ti­at­ed a mul­ti­tude of projects and cam­paigns in their fight against hunger; unfor­tu­nate­ly, noth­ing has improved the sit­u­a­tion. The non-stop mis­ery caused by hunger calls urgent­ly for fresh strate­gies, of which veg­e­tar­i­an­ism must be one!

In the inter­est of jus­tice and human­i­ty the present wast­ing of 7–16 kg of grain or soy beans, up to 15,500 litres of water, and 323 m² of graz­ing land that yields just one kilo of beef can­not be allowed to con­tin­ue.

23 Sep­tem­ber 2008 was ‘Over­shoot Day’ — mile­stone when human­i­ty will have used all the resources nature will gen­er­ate this year: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=overshoot

Con­sid­er­ing that glob­al­ly, we now require the equiv­a­lent of 1.4 plan­ets to sup­port our lifestyles, ‘Over­shoot Day’ should be a wake-up call for politi­cians and indi­vid­u­als alike.

With the aim of help­ing peo­ple in need, sav­ing the envi­ron­ment and boost­ing pub­lic health, the reduc­tion or the end of eat­ing meat is the eas­i­est and most ben­e­fi­cial way ahead.

The fact that we do have more than enough resources to feed every­one must no longer be com­pro­mised by the greed for meat.

For ref­er­ences see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.beef and http://www.evana.org/index.php?id=38147

Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action Against McDon­alds: http://www.veggies.org.uk/event.php?ref=50

Veg­an Cam­paigns (Lon­don): http:www.vegancampaigns.org.uk

Not­ting­ham Veg­an Free Food Give-Aways: http://www.veggies.org.uk/event.php?ref=1400

Past events have includ­ed:

July 31st & August 21st out­side McNasty — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/08/405531.html

July 4th, in advance of Viva!’s Incred­i­ble Veg­gie Road­show — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/07/402884.html

June 3rd: Day of Action on Food and Cli­mate Change — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/06/400106.html

May 15th: McLi­bel Human Rights Anniver­sary — http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/05/399158.html

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