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Should you go vegan?
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Not eating meat could prevent world hunger

There is enough food to feed the world population. World hunger is still a huge issue because rich countries demand meat, and therefore it is more lucrative to sell this luxury to them. If less people ate meat, more efficient crops would take their place and be able to feed the entire world.

The Argument

Raising animals for food (including land for grazing and growing feed crops) uses over one-third of the planet’s landmass. If the land was used instead for farming crops, we could potentially end world hunger. Crops are much more land efficient than animals in regards to the amount of calories produced. By redirecting the feed that goes to animals (for meat and dairy) to humans we could end world hunger. According to PETA - ‘We produce enough calories globally to feed 10 to 11 billion people, yet the majority of this food is directed to animals of farms, not humans in need.'[1] The three billion people in need of food today would be accounted for if the world went vegetarian due to the fact that about seven pounds of crops are used to make one pound of beef.[2]

Counter arguments

Distribution is arguably the biggest challenge that needs to be solved in order to prevent World Hunger. While we produce enough food to feed the entire planet, global distribution methods are not yet effective enough to ensure everyone is well fed.

Proponents

Premises

[P1] Production of meat and animal products is a significantly less effective use of land than using it to produce crops that could feed far more people. [P2] Land use should be redirected to producing crops rather than animal products.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Simply producing more food is not enough to solve world hunger.

References

  1. https://www.peta.org.uk/blog/7-reasons-not-to-eat-meat/
  2. http://www.earthsave.org/environment.htm
This page was last edited on Friday, 24 Jan 2020 at 14:56 UTC

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