Two recent articles caught the attention of the Grumpy Vegan and made him smile. It wasn’t because of what was happening to workers in rural communities. It was because bad economies can do good things.
For example, U.S. News & World Report wrote
The American beef industry is in trouble. Though the financial strain of rising fuel and food prices is being widely felt across the U.S. economy, the livestock industry, which consumes about 5 billion bushels of corn annually, is suffering more than most.
Feedlot operators, who fatten their animals on corn before sending them to a slaughterhouse, are losing $150 a head with corn prices near record levels because of demand for corn-based ethanol. In Texas, the country’s largest beef-producing state, a quarter of the once-packed feedlot space is unoccupied. Some operations are shutting their doors, and “liquidation”—the culling of herds—has become a frequent escape hatch for the seriously struggling.
Telling a remarkably similar story The New York Times reports
Hog and chicken producers as well as cattle ranchers, all of whom depend on grain for feed, are being severely squeezed.
[…]
Then the economics went awry. Feed is now more than half the total cost of raising catfish, compared with a third of the cost of beef and pork production, according to a Mississippi State analysis. That makes catfish more vulnerable. But if the commodities continue to rocket up — and some analysts believe they will — other industries will fall victim as well.
The Grumpy Vegan likes economic downturns because it usually means it’s finally revealed to be true that the king truly is wearing no clothes.
This is an arcane way to say areas of institutionalized, commercial exploitation of animals only persist because of short-term economic gains. Thanks to the globalization of the world’s economy and its ever-tightening grip, hitherto fast-buck enterprises are being exposed for their long-term uneconomic costs.
Welcome to the Animal Rights Beginner’s Class. Repeat after me. Lesson 1: Animals don’t produce food. When it takes 100,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef and only 500 litres to produce one kilo of potatoes, we know that trickle down economics and the market forces of capitalism are going to pay attention—specially if we know the planet’s environment is going to hell in a hand basket.
So, here’s Lesson 2: Animals don’t produce. Feed people; not animals. It’s good for the economy.
