What We Eat Matters - Take Heart - Christian Vegetarian Association

What We Eat Matters

With the increasing demand for animals products worldwide, food prices are being driven by the cost of grains which are the main food source to feed the 55 billion animals humans eat every year. China is the perfect example of this trend where in the 1990s the production of soybeans was 15 million metric tons a year, enough to feed their farmed animals and export some; however, although China still produces about 15 million metric tons of soybeans, it imports more than three times that amount to feed its farmed animals. According to the director in China for the U.S. Soybean Export Council Xiaoping Zhang, the United States exports about a quarter of its soy crop to China and is expecting a fourth consecutive record year of exports, forecast at more than 25 million metric tons.

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How is it possible that humanity willingly feeds more than half of all the grain produced worldwide to farmed animals while about 1 billion people go hungry every year? We need to stop and think about the atrocities we commit against ourselves and other creatures, and reflect on the countless consequences, including very important spiritual ones, of our actions. There is certainly enough food to feed the world if we freed more grain and fed it directly to people instead it to farmed animals. “For I was hungry and you gave me food.… [A]s you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:35, 40 RSV).