A report issued
by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
recommends levying fees for livestock as a way to reduce this sector’s
emission of greenhouse gases, currently estimated at 7,000 billion tons
of CO2 equivalent annually.
Moreover, livestock raising is known
to impact not only human health but also causes enormous damage to
ecosystems, biodiversity, land, forests and water quality.
“The
State of Food and Agriculture” report thus calls for market-based
policies such as taxes and subsidy reductions that would cause producers
to minimize environmental damage by being required to absorb its costs.
FAO Director-general Jacques Diouf stated that the rapid growth
of the livestock sector has unfortunately thus far had little
oversight, with current estimates forecasting that without a change in
course, the number of livestock cattle alone will increase 70% to 2.6
billion by mid-century.
Director-general Diouf and United
Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, we laud your recommendations
for such planet-protecting policies. May governments across the globe
be motivated to implement measures as these for the benefit of all the
Earth’s inhabitants. During an August 2009 videoconference in Thailand,
Supreme Master Ching Hai spoke of this very subject, calling on world
leaders to forego livestock raising as a way to save the planet.
Supreme
Master Ching Hai: I hope the governments would please make it
into law to forbid the killing of animals, to forbid any more animal
livestock raising. If they are truly the leaders that pledge to protect
their people, to improve their country in many aspects, then this is the
first step we have to do. Stop the meat industry, stop the fish
industry, stop the dairy industry, then our planet will be the way it
was and even better.
There are only two ways to do things in our
world - the correct way and the incorrect way. And right now, to save
the planet, there is only one way to stop the cause - that is, the
animal industry, by all means, in all aspects. We have to do it.
Supreme Master Ching Hai: Spread
information, encourage everyone, inform everyone to be vegan.
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http://www.agrimoney.com/news/un-green-crusade-plans-tax-on-livestock-wind--1368.html