Louise (f ): Hallo, and you are all very welcome to Saturday
night with Louise Kings and The Sandman, East Coast FM, political, spiritual,
cultural and world events show. I am your host, Louise
Kings.
Sandman (m ): And I am the Sandman.
Louise (f ): And tonight we are extremely honored again
to interview Grand Supreme Master Ching Hai. Now the last time we spoke to her
we were discussing the adverse effects of meat eating to both our planet and
ourselves, and some of the ways that we could help our planet. And tonight she
joins us to talk about our oceans and the seas.
And some of the things that
we are going to be discussing will be the coral reefs, contaminates in our fish
and some of the effects of overfishing. So we are asking you to be interactive
with us tonight; let us know your thoughts, your comments or your questions.
Louise Kings(f): We are very honored to talk to Supreme Master Ching Hai, which we do have online live. Hallo, good evening.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : Good evening, Louise and the Sandman. Hi.
Louise (f): Hallo, Supreme Master.
Sandman (m): Hallo.
Supreme Master
Ching Hai : How are you?
Louise (f): It's great
to talk to you again.
Sandman (m): You're very, very
welcomed to the show and we're sitting here with bated breath with all your new
knowledge or old knowledge about saving the Earth.
Louise (f):
Well, we're going to give her a little bit of feedback from the first
show that we did three months ago.
Supreme Master Ching Hai
: Wow!
Sandman (m): Let me tell you that since
I spoke to you last, I am have gone completely vegetarian.
Sandman (m): And so much so that I cannot even go near
a supermarket that has any meat displayed at all. And it has made such a great
change in my life. I do believe it was probably something that was inside,
somewhere inside my psyche or somewhere inside that I just newly discovered. And
now, I am just completely against meat eating.
Supreme Master
Ching Hai : Wow!
Louise (f): Well, we’ve had
plenty of other feedback, Supreme Master, that's been really, really
heartwarming from young children that we've spoken to since the show, where
they've been talking to their parents about becoming vegetarian or becoming
vegetarians. So much so, it's even gone as far as going into some schools where
they've held some vegetarian cooking days and things.
So it's just been
fantastic. And aside from that, other people have said they've cut right back
down on meat and that they plan to kind of phase it out. For us, It was easy for
us to cut it out. But in the 3 months since we've spoken to you, I mean the
results that we've seen in ourselves has, not just from a physical point of
view, but also I think from spiritual point of view, has been fantastic. And
certainly something I would highly recommend to all. (Wow!)
Sandman (m): Well, long may it
continue.
Louise(f): Well, I have to say, Supreme
Master, my hair is in better condition since I have gone become vegetarian.
Supreme Master Ching Hai :
Truly?
Louise(f): Definitely and my
nails.
Supreme Master Ching Hai :
Wow!
Louise(f): Hair and nails and skin, definitely
ahuge improvement.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : Yes,
beautiful you are. You’re beautiful all together, you two.
Louise (f): Supreme Master, Ireland, as you know, is
surrounded by the sea so I think it's appropriate to start off by taking a look
at the wonderful part of our ecosystem and the perilous state that it's in. We
start off with the ocean dead zones. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg
in Sweden have discovered 20 dead zones around the Irish coastline and 400
worldwide. If global dead zones were combined they would equal New Zealand in
size. Scientists mainly blame fertilizer and other farm runoff, sewage
and
fossil fuel burning. But Robert J. Diaz, Professor of the Marine Science of
University of Gothenburg said that,"We could end up with no crabs, no shrimp and
no fish.” How important is the sea to human survival?
Supreme
Master Ching Hai : Well, it is as important as the forest to Earth and
the water. According to research, 50% of our Earth’s oxygen is provided by
microscopic sea plants, 50%. And now the dead zones in the oceans kept spreading
and increasing around the globe. Some were even there for many years, but we
have just found them recently. So, they cover at least like 95,000 square miles
for the one that we have discovered, with more not yet discovered even.
The
pollution from fertilizers, sewage and fossil burning fuel are to blame,
according to scientists. But even cage farming for salmon also cause dead zones,
as in the Big Glory Bay in New Zealand. They have discovered that it’s also been
a dead zone because of the caging in salmon farming. So, the area has begun to
recover after the salmon cages were removed, according to research and
documented by Diaz and Rosenberg of Swedish Gothenburg University. We will
provide you some websites for further info.
Right now, it's too much to read
here. We'll send it to you.
www.vims.edu/deadzone
www.serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/deadzone/index.html
www.disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceancolor/scifocus/oceanColor/dead_zones.shtml
Louise
(f): Fantastic. Actually, it's a very interesting way of looking at it,
that the sea is like our forest, our underwater forest. I've never really looked
at it that way. But if we talk about like the coral reefs, Alex Rogers, from the
Zoological Society of London writing in the Journal Science said that an
astonishing 33% of the world's reef building corals face extinction, mainly
because of overfishing and coastal development and pollution, with another 50%
hanging in the balance. And also a report from the World Resources
Institute
in 1998, suggested that 60% of the world's coral reefs are threatened by human
activity. What would be the effects if the coral reefs disappeared and what can
we do to prevent this from happening?
Supreme Master Ching Hai
: What would be the effects? Whatever is created there are good for us.
Now, the coral reefs are there for some reason. See? There are many factors that
affect coral reefs, like coastal development, water pollution, changing sea
water temperature because of global warming. So, global warming is the greatest
threat as it causes coral bleaching, or when temperature gets too high, and
the corals’ important symbiotic algae is lost and exposes their white skeleton,
and that's the sign of death for the coral colony.
As they are sensitive to the
environment, extremely slow in growing as well, some say that they grow only 30
centimeters in 1000 years, and they need special conditions to survive.
Therefore, some scientists predict that most of the coral reefs could disappear
in the near future if global warming increases. Scary, 10% lost just in the last
four years alone. Coral reefs are just like the forest on land. They are the
protectors of 100-plus countries’ coastlines against storm surges and
hurricanes.
They are the protectors. And they are also the supporters of
over 25% of all marine species. They are the medical treasure which is used in
many medicines like antihistamines, antibiotics, treating for asthma, heart
disease even, etc., etc. And plus more than 50% of new cancer drug research
relies on marine organisms. So you see how important it is. And there are many
more things that we have not discovered about the benefits of coral reef and
marine life.
Louise (f): So, we really do need to do
what we can to protect them?
Supreme Master Ching Hai :
Yes. We have to stop global warming, that's what.
Louise
(f): If we were to look at contaminates in fish, Supreme Master,
dolphin meat sold in Japan has high levels of mercury, methylmercury, DDT and
PCB's. One or more of these contaminates pollute almost all of the dolphin meat
for sale in Japan, with one sample having more than 1,600 times the maximum
permitted amount of mercury.
I can't believe that people are not being
informed of the levels of mercury in fish on food packaging but as it's even
been sold to pregnant women. Master Ching Hai, do you feel that government
should do more to inform people of these issues?
Supreme Master
Ching Hai : Yes, definitely. The European Union’s Food Safety Agency
has warned pregnant women to limit swordfish and tuna intake due to their high
mercury levels, which can cause brain damage in unborn babies. The United States
Environmental Agency also issued a similar warning. It is estimated 1 in 8
American women of child-bearing age has dangerous levels of mercury in their
blood.
Fifteen percent of babies in the United States in 2000, were exposed to
fatally high levels of the mercury, according to research conducted by an
international team of scientists in Japan in 1999.Dolphin meat is reported to be
also even disguised often as whale meat and is mostly contaminated. More than
91% of dolphin and whale samples tested exceed one or two pollutants. Other
research shows similar results that the dolphin meat are dangerous to mother and
fetus. And if mother is breastfeeding the child after consuming dolphin meat,
then the child also encounters danger.
Louise (f): Some
new research as well, Supreme Master, is that the mercury levels can actually
affect fertility too.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : Some
Japanese scientists, the one who were involved in this Japanese project, stated
that these products should be taken off the shelves immediately. And Dr. Palombi
of Harvard University gave the same advice to the Japanese government - that
they should ban dolphin fishing and they should ban dolphin meat
selling in
the market.
Louise (f): Speaking of fishing, Supreme
Master, I think we’ll move on to the overfishing. As fishing fleets expanded
through the late 1980s and as fish finding and harvesting technologies became
more efficient, the world’s fishes have systematically gone after their catch at
greater depths and in more remote waters. Over the past 50 years,
the
number of large predatory fish in the oceans has dropped by a startling 90%.
And according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, the 4 million
vessels that are scouring the world waters are at, or exceeding, the sustainable
yields of three-quarters of all oceanic fisheries. Master Ching Hai, if we keep
on this path, there will be nothing left in the sea. How can we stop this
nonsensical destruction of the only sea that we have?
Supreme
Master Ching Hai : We have to stop it somehow. Just stop the fishing.
The government has to forbid fishing because it’s too important to our survival
to delay any further. Not only is there overfishing and depleting of the marine
life, but there is also side killing. Like when the commercial long liners go
fishing, they normally target swordfish but then they’re killing tens of
thousands of sea turtles, by the way, and hundreds of thousands of sea birds and
millions of sharks every year.
This accidental killing is about 25% extra of
all global catch. In the New York Times on November 2006, there is an article
that says: “Global collapse of fish species.” will each,” we read, like,
Experts predicted that, “in its present pace more and more species will vanish
and the global marine ecosystem will collapse, .” possibly in mid-century. There
is more to this research. Please refer to the websites that we will provide for
further reference. To stop this destructive practice of fishing, the solution is
vegetarian diet, no fishy stuff in our meals. The sea offers us plenty of
better food choices; the wide varieties of super healthy and nutritious sea
plants. We can even live on it forever. We must protect a living and healthy
sea, as it relates to our living and healthy self. I think we cannot live
without the sea. Summer, imagine you have no beach to go, just to think about
that.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : If the sea is polluted
and dead in some way, where would you go?
Louise (f):
It’s so true. Supreme Master Ching Hai, as recent converts, both myself and the
Sandman, we would like to talk a little about health and the vegetarian diet as
you just mentioned.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : You mean
in the nutritional value?
Louise (f): Yes.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : You see, we can always be
assured that this peaceful diet is more than sound and for all around healthy
and intelligent life. Evidences are plenty from all aspects: physically,
mentally, emotionally. Here is some excerpt from the position paper on vegetarian diet published in the Journal
of the American Dietetic Association, June 2003. It is said: “It is the position
of the American Dietetic Association and dieticians of Canada that appropriately
planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate and provide
health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.
Vegetarians
have lower body mass indices (BMI) than non-vegetarians, lower rate of death
from heart disease, lower blood cholesterol, lower blood pressure, lower rate of
hypertension, as well Type 2 diabetes, prostate and colon cancer even.
Vegetarian diet offers lots of nutritional benefit including high levels of
fiber, magnesium, potassium, folates and antioxidants.” etc., etc. “Vegetarian
or vegan diet can meet all current recommendations of vital nutrients. Thus, the
well-planned vegetarian and vegan diet are appropriate for all stages of life,
including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence.” We will
give you some websites for further detailed information concerning this
question.
Louise (f):
Excellent! We will post that up on our own website for listeners to
check out. That kind of leads on to the next question, Supreme Master, that many
people are concerned they won’t be able to meet their nutritional needs on a
plant-based vegan or vegetarian diet. How could we be assured that a vegetarian
or vegan diet is sound?
Supreme Master Ching Hai : Yes,
I think we have covered that, by the way. Anyway, nowadays, we can always go
onto all kind of nutritional websites or medical websites in order to find
out more details and more convincing evidences about the fantastic, healthy and
nutritious vegetarian diet. There is no more doubt nowadays, we can always
verify with all kinds of experts and all kinds of scientific evidences all
point out that vegetarian diet is the best, the one and only that should be for
human, at least for human.
Louise (f): Supreme Master
if we look at obesity, experts are predicting that Ireland is on the verge of an
obesity crisis. Since 1990, the rate of obesity in women increased from 13% to
16% and men increased from 8% to 20%. Obesity in related issues cost the US
economy an estimated US$100 billion per year and Northern Ireland US$500 million
per year. How effective is a vegan diet in addressing obesity?
Supreme Master Ching Hai : How effective? Look at me
and look at many of our Association members. They all look very nicely
proportionate and healthy. And none of us are, are very overweight at all. Even
the one who just began vegetarian diet not long ago, they begin to balance their
weight very soon afterwards. And according to the American Dietetic Association
and dieticians of Canada again, they reviewed 20 scientific studies concerning
vegetarian and vegan diet and concluded that vegetarians were much less
likely to suffer obesity than a meat eater. And through research and
experiments, some of the doctors, like Dr. Dean
Ornish, M.D, and Dr.
Fuhrman, confirmed that a well-balanced, plant-based diets are highly
successful in taking weight off, and even keep it off! Because sometimes people
go on diet, they take some weight off and later, they gain more because they eat
more.
Louise (f): I’ve been there, Supreme Master.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : The psychological pressure on the people who go on diet to take weight off is tremendous. I understand that. They cannot do it; it’s against their nature. So, the vegetarian diet, you can just eat and then you just take your weight off naturally. And they say that it’s even better than gastric bypass surgery, and also improves health and helps prolong youthful look and vigor. So you can refer to the books like, “The Ornish Diet,” “Eat to Live,” and “Eat for Health” for more details. And we will provide you, of course, some more websites for your listeners.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : What can we do? They are
refugees, definitely. Because if we don’t have global warming, then no one would
be a climate refugee, would they? So, no one would like to be a refugee, in
this case. So now, first we can help them to get back on their feet, the one who
has means and power. We must consider the refugees’ status, legally, because
they are refugees by all means.
And by stopping global warming, we can help
reduce this refugees issue. I ask everyone from the governments to the citizens
to please imagine if that were yourself in the refugee’s situation, experiencing
all these troubles, - insecurities, hunger, lacking all comfort, humiliation,
undignified situation, uncertain of the morrows of your future and the future of
your helpless children. Just imagine it. Then try to solve this tragedy by
helping in whatever way we can. And above all, and most urgently of all, be veg,
go green to save the planet, to prevent such trauma and to build a bright future
for the world, for our co-citizens. Please see the following websites that I
provide for the concerned information.
Louise (f): It
seems quite clear with the FAO (UN Food and Agricultural Organization) Livestock’s Long Shadow report that humankind can no longer
continue its present ourse with the consumption of animal products. The
facts are there for us all to see. How can people get to see and research the
findings of the FAO? Do the general public have direct access to this
information?
Supreme Master Ching Hai : Yes, we can. We
can go to FAO.org and also SupremeMasterTV.com, and I’m sure that there are many more, to
download the reports. We will provide all other the websites also for you. The
FAO also estimates that an annual funding increase of US$24 billion to ease the
world hunger will be repaid fivefold in increased productivities in income in
return. And according to UNICEF, every 2.3 seconds a child dies from malnutrition, while 90% of
the world’s soy and 50% of the world’s grain and 85% of the world’s corn are fed
to livestock. And they keep breeding more and more. 25,000 people are killed
by hunger every day, more than war and AIDS and all the diseases combined. Of
course, we will give you more websites for detailed information.
Supreme Master Ching Hai : It’s very
sad. It’s very sad, Madame, very sad! We have to change. We have to change this
lifestyle of our world; we have to change, otherwise we’re not human beings, we
have to have compassion for others
Louise (f): Supreme
Master, we never have long enough to speak with you. But just quickly, I’m just
going to move to bees. In order for us to have fruits and vegetables, the
plants, crops and flowers must be pollinated. Without bees, 80% of fruits and
vegetables will disappear. Recently, the bee population has been reduced dramatically across the US and
Europe. What do you think is the cause of this and what can we do to keep our
bee population alive and healthy?
Supreme Master Ching Hai :
By using organic farming and eating organic food, we will help the bee
population. It’s reported that there are several causes for the bee’s decline,
like genetically modified crops, chemical pesticides, and other spray substances
for plants. Climate changes also affects the environmentally sensitive and
fragile bees.
References can be found from the recent German journal Der
Spiegel. Also, there’s a report by Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, the scientist of
Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific and the director of EcoNexus UK,
or from the Soy Soil Association, UK. The pesticide neonicotinoids are banned by
some EU (European Union) countries and may be banned throughout the EU
(European Union) in the near future by vote, to protect public safety and
wildlife from these dangerous chemicals, as Peter Melchett, director of the Soy
Soil Association stated. I will provide more websites for you.