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Indutrial Animal Agriculture - part of the poverty problem (2007) [WSPA] |
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| 31st May 07, World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) | | | The research studied the exponential growth of industrial animal agriculture in developing countries, threatening the sustainability of both rural populations and traditional food production systems. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa will be the world’s leading producers of animal products by 2020, with industrial animal agriculture likely to be the predominant production method. With little regulation currently in place to control the impacts of industrial animal agriculture, the results for the development of communities are of great concern.
Industrial animal agriculture has historically been promoted by some international organisations, development agencies and national governments due to the – now discredited – belief that the growth generated through increased agricultural production would “trickle down” to benefit those suffering from poverty and hunger. But research has shown that, far from making poverty history, industrial animal agriculture forms part and parcel of the poverty problem.
Industrial animal agriculture is bad news for animal welfare and bad news for the poor in developing countries.
In developing countries, industrial animal agriculture devastates the livelihoods of local farmers, destroying rural structures and communities; its inefficient use of food sources and production, together with its dependence on imports and technology, makes food supplies insecure; and its significant environmental and health costs are borne by the countries involved, rather than by the often foreign-owned corporations profiting from the goods.
The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals include halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and in hunger by 2015. The profits of industrial animal farming are concentrated in the hands of a small number of major commercial interests, and its products go to feed well-off urban populations. The only impacts of industrial animal agriculture on poor communities are detrimental ones.
This report is a call to action for international development agencies and NGOs to tackle the problem of industrial animal agriculture as an integral part of their poverty alleviation work. It is a call for them to advise policy makers to allocate future support to humane and sustainable agriculture, rather than to industrial animal agriculture, which undermines the elimination of poverty and hunger in developing countries. http://www.wspafarmwelfare.org/resources/WSPA_Poverty_Report_English.pdf
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