REPORT  &  LAWSUIT AGAINST 46 STATES

 

1st Liveable Futures Report

FOOD OF MASS DESTRUCTION

HOW EXPLOITING ANIMALS DRIVES US TO EXTINCTION

PLANT-BASED DIET AS GLOBAL EMERGENCY

CREATING AN INTEGRATIVE FRAME FOR ACTION

>>>1st-LIVEABLE-FUTURES-REPORT__Updated-version-1.1—Dec-2023

(For 2024 extensions, appendixes, talks, and summary in Spanish visit here)

Peer Review:   Fernández-Mateo, J. 2024. “Quot”;. [Review of “1st Liveable Futures Report: Food of Mass Destruction: How Exploiting Animals Drives Us to Extinction”] Journal of Posthumanism, vol. 4, no. 1, Apr. 2024, pp. 33-38, doi:10.33182/joph.v4i1.3246. https://journals.tplondon.com/jp/article/view/3246

Contact: jaimedelval@metabody.eu

Citation: del Val, Jaime. 2023. 1st Liveable Futures Report: Food of Mass destruction: how exploiting animals drives us to extinction. Plant-based diet as global emergency. Creating an integrative frame of action. Madrid: Reverso/Metabody Institute. Online: https://metabody.eu/1st-liveable-futures-report/

THE REPORT EXPOSES THE MANY FARCES OF COP28

Not only is it done in a Petrostate, directed by a “sultan of oil”, and who will take advantage of the meeting to do business, but THE TWO ESSENTIAL FACTORS OF THE CRISIS ARE SILENCED:

1. The main problem of the climate and biodiversity crisis is not fossil fuels but FOOD INDUSTRY OF ANIMAL ORIGIN, which is not even talked about.

2. The main solution to fossil fuels is not renewables but the RADICAL DECREASE IN CONSUMPTION, which is also not talked about.

SUMMARY

The major source of our epochal crisis is largely silenced and ignored: it is the FOOD industry, indeed animal-based food: that pillar of human expansion, a taboo that no one is to question. Animal Exploitation Food Industry (AEFI) is the major source of the environmental crisis and of most human health problems, and is the most pressing ethical issue and crime in humanity’s history: a holocaust of 100 trillion animals -each of them sentient and unique individuals- estimated for the past 100 years, a massive but hidden system of animal abuse which is however the very foundation of human progress, especially in rich democratic societies, but also the major source of their imminent collapse.

Historically, farming is also the origin of most of human miseries and inequalities and inaugurated an era of exploitation and expansion that has collapsed the Earth system and whose catastrophic event horizon we are entering right now. Environmentally it is the major source of the current mass extinction that has brought to end possibly one million species while another million are threatened now, each of them equally important and unique, while disrupting the biosphere’s cycles to a degree where liveable conditions for most known life could no longer exist very soon. Food systems are also the major source of climate change, along with fossil fuels, and over 80% of their impacts correspond to animal-based food.

For decades scientists and institutions have been claiming the urgency to shift to plant-based diets, especially in view of the expected exponential growth of consumption of animal products till 2050, that further raises core food security alarms. However the issue is utterly neglected and silenced by governments, industries and media, and unknown to populations.

Hence, two Spanish non-profit organisations based in Spain, Reverso & Metabody Institute for Liveable Futures, under direction of philosopher and activist Jaime del Val  and as part of the Liveable Futures initiative, have published a report putting together this extensive evidence from over 120 international high-profile studies. Spain is particularly threatened both by climate change and by a boom of farming.

At the same time a lawsuit is being launched at the European Court of Human Rights against all 46 states of the ECHR for violation of fundamental rights by promoting the most destructive industries on earth, hiding their impact from public discourse, and not taking any measure in relation to them, especially in face of the climate emergency and the extreme urgency to act dramatically before 2030.

Core Facts

  1. Livestock, and animal-based food, accounts for more GHG emissions than all transport;
  2. is the major driver of global deforestation, mass extinctions and loss of ecosystems, with 41% of all tropical deforestation for beef alone, half the surface of the Netherlands per  year, 85% of it in the Amazon, where for each burguer 15 trees are estimated to be cut;
  3. uses 80% of global agriculture and one third of the earth’s surface (like Africa and Brazil together);
  4. uses near to 70% of global freshwater and is the major driver of global water depletion and pollution,
  5. and thus of human inequality, malnutrition, poverty, migration and conflict in a scenario of desertification, where crops for livestock, for meat consumption in richer countries, are grown in poor ones, where populations don’t have access to them;
  6. agriculture for feeding animals uses 80% of global fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals,
  7. is the major source of earth pollution, and the major cause for the 700 dead ocean zones due to fertilizer and slurry pollution,
  8. consumes half the global fish production being major driver of overfishing,  and destruction of marine ecosystems and of the increase in fish farming, which also has grave environmental health and animal welfare impacts.
  9. Animal exploitation and its associated land use is the source of nearly all pandemics in history, and of nearly all zoonotic diseases which are 75% of all human diseases,
  10. livestock uses 80% of antibiotic use and is hence themajor responsible of antimicrobial resistance that will cause expected 10 million deaths per year in 2050;
  11. animal-based food is the major source of non-communicable diseases and premature human deaths, far above tobacco, through cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, obesity and many other diseases, with unhealthy diets with excess of animal-based food and lack of plant-based food causing 11.5 million deaths per year, with hundreds of millions of humans under chronic medical treatment, so that while animal agriculture causes malnutrition in poor countries it causes an obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart stroke epidemic in rich ones;
  12. and it is the absolutely major source of systemic animal abuse, accounting for approx. 99% of the animals subjected to cruelty, exploitation, extermination and radical systemic attacks against animal welfare, with 80 billion animals exploited, mutilated, and slaughtered per year on land, and ten times more in aquaculture and fishing, altogether estimated in over 40 trillion in the past 100 years, over 100 trillion including fishing, especially in richer countries with greater percentage of industrial farming, aquaculture, animal agriculture, and fishing,
  13. a reality that is protected by secrecy laws and governments, ensuring the complicity of populations.
  14. Millions of the people work in this industry are under exploitation and slavery, while indigenous people get killed or expropriated to deforest the Amazon for feeding cattle.
  15. Meat production and consumption is expected to double by 2050, which is incompatible with a liveable future and with food security.

 

We show evidence of the abundant consensus in the scientific community, the United Nations and other organizations, that global reduction of animal products in food is a primordial measure for avoiding a climate catastrophe, for regenerating the Earth’s ecosystems whose functions are core to life, for avoiding millions of human deaths, for ensuring food security and for undoing the major historical source of systemic animal abuse and its effects on human health and planetary health, its central role in the crisis; we also show the well known scientific consensus that massive action is needed before 2030, multiplying current efforts by 5 or more, if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe, after 5 decades of inaction by  states.

We show evidence of how this core epochal problem is globally silenced, the true ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, with a policy and awareness VACUUM, effectively hidden behind the secrecy of the animal farming industry, protected and promoted by governments, ensuing in unawareness and complicity of populations. States already commit grave and criminal irresponsibilities in relation to inaction in reductions of GHG emissions through fossil fuels, and to their promotion of a growth economy that has been deounced as suicidal since 1972. But in relation to the food industry it is as if no discussions on climate and biodiversity crisis had ever taken place, and consumption of meat is expected to double till 2050, an expectation that, as we show, profoundly threatens liveable boundaries on Earth as well as food security.

Hence we claim that States are committing grave violations of fundamental and human rights, and crimes against humanity, which are to exponentially increase in coming daces if no immediate action is taken, by actively promoting, concealing and not taking any effective measures against the most destructive industries, which currently threaten a liveable future on earth.

We demand the immediate coordination of a global emergency as issue number 1 in the global agenda:

  1. shifting to healthy sustainable diets away from animal products,
  2. immediately ending harmful subsidies that violate the UNCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement,
  3. reducing food waste and overconsumption in all areas including fuels,
  4. protecting natural ecosystems,
  5. towards deep systemic shifts, away from unsustainable growth in all aspects, as requested by UN,
  6. while ensuring public awareness,
  7. empowering people for change,
  8. stopping harmful subsidies,
  9. subsidising the transition,
  10. and ending the secrecy of the industries.

 

We Support the fundfuturefood.org initative by Replanet, sign the petition in the link.