These barbaric acts changed the world in countless ways. Steps must of course be taken quickly to defend against additional terrorism and to punish those who plan and carry out these crimes against humanity.

Professor Emeritus, Mathematics
College of Staten Island
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Staten Island, NY 10314 USA (718) 982-3621

Email address: Schwartz@postbox.csi.cuny.edu

In this context, it might be thought that other considerations, such as dietary choices, are inappropriate and even offensive. However, it is essential that these senseless acts of terrorism not further impede the
already fragile global efforts to cooperate in addressing the world's pressing social, economic, and environmental threats. Perhaps we can look beyond the horror and productively utilize our current feelings of vulnerability and sadness.

Although seldom discussed, animal-based diets and agriculture constitute what Jeremy Rifkin called "cold evil," a form of indirect, unconscious terrorism, which may also make future terrorism more likely. For a safer, more stable and sustainable world, it is essential that, along with other steps to defend against evil and irrational acts of terror, the effects of the mass production and widespread consumption of animal products be considered.

In 1992, over 1,670 scientists, including 104 Nobel laureates -- a majority of the living recipients of the Prizes in the sciences -- signed a "World Scientists' Warning To Humanity." Their introduction states:

Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.

The scientists' analysis discussed threats to the atmosphere, rivers and streams, oceans, soil, living species, and forests. Their warning: We the undersigned, senior members of the world's scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.

Many of the problems that the scientists are warning about, including hunger, water shortages, demand for sufficient energy, desertification, global climate change, and a culture of violence, are already having major negative effects and also have the potential of resulting in future acts of terrorism. Fortunately, these problems can be substantially alleviated through a shift to plant-based diets:
*The magnitude of world hunger is staggering: More than a billion people, over one out of 6 people in the world, are chronically hungry or suffer from malnutrition. Children are particularly victimized by malnutrition. Throughout the world, over 12 million children under the age of 5 die every year -about 34,000 each day -- from diseases brought on or complicated by malnutrition. Each year, almost 8 million children die before their first birthday, largely due to malnutrition. Malnourishment also causes listlessness and reduced capacity for learning and work, thus perpetuating the legacy of poverty.

Numerous factors, including rapidly increasing world population and affluence, environmental strains, climate changes, and significant decreases in clean water, arable land, fish catches, and land productivity all threaten the world's food security. Providing enough food for the world's rapidly increasing population will be a critical issue for many decades.

Extensive hunger and malnutrition in so many parts of the world make rebellion and violence more likely. Professor Georg Borgstrom, international expert on food science, fears that "the rich world is on a direct collision course with the poor of the world... We cannot survive behind our Maginot line of missiles and bombs. Unless the problem of global hunger is fully addressed soon, the outlook for global stability is very poor.

Land that grows potatoes, rice and other vegetables can support about 20 times as many people as land that produces grain-fed beef. Feeding grain to livestock wastes 90% of the protein, almost 100% of the carbohydrates, and 100% of the fiber of the grain. While grains are a rich source of fiber, animal products have no fiber at all. This evidence indicates that the food being fed to animals in the affluent nations could, if properly distributed, end both hunger and malnutrition throughout the world.

Unfortunately, the world is moving increasingly to animal-based diets as people in nations that have been becoming more affluent, such as China, India, and Japan, move up the food chain. Because of a shift toward meat from grain-fed animals, China shifted in 1995 from a grain exporter to a major grain importer. If this trend continues, it will have very serious implications for future food security.

* Due to heavy demand for water, there are serious shortages in about 80 countries (including Israel) which contain 40 percent of the world's population. According to a report released recently by Population Action International, over the next 25 years, the number of people facing chronic or severe water shortages could increase from 505 million to more than 3 billion. The report said water shortages would be worst in the Middle East and much of Africa. Globally, 2 billion people live in areas with chronic water shortages. A combination of population growth, drought, desertification, waste of water, and global warming is causing a serious water shortage in China that experts say could induce environmental and political crises. Officials are blaming drought for a 9.3 percent drop in the summer grain yield, and water rationing has been imposed on residents and industries in nearly 100 cities.

Once again, a shift toward vegetarianism can make a significant difference. The standard diet of a meat-eater in the United States requires 4,200 gallons of water per day (for animals' drinking water, irrigation of crops, meat processing, washing, cooking, etc.) A person on a purely vegetarian (vegan) diet requires only 300 gallons per day. Animal agriculture is the major consumer of water in the U.S. According to Norman Myers, author of Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management, irrigation, primarily to grow crops for animals, uses over 80 percent of U.S. water. The production of only one pound of edible beef in a semi-arid area such as California requires as much as 5,200 gallons of water, as contrasted with only 25 gallons or less to produce an edible pound of tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, or wheat. Newsweek reported in 1988 that "the water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer would float a (Naval) destroyer."

Mountains of manure produced by cattle raised in feedlots wash into and pollute streams, rivers, and underground water sources. U.S. livestock produce an astounding 1.4 billion tons of manure per year (this amount works out to almost 90,000 pounds per second!), or about 130 times the amount excreted by the U.S. human population Food geographer, Georg Borgstrom has estimated that American livestock contribute five times more organic waste to the pollution of our water than do people, and twice as much as does industry.

* About 70 percent of the world's 13.5 billion acres of agricultural dry lands -- almost 30 percent of the Earth's total land area -- is at risk of becoming desert. Over a billion people in 135 countries depend on this land for food. Loss of agricultural land as well as the destruction of other ecosystems cause an increase of migration into cities, where increasingly crowded conditions lead to disease, hunger, and other negative effects of poverty, including greater potential for crime and violence.

As in every other threat considered in this article, there is a dietary connection. Grazing animals have destroyed large areas of land throughout the world, with overgrazing having long been a prime cause of erosion. Over 60 percent of all U.S. rangelands are overgrazed, with billions of tons of soil lost each year. Cattle production is a prime contributor to every one of the causes of desertification: overgrazing of livestock, over-cultivation of land, improper irrigation techniques, deforestation, and prevention of reforestation. According to mathematician Robin Hur, nearly 6 billion of the 7 billion tons of eroded soil in the United States has been lost because of cattle and feed lot production.

* At current rates of destruction, the world's remaining rain forests will virtually disappear by about 2031. According to a study published in the journal Science, as little as 5 percent of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil may remain as pristine forest by 2020. Researchers fear that roads, new homes, logging, and oil exploration will devastate the 1.3 million-square-mile Amazon forest, which makes up 40 percent of the Earth's remaining tropical rainforest.

The burning of tropical forests releases tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and eliminates the ability of these trees to absorb carbon dioxide. Also, the highly mechanized agricultural sector uses an enormous amount of fossil fuel to produce pesticides, chemical fertilizer, and other agricultural resources, and this also contributes to carbon dioxide emissions. Cattle emit methane as part of their digestive process, as do termites who feast on the charred remains of trees that were burned to create grazing land and land to grow feed crops for farmed animals. The large amounts of petrochemical fertilizers used to produce feed crops create significant quantities of nitrous oxides. Likewise, the increased refrigeration necessary to prevent animal products from spoiling adds chlorofluorocarbons to the atmosphere.

Now, consider the opportunity that a slaughterhouse provides to a bio-terrorist. US slaughterhouses have a very large turnover of undocumented aliens. It would be relatively easy for a bio-terrorist to enter the country legally or otherwise, join the slaughterhouse staff, and slip a powerful pathogen into a vat of ground meat destined for hamburgers or hot dogs (frequently eaten uncooked). The culprit would be long out of the country before the contaminated product reaches supermarket shelves and thousands of his victims begin dying. Anyone really concerned with anthrax or other form of bio-terrorism would be well advised to lay off meat and poultry for a while.

As a result, there is a scientific consensus that the extensive use of antibiotics to produce meat and other animal products, along with their over-use in medicine, has increased resistance among bacteria and jeopardized human health by causing diseases that are difficult or impossible to cure. For example, in 1997, the World Health Organization called for a ban on the routine use of antibiotics in livestock feed. In 1998, the journal Science called the meat industry "the driving force behind the development of antibiotic resistance in certain species of bacteria that cause human disease," and later that year, the Center for Disease Control blamed the use of antibiotics in livestock feed for the emergence of salmonella bacteria resistant to five different antibiotics. Joshua Lederberg, M.D., a Nobel Laureate, stated "we're running out of bullets for dealing with a number of these infections. Patients are dying because we no longer in many cases have antibiotics that work."

* Another benefit of a shift toward plant-based diets is a reduction in the current widespread violence in the world. Presently 10 billion animals in the US alone and 45 billion animals worldwide are cruelly treated on "factory farms" and then slaughtered for consumption. Many practices are particularly shocking: the force-feeding of huge amounts of grains to ducks and geese to produce pate de foie gras; the raising of veal calves who are taken away from their mothers almost immediately after birth, and are kept in narrow pens, where they are denied exercise, and fed a diet deficient in iron and other essential nutrients; the killing of over 250 million male chicks immediately after birth because they can't lay eggs and have not been genetically programmed to produce much meat. There are documented studies that violence towards animals by children is a strong predictor of violent and criminal behavior in theadults those children grow up to be.