Life and Times: The Annual Vegan Fair (2026)

The Life and Times column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Vegan Fair I went to near where I live was quite an event. People milled around outside the hall where it was being held and on either side of the entrance there were queues at the two food-to-go stalls, one of them offering Persian vegan mezze and the other vegan American-style burgers. I’d arranged to meet my friend Jane, an enthusiastic anti-vivisection campaigner, and when I arrived, she was already outside the hall handing out leaflets and asking people for petition signatures. I greatly admire her dedication and share her concern for the suffering that vast numbers of animals are subjected to in the millions of experiments on them every year – many for no faintly useful purpose. And I’m sympathetic to the vegan cause more generally and to those who put the case for it, though I also think that such things as the food people eat and the clothes they wear must in the end be a matter of personal choice.

Entrance to the hall itself was free and the place was packed. There were stalls and tables of various kinds selling a variety of different types of food as well as jewellery, clothes and ornaments. People seemed most interested in the food and I suppose I was too. What caught my eye among all else was, of all things, a stall offering a wide selection of different types of olive. I liked the look of one particular kind and the young woman at the table selling them told me they were ‘a special olive’. So I asked for some. They turned out be a special price. Too late. I should have asked about that first. But never mind.

Later on, I sat down with Jane and one of her fellow campaigners at the large dining table in the centre of the hall. We’d bought coffee and snacks and, as we ate and talked, I also began looking at the various leaflets and flyers scattered across the table. One in particular caught my eye. It was headed ‘Socialists for Animal Liberation (SAL)’. I read what it had to say and was definitely impressed. One of its paragraphs went as follows: ‘Capitalism is a highly destructive system that drives inequality, war, famine and environmental collapse in order to concentrate wealth and extreme power in the hands of the few. The need for a new economic system is clear. But if we want a future that’s sustainable and one that is not predicated on violence or exploitation, then we must reject capitalism and simultaneously reject all forms of animal exploitation’. It went on to outline aspects of the suffering inflicted on animals by factory farming, adding that ’no amount of suffering is too much for a system which cares only about maximising profit’ and concluding that ‘a post-capitalist society will inherently end the exploitation of animals’.

Later, I used the email address on it to write for further information, outlining what it seemed to me SAL had in common with the Socialist Party but also mentioning that many socialists could only see decent treatment for animals as a pipe dream under a system that set so little store by decent treatment for humans. I amplified this by saying that I thought we should therefore put our energies into campaigning for ‘system change’ (ie a new democratic, marketless, leaderless world system of production for use, without buying and selling or wages and salaries and based on free access to all goods and services) rather than focusing on issues within capitalism that we might consider ‘immediate’ and ‘priority’. I expressed the view that to do otherwise could only have the effect of postponing real system change until the first of never. I nevertheless stressed my personal sympathy with the concerns of the group and asked for more information about SAL and its activities.

I got a quick and friendly reply from their organiser, Claire, together with a copy of the SAL manifesto, which, as well as calling for involvement in ongoing issues of ‘animal rights’, stated: ‘With its emphasis on ending profit-based relationships, on social ownership and a planned economy, SAL remains convinced that it is only in the context of a socialist society that animals will achieve true liberation’. I couldn’t disagree with this or with their statement that they welcomed ‘any reduction, big or small, in the abuse that animals suffer’. Claire also invited me to the group’s next online meeting the following week, which I attended and found interesting, even if I wasn’t convinced that everyone there had a clear notion of what socialism meant. Since then, I’ve been invited to other meetings, one of which was a ‘reading group’ to discuss an article entitled ‘The Case for Socialist Veganism’ from an American journal, Monthly Review. I wasn’t able to attend but, since I’d a written a piece on that very article in a recent issue of the Socialist Standard, I drew Claire’s attention to it and she replied that she would circulate it among the group. I don’t know if she did and, if so, what they made of it, but I couldn’t help thinking that it might well be submerged in discussion of what could be done to alleviate the plight of animals here and now.

Perhaps that’s being unfair, but when, at the vegan fair that day, I drew the attention of Jane, my anti-vivisectionist friend, to the SAL leaflet, she showed little interest, focused as she was on her own immediate mission. And I couldn’t help feeling that, despite the SAL group’s stated desire for a ‘post-capitalist’ society, their overwhelming focus too would be on the various reforms they were chasing in the current system and which, even if achieved, would bring us no nearer the aim stated in their leaflet of ‘a future that works for people, planet and animals’.

Howard Moss

You can have your veggies and eat them too ! (2006)

From Issue 20 of the World Socialist Review

The practice of vegetarianism — or non-practice of animarianism* — is not new to humanity. However, one could argue that it has never been more important. World hunger, inhumane and filthy methods of meat production, and the spread of livestock diseases both new and old are forcing many who would never consider abandoning sinking their teeth into a steaming hunk of flesh to give the idea a second thought. There are many kinds of vegetarians, ranging from impostors to the almost monastic avoiders of any food product of animal origin. This lifestyle is admittedly difficult; from meat-lover’s restaurant menus to relatives who have to cook me something extra (and have my eternal gratitude), to the usually absurdly high-priced products offered in the supermarkets.

I will try to show how vegetarianism in socialism makes sense and pass along some of the general benefits of the lifestyle, without attempting to convert you. There are people and organizations out there that can help you if you have questions or want more details on the nutritional aspects of meat-free lifestyles.

One of the concerns about meatless diets is protein. Actually, a balanced Western diet includes four times the recommended amount of protein for an average healthy adult, so leaving out the meat isn’t going to kill you. In fact, I don’t track where my protein comes from, and I sort of don’t care, because I know that there are sufficient quantities in many plant-based foods, the chief being the soybean. This is exactly where the herbivores get it and they do just fine.

Incidentally, this introduces an area where I think vegetarianism and socialism cross — at the cessation of the waste of matter and energy involved in transforming plants into meat. A good rule of thumb to estimate this waste is the “ten percent pyramid,” with humans on the top and the little greenies on the bottom. Only ten percent of each pound of “eaten” is successfully converted into “eater.” The rest is waste in the form of uneatable or indigestible matter and heat energy lost during chemical conversion. Therefore, it takes about ten pounds of plants to produce one pound of animal, and ten pounds of animal to produce one pound of human or other carnivore.

A Happy and Livable Planet

A little math tells me that if I was a carnivore, it would take 250 x 10 x 10 = 25,000 pounds of vegetable matter to produce a meat-eating version of me, but only 2,500 pounds to produce me as an herbivore. Abandoning meat as a food source can optimally increase the nutritive capacity of agriculture ten times, thus reducing our dependence on it! When socialism rolls around, the elimination of waste and hunger will surely be both primary goals for the creation of a happy and livable planet.

A socialist future like the one I dream about will also have a lot less pain and suffering than the current offering. I’ve done my homework, and without getting into details, I can say that there is a lot of that going on in the meat industries. Plants, in contrast, don’t feel pain. They cannot for the obvious reason that they do not have brains, or any nervous systems at all. And no, the cows and pigs are not going to reproduce out of control if we stop using them for food.

There are environmental impacts as well, the most serious of which is the pollution caused by the wastes of animals grown for food. This has to go somewhere — and usually, untreated livestock waste is dumped into the nearest body of water, unlike human waste, which is in most cases required by law to be treated before release into the environment. The impacts of farm animal waste are significant — I’m not going to quote statistics, so you can research this if you want.

The impact of fertilizer is even greater; however, this problem does not completely go away if meaty diets eventually disappear. Fertilizer will still be necessary to grow crops, but mindful socialists will not be forced by the pressure of the market to produce the most, the biggest, and the best — only that which is needed. They can take care that the effects of the fertilizer they do use are reduced and monitored by careful farming practices, efforts made easier by a cooperative agricultural model and not a competitive one. Meat processing facilities have environmental impacts as well. Since it seems impossible for capitalism to maintain clean and efficient slaughterhouses, those places remain vectors for disease and contamination. Shockumentaries still pop on the tube every once in awhile, reminding us, however ineffectively, how filthy meat processing actually is.

In sum, the benefits of a vegetarian society can go hand in hand with the desires of a socialist society. A widespread vegetarian lifestyle can play a significant role in reducing energy demands, pain and suffering, and the negative effects of agriculture on the environment. The environmental and medical impacts of a meat-centered culture are well documented even if they are generally ignored; and even though the psychological impacts may be harder to measure, they still contribute, in my opinion, to making the world a little more violent than it needs to be.

Tony Pink

* This is not an actual scientific term, but then neither am I.

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The watch is a limited edition of only 150 pieces that’s already being delivered to customers. The retail price is $330,000…prices on the secondary market will get a bit bonkers. 

[HODINKEE]

Pakistan’s claims to all of Kashmir are driven by the region’s hydrological importance, its majority-Muslim population, and the military’s interest in rallying the nation behind it on these grounds. 

[Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter]

‘That’s where I sleep, under that bridge’ he says, pointing to a nearby cluster of tents beneath a highway overpass. ‘And the dogs are up there with their own private pool. They probably eat more in a day than we do in a month’. 

[NPR]

Underage workers, in some cases, have been hired to kill poultry flocks, handle dead carcasses and clean industrial poultry farms. Workers sometimes lack personal protective equipment or receive damaged gear, despite the risk of the virus jumping from animals to people. Dealing with a federal backlog, some farms have used killing methods considered inhumane, because it can be quicker and cheaper. ‘The biggest factor in agricultural safety is the urgency’ said Bethany Alcauter, director of research and public health for the National Center for Farmworker Health, a Texas-based nonprofit that advocates for worker safety and health. ‘Everything has to get done in a short amount of time, and that really can be problematic because there’s not the same amount of time to adequately train workers’.

[truthdig]

‘Trump’s view of a man at a desk moving pieces of the economy around like rooks and pawns on a chessboard is what socialism is all about—though the old tyrants in Moscow at least had the humility to assume that a committee of experts would be necessary to manage the economy according to ‘scientific‘ principles or at least the guile to pretend that they believed it, whereas Trump apparently has swallowed his own silly god-man horsepucky, being, as he is, an ass of exceptional asininity’. 

[MEDIAITE]

On July 28, 2024, Venezuelans turned out to vote in large numbers despite more than a decade of systematic repression and human rights violations under President Nicolás Maduro. Hours after polls closed, the Electoral Council declared that Maduro had been re-elected, with over 51 percent of the vote. The United Nations Electoral Technical Team and the Carter Center, which observed the elections, said the process lacked transparency and integrity, and questioned the declared result. The Carter Center said that the precinct-level tally sheets published by the opposition, which seemed to indicate that opposition candidate Edmundo González had won, were reliable and ‘authentic’. The Electoral Council failed to release the official tally sheets and did not conduct the required audits or citizen verification processes mandated by law. Thousands of protesters took to the streets in demonstrations, most of them peaceful, demanding a transparent and fair counting of the votes. They were met with brutal repression.

[HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Life and Times: Veganuaries – do they work? (2025)

The Life and Times column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is veganism weird? That’s the question the organisation behind Veganuary asked recently on their website as they urged people to go vegan for January and then, if possible, to carry on with it forever. Of course, their answer was no, it isn’t weird. In fact, they said, it’s ‘part of something huge’. And they had various celebrities on their site backing them, eg Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Eilish, Chris Packham, Sarah Pascoe. Their statement of intent was: ‘Our vision is simple; we want a vegan world. A world without animal farms and slaughterhouses. A world where food production does not decimate forest, pollute rivers and oceans, exacerbate climate change, and drive wild animal populations to extinctions’.

Animal welfare

This took me back many years to when I was a student and anything but a vegan or even vegetarian. I remembered being openly (and immaturely) contemptuous of a fellow student who was vegetarian. Little did I know that many years later I myself would decide to go vegetarian and then a long time after that – fairly recently in fact – vegan.

How did that happen? Well, I became a vegetarian when I found the idea of eating the flesh of another sentient being too difficult. Later – much later – when a vegan friend suggested I attend an online talk by a leading advocate of plant-based eating, the suffering dairy farming brought to animals was also brought home to me and I saw no alternative but to go the whole hog and move to veganism. The speaker, Dr Klaper, described as ‘an internationally recognized clinician, teacher and speaker on diet and health’, told us he had himself grown up on a dairy farm in the USA and that seemed to make his talk on ‘The Most Powerful Strategy for Healing People and the Planet’ all the more authentic. I also found it impressive in that he avoided being openly proselytising, simply sticking to simple facts in three key areas: animal cruelty, human health, and the environment. While the animal cruelty area was the one of most immediate interest to me, I also appreciated the case he put forward in the other two, even if I could think of some counter-arguments from opponents.

Veganism effective?

But what about Veganuary? It’s certainly possible that, if it does result in more people going vegan or vegetarian on a permanent basis or at least eating less meat or fish, it might lead to a reduction in the cruelty suffered by animals. But would it do much to lessen the hold of animal agriculture over the world’s food supply and reduce the raising and slaughtering of vast number of animals almost everywhere An argument often heard that says it wouldn’t, because the relative monopoly over food production held by a small number of big producers means that, even if they respond to a ‘market’ need to produce vegan ‘alternatives’ (as some of them are in fact doing), the effect of this will just be to increase their profits and investment power, so allowing them to produce meat and milk products more cheaply and more enticingly than before and thereby potentially increase animal suffering and exploitation.

And would an increase in veganism do much to solve the climate and environmental problems that the current system’s unbridled quest for ‘growth’ and profit has brought about? Some of the effects of what is happening were outlined in a recent article for the Earth/Food/Life project by Vicky Bond, animal welfare scientist and president of the US-based Humane League. She wrote:

‘Factory farming touches every aspect of our planet, from emitting massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to contaminating the groundwater, rivers, lakes, and streams we rely on for fresh water. Factory farms house animals in crowded and often filthy conditions, subjecting millions of cows, chickens, and pigs to the worst forms of abuse for the entirety of their short lives. Driven by the demand for cheap eggs, meat, and dairy, the animal agriculture industry has disastrous consequences for the planet’.

She went on to reveal that in 2024 animal agriculture accounted for almost a third of fresh water used globally and that, every day in the US, it withdrew 2 billion gallons of water from freshwater resources. One of the reasons she gave for this was the large quantities of water used by slaughterhouses both in electrified stun baths and in scalding tanks for feathering chickens. She went on: ‘Because this method of slaughter is so terrifying for chickens, they also use vast amounts of water to clean feces and vomit from the chickens’ bodies afterwards’ (tinyurl.com/5yz7crxf).

Feeding the beast

Yet it is clear that, even if there were a significant reduction in meat-eating and so in animal agriculture, as Bond would like, the environment would continue to be polluted and the climate would keep on warming owing to the demands of the economic system we live under, that untameable ‘beast’ of production for profit. Faced with the system’s need to feed the beast, our food choices would do little to contribute to stopping or reversing ecological deterioration or global warming.

It is decades too late now for me to apologise to that fellow student for ridiculing his choice of vegetarianism. Of course, I would if I could, since I feel that in a sense that we are ‘on the same side’. But, having said that, nothing in the Socialist Party’s case for a moneyless, marketless society of free access and voluntary cooperation demands adherence to any particular kind of diet. That is, and will always be, a matter of personal choice. But the fact is that, choice of diet apart, the Earth has sufficient resources to feed (and house and clothe) all its inhabitants to a highly comfortable level a number of times over, once we, the human species, decide to put our natural capacity for cooperation and collaboration to full use and apply those resources to make sure that all – whether they choose to be vegan, vegetarian or anything else – have enough healthy food to eat and the certainty of a decent, secure life. Failing this, under the existing worldwide system of production for profit and buying and selling, those who do not have money to buy will go hungry, very many more will lead insecure and highly stressed existences, human health will not be well safeguarded, and the ecosystem will continue to be in imminent danger of collapse.

Howard Moss

Not—so—bon appetit (1989)

From the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

One thing is clear in all the fuss and confusion about salmonella in eggs, listeria in cheese and BSE in beef: the statements of, and advice from, ministers have not been fit for human consumption. There is nothing new in that: at the time when the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl passed over Britain, letting fall its lethal chemicals with the rain onto the sheep of North Wales and Cumberland, the then Minister of Agriculture was self-sacrificially emphatic about how harmless it was. He declared that he was going to spend that week-end “enthusiastically" eating British lamb. So far he has not grown two heads, but evidence has emerged that the meat in those parts was dangerous to eat then and will remain so years after the fall-out.

Although the most recent row became public with Edwina Currie's famous remark about how widespread salmonella is in egg production, that was by no means the beginning of the affair. Currie's reputation for valuing career-sustaining self publicity over facts made her vulnerable to the kind of assault which the farming interests launched on her. When we saw TV pictures of adorably fluffy chicks on their way to being gassed because of her ill-considered words, her fate was sealed.

But anyone with the most cursory acquaintance with what passes for farming and methods of the food industry had known for a long time about the active threats to health which they represented. There has been no shortage of information, available to anyone who wanted it, about the effects on cattle and on the people who eat beef of pumping the poor beasts full of hormones, not to cure them of some disease but to make them more copious producers of milk and beef. Yet another hormone — bovine somatropin — is now under test, although an unusually sensitive National Farmers' Union seems to be opposed to its use, presumably because they are anxious to avoid more bad publicity for their members.

Battery hens — quite apart from the sickening conditions in which they spend their brief, wretched lives — have long been known to be a source of salmonella poisoning, made worse by the fact that they have commonly been fed on the already diseased remains of slaughtered hens. That is why there have been warnings, albeit muted, about the need to cook chickens thoroughly and to avoid re-heating them.

So why didn't the government simply publicise the whole issue, a long time ago? Why didn't they tell us not to touch any intensively reared meat, or eggs from battery hens, or soft cheese? Or, more effective, why didn't they rush through parliament some sort of legislation to outlaw the production methods which cause the illnesses?

We saw the answers to these questions in the Currie affair. Intensive food production was developed because it is more profitable than the old, slower, less certain methods. The big drugs companies have enormous investments tied up in the production of the chemicals which the farmers shove into their animals. If enough people become scared of buying the food, demand for it can collapse to the point at which it becomes unprofitable to produce it. That may save a few lives and prevent a lot of very distressing sickness but it would play havoc with the profits of the farmers and the drug companies and that is not what the government is there for. Governments exist, not to look after the wellbeing of what is called the consumer — workers who spend their wages on the things they need to re-produce their energies — but to protect the profits of the class who own the means of production, which in this case means the farming industry. the food production firms and the drug companies.

That is why the first official reaction to the slightest breath of truth about something like salmonella in eggs is to rush to conceal the facts. If public pressure becomes so fierce that some of the facts must be allowed out they will often be so mangled and restricted as to be unreconcilable with the truth. This stubborn rearguard action can go on for a very long time, while workers endure painful and possibly fatal illnesses because of their ignorance of the facts.

The great food scandal brings us once again up against the reality that capitalism puts profits before people. Currie's big mistake was that, while she so ardently supports this social system, she allowed herself to voice a passing doubt about the effects of this principle. The penalty she paid, was a lot less distressing than what was endured by those who experienced what it meant from the business end of a sick-bed.

Life and Times: Lifestyle choices: does it make a difference? (2024)

The Life and Times column from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’re often told that we can help to change things or at least move in the right direction by each of us making changes in our personal lifestyle. We’re encouraged for example to make sure we know where our food is grown, how ‘sustainable’ its production and distribution methods are, and, if possible, to ‘buy local’. The idea is that our food buying choices will help to reduce carbon emissions and contribute to the battle against ecological deterioration and global warming. It’s also suggested that more radical lifestyle choices like vegetarianism or veganism can play a part in this by freeing up for direct food production land currently used for crops to feed the vast number of animals raised and slaughtered everywhere in the world.

This was the theme of a recent ‘opinion’ piece in one of the website bulletins from the Scientific American magazine which regularly arrive in my email inbox and usually contain items which are both interesting and thought-provoking. This particular piece, written by Sarah C. Hull, assistant professor of cardiology at the Yale School of Medicine, was entitled ‘A Meatless Diet is Better for You – and the Planet’ . Its summary states that ‘vegetarian and especially vegan diets can promote better health, help mitigate climate change and reduce inhumane factory farming’ and it puts forward various, seemingly plausible arguments against certain commonly held beliefs about diet, for example that plant-based food does not contain enough protein and iron for adequate nourishment and that dairy products are necessary to obtain enough dietary calcium. It then goes on to talk about health benefits of a non-meat or low-meat diet referring to scientific evidence that points to a significantly lower risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Further arguments are then presented regarding the inevitable cruelty to animals involved in factory farming, the risk of epidemics or pandemics associated with the overcrowding of livestock, and the often poor conditions of work for the human beings themselves involved in this activity. Finally the point is made that meat consumption contributes significantly to climate change through deforestation and methane emissions, with food systems making up a third of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity (tinyurl.com/2p9dtht6), and animal-based foods contributing twice the emissions of plant-based foods (tinyurl.com/bde8nzs6). Personal dietary carbon emissions, it concludes, can be reduced by 30 percent with a vegetarian diet and by up to 85 per cent with a vegan one.

So do we all go vegetarian or vegan? It sounds a good idea to me personally, but thinking about it carefully, I can’t avoid the question of how much difference it would really make within the confines of the buying and selling system we all live in. Professor Hull clearly thinks it would make a difference. She talks about the need for people to adopt at least a ‘flexitarian approach to meal planning that de-centers meat as the focal point of meals’ and to consider that ‘even modest reductions in meat consumption and progress toward a more plant-forward diet can yield significant health and environmental benefits.’ She also quotes from the 2019 EAT-Lancet Commission report on ‘globally sustainable diets’ which states: ‘Food is the single strongest lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on Earth’.

Yet while such choices might indeed lead to different methods and types of food production, reduce the mass slaughter of living creatures and also have some impact on climate change, how much difference would they actually make to the day-to-day problems faced by many millions of people throughout the world? I’m thinking here about such problems as poverty, homelessness or precarious housing, and, above all, the need for the vast majority of us to sell our energies to an employer for a wage day in day out or find ourselves without the means to live decently. What I’m saying is whatever the method of production or the goods produced, so long as production takes place with a view to goods being sold on the market and maximising profit and people needing money to buy those things, we will still have the system we call capitalism and all the problems and contradictions it throws up. The major contradiction is that the means do actually exist to sustain all the world’s people at a decent level several times over in food and other essentials and this without polluting the environment or changing the climate. And this is the case whether we are meat eaters or go vegan. Yet, under the capitalist system of production for profit and buying and selling, those who do not have money to buy will go hungry, many more will lead insecure and highly stressed existences, human health will not be safeguarded, and the ecosystem will continue to be in imminent danger of collapse.

To be fair, Professor Hull’s apparent solution to this is not just lifestyle changes by individuals but also – and more importantly in her view – what she calls ‘large-scale, well-coordinated national and international action’ and ‘pressure on governments and organisations to enact meaningful change in this direction’. Nevertheless, however much change we are able to implement either in our personal lives or by forms of collective pressure, it stands to reason that, as long as we continue to do this within the constraints of the profit system that is capitalism, any progress will be necessarily limited. It’s a little like clamouring for freedom on the basis of slavery. So while we can’t deny that, as she says, ‘societies change when enough individuals within them alter their behaviour’, it’s not the kind of behavioural change she is referring to that’s needed, but rather change in political behaviour, or put a different way, in consciousness.

So while there’s no doubt that magazines like Scientific American can teach us a lot about how things work in the world, they are sadly no more advanced than most of those who read them when it comes to seeing beyond the social and political system in which we exist. Isn’t it time therefore for workers throughout the world to switch on to the consciousness needed to do that and to vote collectively to change that system and move to a moneyless, marketless society of free access and voluntary cooperation – which we call socialism? In that society people will put their natural human capacity for cooperation and collaboration to work and use the resources of the earth to make sure that everyone – whether they choose to be vegan, vegetarian or otherwise – has enough healthy food to eat and to secure a decent life for all.

Howard Moss

Right Direction (2020)

Pamphlet Review from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food, Health and Capitalism. Covid-19 and Beyond. Published by the Anarchist Communist Group, June 2020. 45 pages.

The Anarchist Communist Group (ACG), formed in 2018 by former members of the Anarchist Federation in Great Britain, states its aim as ‘a complete transformation of society’, explained as ‘the working class overthrowing capitalism, abolishing the State, getting rid of exploitation, hierarchies and oppressions, and halting the destruction of the environment’. Among the group’s activities is the production of pamphlets arguing their case, the latest of which looks at the way capitalism produces food and the part this has played in the Covid-19 virus.

Despite its limited length, this is a well-researched and highly informative publication which outlines very effectively how the profit system, the driving force of today’s world capitalist economy, dictates an increasingly intensive exploitation of land and animals, leading to a ‘perfect storm environment’ for diseases which are likely to be infectious. It outlines the conditions of industrial farming that, after causing previous virus epidemics such as MERS, Ebola and SARS, have now led to the current Covid-19 pandemic which in its indiscriminate worldwide spread is causing panic and threatening social and economic breakdown. It explains how these viruses stem from a form of intensive agriculture, in which ‘the more you can produce with fewer inputs, the greater the profit’, with the effect on human health (not to speak of the welfare of animals) always a secondary consideration.

So, for example, both intensive factory farming of domestic animals and the slaughter, preparation and sale of an increasing range of wildlife in the Far East in crowded and insanitary conditions provide an ideal breeding ground for deadly viruses to ‘jump’ from animals to humans and then spread indiscriminately. In addition, the quadrupling of global meat production in the last half century has resulted in most land resources being used to feed animals destined for slaughter rather than to grow food directly for human consumption. This has led to an epidemic of obesity among some populations, but at the same time, as the pamphlet points out, in many parts of the world people die of starvation and, even for example in the UK, it quotes estimates that, even before the present virus hit, at least 3 million were going hungry, while 14.6 million were suffering from food insecurity. The entirely irrefutable reason given for all this is that, while some people get obese because of the cheap, unhealthy food that they eat, others go hungry because they do not have the money to buy enough food of any description. This, the pamphlet insists – again irrefutably – is quite simply the outcome of a system that puts profit before need. As it says, ‘capitalism has penetrated everywhere on earth in its search for profits’.

What remedy then does the ACG propose to resolve deadly industrial farming practices, food produced for cheapness rather than quality, and, even in the more economically advanced parts of the world, poverty amid plenty? It advocates ‘the need to create an agriculture system which is not based on the need to compete in the market economy and in which human need and health is the main priority’ and goes on to say that ‘instead of tinkering with the system… we need to get rid of it altogether and replace it with a food system that can truly meet the needs of everyone… the aim is for food to be free’. So far so good. This seems to mirror the aim of the Socialist Party, ie a society of free access with production for need not for profit. But then, this pamphlet, in its final section entitled ‘Basic Principles of a Revolutionary New Food and Agriculture’, seems to water down this objective advocating not a free access society as such but rather single initiatives such as ‘land reform’ ‘collectivising agriculture’ and ‘developing co-operatives for distribution and consumption’. All it seems within the framework of the current overall capitalist system, this being implicit in the characteristically reformist call to ‘begin to transform our society now’. A pity, because the way to truly transform society is not for individuals or groups to fight capitalism’s imperatives within the current system but to band together to persuade the majority of wage and salary earners to take democratic revolutionary action to usher out the whole framework of capitalism (profit society) and bring in socialism (a free access society based on the satisfaction of human needs).

Howard Moss

Tiny Tips (2011)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thousands of British schoolgirls as young as eight face being taken abroad this summer to have their genitals mutilated and stitched up to preserve “purity”. A campaign by the Metropolitan Police and Foreign Office will suggest that more than 22,000 girls under the age of 15 risk being taken abroad by their family for “cutting”, based on data from The International Centre for Reproductive Health. Girls may have their outer genitals removed and stitched up to preserve their virginity, with an opening as small as a matchstick head, meaning it can take up to 20 minutes to urinate:

[Link.]

Anyone who thinks slavery ended with the 13th Amendment is not paying attention. According to the latest State Department statistics, as many as 100,000 people in the United States are in bondage and perhaps 27 million people worldwide. The numbers are staggering:

[Link.]

Just counting work that’s on the books (never mind those 11 p.m. emails), Americans now put in an average of 122 more hours per year than Brits, and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans. The differential isn’t solely accounted for by longer hours, of course—worldwide, almost everyone except us [in the USA] has, at least on paper, a right to weekends off, paid vacation time (PDF), and paid maternity leave. (The only other countries that don’t mandate paid time off for new moms are Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Samoa, and Swaziland.)

[Link.]

Every hour, more than 1,300 severed pork heads go sliding along the belt. Workers slice off the ears, clip the snouts, chisel the cheek meat. They scoop out the eyes, carve out the tongue, and scrape the palate meat from the roofs of mouths. A woman next to Garcia would carve meat off the  back of each head before letting the denuded skull slide down the conveyor and through an opening in a plexiglass shield.

On the other side, Garcia inserted the metal nozzle of a 90-pounds-per-square-inch compressed-air hose and blasted the pigs’ brains into a pink slurry. One head every three seconds. A high-pressure burst, a fine rosy mist, and the slosh of brains slipping through a drain hole into a catch bucket. (Some workers say the goo looked like Pepto-Bismol; others describe it as more like a lumpy strawberry milkshake.) When the 10-pound barrel was filled, another worker would come to take the brains for shipping to Asia, where they are used as a thickener in stir-fry. Most days that fall, production was so fast that the air never cleared between blasts, and the mist would slick workers at the head table in a grisly mix of brains and blood and grease:

[Link.]

Here’s one financial figure some big U.S. companies would rather keep secret: how much more their chief executive makes than the typical worker. Now a group backed by 81 major companies — including McDonald’s, Lowe’s, General Dynamics, American Airlines, IBM and General Mills — is lobbying against new rules that would force disclosure of that comparison. In 1970, average executive pay at the nation’s top companies was 28 times the average worker income. By 2005, executive pay had jumped to 158 times that of the average worker

[Link.]

. . . and the food's not too good, either (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent outbreaks of salmonella and listeriosis have focussed attention on the rising incidence of food poisoning in Britain in the last few years. There have also been outbreaks of food poisoning from other organisms; campylobacter has increased threefold and rotavirus has increased fivefold in the last eight years. Both of these organisms cause diarrhoea and vomiting, and the increase is probably due to “changes in agricultural practice or changes in the commercial preparation of food" (The Independent, 23 January 1989). These changes are the result of trying to make maximum profits regardless of the risk to consumers' health.

Salmonella

The Communicable Disease Report compiled by the Public Health Laboratory stated that there were 24,123 cases of salmonella enteriditis poisoning in 1988 and 12,533 cases of salmonella enteriditis phage type 4. Salmonella infections have doubled in the last two years and 80 to 90 per cent are found to be associated with chickens and eggs (Ibid.). It is significant that this dossier is not available to the public because the state in its role as facilitator of capital regards commercial secrecy as more important than providing the public with the knowledge to avoid the risks associated with food poisoning.

It was Edwina Currie's claim that most of the egg industry was infected with salmonella that alerted the public, and led to her losing her Junior Health Minister's post for offending the powerful agricultural lobby. Further evidence of the government’s concern to protect the egg industry's profits rather than public health was demonstrated by the much publicised leaked document received by Robin Cook, Labour Party health spokesman, which showed that representatives from the Department of Health had met with the egg producers and agreed not to issue a notice that “salmonella-poisoning at two hospitals appeared to have been caused by raw eggs. It was generally better if the announcement came from the company or trade body concerned" (Morning Star, 10 February 1989).

The use of antibiotics to help animals gain weight has resulted from the European Economic Community's ban on the use of hormones in meat, since 1 January 1988, because of the risk to human health. Previously, hormones fed to cattle increased profits by putting up to an extra 100 pounds of weight on a carcass. It is thought that antibiotics also help animals to gain weight, possibly by eliminating sub-clinical infections which prevent them from gaining their optimal weight (Self Health, 20 September 1988). But the widespread use of antibiotics has led to the evolution of drug-resistant strains of bacteria, and a study by two doctors at the US Center for Disease Control in Atlanta found that, compared with ordinary strains of salmonella, the death toll was 21 times higher in people infected, with resistant strains of salmonella.

A fund of £19 million was set aside by the British government to compensate the egg industry for loss of sales even though the sharp increase in salmonella poisoning has been caused by a blatant disregard for consumers' health in the way that poultry has been reared.

In fact egg sales fell by 10 to 15 per cent and only £482,000 compensation has been claimed by the egg industry (The Grocer, 21 January 1989). Of course there are no plans to compensate the relatives of those who have died or the thousands of people who have been made ill as a result of eating contaminated eggs.

Ironically, in these days when increasing numbers of people are more health-conscious of what they eat, free range eggs are more likely to cause salmonella infections according to Bill Reilly, chairman of the public health committee of the British Veterinary Association:

The big advantage of the battery system is that the egg is laid on the wire ann rolls away immediately. A free range hen may lay the egg anywhere, and faecal contamination is more likely. (British Medical Journal, 28 January 1989 )

Listeria

Listeriosis, although less common than salmonella, with 683 reported cases since 1986 and 39 deaths in 1986 and 1987 is potentially more dangerous and, because of the continuing increase in “cook-chill” methods of preparing food, likely to be seen more frequently in the future.

Listeriosis takes between five days and five weeks to develop and it is difficult to trace the source of infection. The symptoms of the disease can resemble influenza, and listeriosis may not be suspected. The disease is particularly associated with miscarriages and stillbirths, and may also cause meningitis and septicaemia in the elderly.

A study carried out by Richard Lacey, professor of clinical microbiology at Leeds University found that a quarter of a test sample of cook-chill meals bought from leading supermarkets contained the bacteria (The Grocer, 14 January 1989). But. in addition to the health risk to the public, there has been an increasing use of cook-chill methods in hospitals since its introduction in the National Health Service in 1980 and there are now 157,000 meals a day produced by 40 centres.

Hospital cooking

Birmingham's Dudley Road Hospital has one of the largest cook-chill operations in the NHS with £1.8 million purpose built food production centre (Nursing Times, 18 January 1989). The introduction of this centre led to the workforce being reduced by one-third as it took over the work previously carried out by 14 kitchen: an attractive proposition for a government intent on reducing NHS costs and creating the potential for commercial use in the future.

The centralisation of hospital catering and the construction of large district general hospitals during the last two decades has caused problems in delivering cooked food to hospital patients. The Institution of Environmental Health Officers' (Hospital and Therapeutic Kitchens Inspection Guidelines and Reporting Format, 1988, states:

The movement of prepared food within hospitals, often over considerable distances. can create many problems with temperature control. In order to be safe the internal temperature of any heated trolley or container should be raised to a minimum of 75 degrees Centigrade before any food is loaded. Food must never be allowed to fall below a temperature of 63 degrees Centigrade.

These guidelines, sensible though they may seem, are almost impossible to carry out, especially in the winter months in hospitals on large sites where food trolleys have to be transported outside to be delivered to separate ward blocks. And even when food is successfully kept hot, the prolonged "hot-holding" to which it is subjected impairs its nutritional value.

It is not surprising that some of the worst outbreaks of food poisoning during the last twenty years occurred in hospitals. It is an indictment of the quality of hospital food that some institutions looking after long-stay patients have had to provide vitamin supplements — especially vitamin C — to remedy the sub-clinical deficiencies caused by an institutional diet.

The majority of cases of food poisoning are not reported but non-attendance at work because of “diarrhoea and vomiting" has become more common in recent years. There has also been an unexplained increase in septicaemia in the elderly. The government's response has been to play down the risks and when this strategy failed John MacGregor, Minister of Agriculture, announced that there would be tough measures taken to ensure that food production is strictly monitored. But plans to extend cook-chill regulations, to make food storage safer in shops, have been suspended for 18 months because of differences between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Health.

Profits before food safety

The government has announced cuts of £25 million in research grants which will lead to 2,000 redundancies in scientific posts and severely restrict future research into food poisoning. Although the government expects the food industry to conduct its own research it is unlikely that it would benefit the consumer: experience in the drug industry has shown that research has been solely to make larger profits and is frequently against the consumer's interests.

There is undoubtedly dissatisfaction with the role the Ministry of Agriculture has played in its responsibility for food safety. However, calls to make the Ministry of Health responsible instead will only marginally improve matters because the state's function is to ensure the smooth running of capitalism and not the well-being of workers unless production is threatened.

In theory there are laws to protect the consumer, but when Sunblest bakeries were recently fined £200 plus £50 costs for selling a mouldy cake it was revealed that they'd had 146 previous convictions since 1983 (The Messenger, 20 January 1989). It is also possible to buy reject and out of date food for less than half price at London markets (Today, 20 February 1989).

In recent weeks mercury has been found in Sainsbury's butter; mineral oils, used to glaze children's sweets, have been found to cause liver damage: and tea bags, milk cartons and coffee filters have been contaminated with dioxin which can cause genetic defects and liver damage. Additionally, despite the efforts of pressure groups the number of additives used in food continues to rise. The basic problem is that food, like any other commodity, is produced solely for profit. Only the abolition of capitalism can ensure that it is completely safe for people to eat.

Carl Pinel

Externalities and British Chicken (2021)

From the March 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Externality – a consequence of an economic activity which affects other parties without this being reflected in market prices (Oxford Concise English Dictionary)

British chicken – annually the UK slaughters a billion chickens, about fifteen per person per annum. (Bureau of Investigative Journalism)

In effect an externality means acquiring something at a price lower than necessary if negative effects were to be avoided or compensated for. A few common examples include such acts as taking occupied land for other uses without agreement or full compensation; poisoning air, water or food of local inhabitants near mines, factories and industrial agricultural sites; habitat destruction for industrial use; carbon offsets by which companies in the richer countries pay for CO2 pollution caused by them by funding reforestation and similar green projects in other countries. So let’s look here at just one aspect of the UK’s involvement with some of these externalities connected to the rearing of these millions of chickens in Britain recently highlighted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The link begins between the giant corporation Cargill and a little heard of, but vast area, the Cerrado in Brazil which is being deforested at an alarming rate for the mass production of soya beans. Some 100,000 tonnes of these soya beans are used to feed those millions of British chickens each year. The Cerrado is a vast tropical savannah hugely significant for its capacity to store carbon dioxide. It is a crucial part of South America’s water system and home to many indigenous communities and endangered animals. It is an area smaller than the Amazon but has far weaker protections. Between 2008 and 2012 the rate of forest loss in the Amazon slowed by 67 percent whilst the Cerrado forest continued to disappear at an alarming rate. There, in the decade to 2018, 95,000 sq km of land was lost, 66 percent more than the Amazon which is three times its size. It now has only half of its original cover. The Cerrado region is estimated to account for 90 percent of soya-driven deforestation in Brazil. Covering more than 20 percent of Brazil’s land size it is a huge carbon sink, critical for eight of Brazil’s twelve river basins and is integral to the hydroelectric power plants producing 80 percent of Brazil’s electricity.

A Dutch NGO ‘Aidenveronment’ has confirmed vast deforestation and fires on land used or owned by Cargill suppliers in the Cerrado, and that the already huge area of monoculture soya is growing rapidly alongside land-grabs and violence.

In August 2020 a Bureau of Investigative Journalism team tracked a bulk tanker carrying soya beans from Cargill and two other companies in the region from a port near the Cerrado to Cargill’s soya plant in Liverpool. Here the beans were processed at Cargills’s soya crushing plant and from there to Cargill’s poultry feed mills in Hereford and Banbury where a mixture of the soya with wheat and other ingredients is produced. This UK Cargill facility operates under the name of Avara, a joint enterprise with British producer Faccenda. Avara supplies chickens to McDonalds, Asda, Lidl and Nando’s whilst also being the largest fresh chicken supplier to Tesco.

Annually the UK slaughters a billion chickens – about 15 per person, which accounts for about 60 percent of the UK’s imported soya consumption. Probably an externality little known or thought about?

Regarding deforestation it is possible that a UK company may have a declaration of no trade with companies involved in illegal deforestation but in this instance, and as an example, Brazil has widespread legal deforestation. Then, regarding the soya supply chain between Brazil and the UK, Cargill admit that their 2010 commitment to eliminate deforestation by 2020 has not been met, and now extends it to 2030 – which experts say is too late on the global warming agenda.

In 2006 there was a ban imposed by traders and international NGOs on felling trees in the Amazon for soya production, but no such agreement for the Cerrado. As a result, it is now beef production that drives the deforestation of the Amazon, both legal and illegal, whilst soya accounts for the fast-growing deforestation of the Cerrado.

More examples

This is just one example of the spider’s web-like tangle between a commodity and an externality. When looked at in depth it seems the globe is an extensive minefield of externalities. How much effect can just one community of the millions of communities around the world have on their own particular problem? Consider some of the many negatives experienced by local communities in wildly different circumstances and environments from the Arctic to the Sahara, east to west, north to south. Faster melting ice, increasing wild fires, severe weather problems, inundation of low lying farmland and islands, filthy air from excessive traffic, industries and coal burning for electricity causing severe health problems; rivers poisoned by industrial and agricultural waste; overuse of pesticides and herbicides especially in intensive farming causing severe species decline; massive ocean pollution, especially plastics; microplastics, heavy metals and poisonous chemicals found in urine samples in all ages of populations around the world. We are mostly steered away from knowing about such problems, let alone thinking about them, by corporations using enormous amounts of money on advertising to draw us in to the many benefits of buying, using, eating and showing off their products.

The divisions between populations around the world, whether nationalism, racism, politics, or economic status, are not natural events. They have been deliberately forged over long periods of time by the powerful sectors seeking their own interests and profits whilst creating wedges between each country’s workers. Workers forced into competition with each other to keep their share of the market, their share of employment, their chance of a decent wage and subsequently blaming the other for unfairness and inequality. So where does the responsibility lie? Do we stop eating chicken? How many more of the thousands of examples like this could be brought to our attention?

Without widespread understanding of at least some of the myriad connections – agricultural methods, global distribution chains, reporting of international agreements re carbon capture and carbon credits payments, the very structure of the capitalist system – how are all these diverse and far-flung populations supposed to understand that what they are eating, wearing, driving, buying and using could be damaging other populations, environments and the world itself?

What is desperately required is a global solution without all these conflicting and competitive issues. The vast majority of the global population share the brunt of all the basic problems as their interests are not those of the ruling elites and corporations. Those in control of the system continue to keep us in check but we the people have to wake up to the realisation that the future is in our hands.

Janet Surman

Rear View: Disaster capitalism (2020)

The Rear View Column from the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Disaster capitalism

‘The Covid virus has been a gift from God, began Ken Eldred. The kingdom of God advances through a series of glorious victories, cleverly disguised as disasters. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Eldred noted, millions of Americans are turning to Christ, Walmart is selling out of Bibles, and online church broadcasts have hit record numbers’ (theintercept.com, 23 May). The Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius saw religion as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. His view remains apposite some two thousand years after his death. Eldred’s god supposedly created a world where at least 40 percent of animal species are parasites, and over 99 percent of all species that ever lived are extinct. Actually, the five mass extinction events took place long before we arrived – at 23:58:43 if Earth’s history is pictured as a 24-hour clock. Capitalism is the cause of many disasters, some ongoing, and religion supports the status quo. Conspiracy theories, which have faded in and out of history since Greek and Roman antiquity, also serve to delay the establishment of a post-capitalist world. But progress is being made. ‘In the 18th and 19th centuries, around 90% of the population probably believed in some kind of conspiracy’ according to Michael Butter, professor of American Literary and Cultural History at the University of Tübingen (dw.com, 29 May).

Capitalism at work

‘The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all’ Steinbeck wrote in The Grapes of Wrath, his 1939 novel of the Great Depression. ‘Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground… a million people hungry, needing the fruit — and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.’ During the H5NI bird flu in Hong Kong in 1997, the government sought to kill 1.3 million chickens to eliminate the virus. ‘After the financial crash of 2008, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed from New York to industrial meat production in China as bankers at Goldman Sachs hunted for safe investments. Partly as a result, large-scale industrial agriculture pushed smaller Chinese producers out into dangerous terrains where their animals came into contact with bats, which carry coronaviruses’ (mronline.org, 28 May). Have you spotted the connection? A wrathful god? A cabal of Jewish bankers? Neither: it is capitalism at work. Some US farmers are once again destroying food, pouring their milk down the drain, killing their livestock and dumping their eggs. COVID-19 has disrupted capitalism’s can’t–pay,–can’t–have food supply chains. Farmers in China have been unable to sell their produce at closed wet markets or replace stocks of animal feed. And in the UK and Germany, there has been a shortage of largely immigrant workers to help with the spring harvest because of lockdown and self-isolation measures.

Pandemic of profit-seeking

‘… the men upon the floor were going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long line of hogs, with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together; until at last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water. It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics’ (The Jungle, 1906). Little would seem to have changed since Upton Sinclair’s time: ‘Iowa’s largest pork producer, Iowa Select Farms, has been using a cruel and excruciating method to kill thousands of pigs that have become commercially worthless due to the coronavirus pandemic. As is true for so much of what the agricultural industry does, the company’s gruesome extermination of sentient animals that are emotionally complex and intelligent has been conducted entirely out of public view’ (theintercept.com, 29 May). Worth noting too: ‘A Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Iowa is shutting down after officials revealed an astonishing 22% of workers tested positive for COVID-19’ (huffingtonpost.com, 29 May).

Post capitalism

The author of Animal Farm, George Orwell, commenting on the genesis of this work, stated: ‘Men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.’ In the global capitalist system which robs, slaughters and degrades, socialists say: ‘Cruelty to animals will go the way of all forms of cruelty, when a real civilised existence becomes a possibility to everyone’ (Socialist Standard, February 1926).

Agriculture: Profit Versus Plenty (1972)

From the July 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Calling agriculture an industry is like making other statements — such as that man is an animal — which are accepted as technically true but contrary to popular imagery. Agriculture in most people’s minds is the antithesis of industry. Agriculture means bucolic bliss: waving corn and lowing herds, fresh food and cider with Rosie, far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife — and so on.

Nevertheless, an industry it is. Michael Allaby in The Environmental Handbook describes it as the biggest factory-floor in Britain:

  Men have been replaced by machines and chemicals. Individual farms and whole wide areas of the countryside have specialized. Every last square yard has been put under the plough. It has been found more profitable to bring concentrated food to animals than to allow them to graze grass, and so poultry, cattle and pigs have moved indoors to semi-industrial units.

The most striking change in farming since the second world war is the progressive absence of men. In 1949 there were 645,000 male and 85,000 female agricultural workers in the United Kingdom. The figures in 1970 were 195,000 and 22,000. The numbers of part-time and seasonal workers have gone down similarly, from a total of 934,000 in 1949 to 252,000 in 1970. In the hill-farm districts of northern England stone cottages stand abandoned and crumbling; in the south, the cottages have gone to a high-priced market for commuters and the well-to-do. Characteristically, an arable farm of 200 acres or more requires only one man besides the farmer.

The mechanization and technology can show, at first glance, impressively greater production figures than those of the old days. Allaby says:

  In 1946 the average yield of wheat was 19.1 cwts. per acre; in 1968-9 it was 28.2 cwts. The barley yield rose from an average 17.8 cwts. per acre in 1946 to 27.4 cwts. in 1968-9. All other produce has shown a similar increase.

However, this suggestion of abundance needs at once to be qualified. The land available for agricultural use is decreasing all the time. According to Best and Coppock in The Changing Use of Land in Britain, the area producing food in England and Wales has fallen since the beginning of the century by 2,500,000 acres. The reduction has been caused by building development, motorways, etc. The same authors expect a greater loss in the second part of the century, making a total reduction of 15-20 per cent, of the whole.

Increased production per acre has then to be balanced against a shrinking acreage — which, in turn, tends more and more to be concentrated in favoured crops. The growing of wheat has remained fairly stable since the war at about 2,000,000 acres, and was not much less before it. Oats have declined dramatically from 2,272,000 acres in 1920 to 575,000 in 1970, and potatoes by half since 1945: other root crops too. The increase has been in barley-farming. Running at about a million before the war, the annual crop now approaches 5 million acres.

It is worth remarking on the chief reason why barley has become the most profitable, and therefore the most widely grown, crop. It is unsuitable for bread, and as livestock food is useful mainly as a fattener. Its great use is for making beer and whiskey, and the highest prices are the brewers’ and distillers’ for a heavy crop of it. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, more than a quarter of the barley produced in Western Europe and America is for this purpose. The central importance of modern agriculture, taken for granted and proclaimed, is the production of necessary food. With the largest acreage in Britain thus given to barley-growing, one sees plain illustration of the fact that it is not so: as with every industry under capitalism, the object is not social good but profit. A not-too-harsh comparison can be made with eastern countries where, amid starving populations, thousands of acres are devoted to the cannabis plant.

Nevertheless agriculture does provide food, of course. If "for the nation” is added, as it usually is, the clue is given to the special status of agriculture. Throughout the history of capitalism there has been a conflict between the industrial capitalist and the agriculturist over, as a writer in this journal put it in 1936, “how cheaply the latter can be compelled to feed the former’s human cattle”. Following the first world war farming fell into an extreme plight, after the Government dropped its wartime price-guarantee system. Eventually in the nineteen-thirties, with another European war in prospect, first steps were taken in a system of subsidies for agricultural production. This system was extended during and after the war to the point where, according to the authors of the Penguin Farming in Britain Today (1972 edition):

 The calculated 'net farm income’ of the country exceeds the subsidy bill by no more than 20 per cent; in other words four fifths of the farmers’ income is directly due to state assistance.

As in all industries, small concerns are gradually being eliminated. Between 1955 and 1968, the number of holdings under 50 acres in England and Wales fell by nearly 30 per cent., from 232,900 to 161,600; while the number over 300 acres rose by 25 per cent. The system of government grants benefits big farmers more than small ones; and large acreages are needed to take advantage of mechanization. Strangely enough, statistics suggest persistently that small farms are far more efficient than big ones. Surveying the evidence, Farming in Britain Today says:

  Therefore, even if one concedes, and undoubtedly one should, that after making adjustments to allow for the greater effect on the profit from bought feeding-stuff's, small holdings still show a greater output per acre than large, it remains a factor that could have over-riding importance only in a situation where food was scarcer than manpower or other resources.

It seems a grudging, tortuous conclusion — but the real point is put a few sentences later:

At the moment the aim is not high production as such but production at low cost.

The tendency, supported by Government policy, is for farms to amalgamate and make larger units. Since 1967 grants have been given for amalgamation schemes, and fresh legislation in 1970 made the terms more attractive still.

What of the farm worker? He is notoriously the poorest-paid of all workers, regardless of the state of agriculture. Today the weekly wage is £16.20, and in April this year a request for a rise was rejected flat by the Agricultural Wages Board. The tied cottage is still widespread: after a lifetime on near-starvation wages families are summarily evicted when the man has to retire through age or ill-health, or if he has died. In this respect, as over wages, the NUAAW (the farm workers’ union) put strong hopes in successive Labour governments, but the promises made were never implemented. It is commonly believed, of course, that in the country there are countless “perks” — an inexhaustible supply of free vegetables and rabbit pie — which more than make up wages to town levels. There was little truth in this in the past, and today rural living is in most ways dearer than in town. The farm worker’s life is one of abject poverty; he is still treated in many cases like a feudal serf, and is too scattered to be able to organize effectively for better pay and conditions.

In the last few years the ecologists have drawn attention repeatedly to modern farming techniques. At a simple level, the removal of hedges and the massive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers have decimated wild life: the commonplace creatures of not long ago — tadpoles, tiddlers, bumble-bees, insects and plants galore — have suddenly become rarities in the countryside. Beyond this, there are immediate physical dangers. Countless drums of poison whose disposal is a chronic problem, whose use is seen to be a source of pollution of lakes and water-courses, and whose contact with food is disturbing to many scientists.

Although this kind of technology has raised crop yields, there is mounting evidence that it is self-destructive. Allaby in The Environmental Handbook writes:

  Farmers have been aware of the deterioration of the soil for some time. Yields have begun to decline, suggesting that the increase of yields may have reached a peak. The crops appear to be less healthy: pest outbreaks, weeds and disease are increasing. The National Farmers’ Union set up an enquiry in 1969 to examine the problem . . . Such information is published and discussed in technical terms that may not impress the town dweller. The experts may forget to tell him that what they are debating is, in fact, the fertility of the land, its ability to produce food.

In the debates on these matters, from the point of view of capitalism it does not matter who is right. Whatever “the balance of nature” may mean, what may be the future of the soil and the environment — these are long-term questions: but farming policies are short-term ones, preoccupied with this year’s profit. The farmers’ reply to criticism is always that they are directed by Government policy. What is meant is that they must farm to get the subsidies and grants and seek the highest market price.

The protests against factory-farming of poultry, pigs and cattle appear to have died down now, presumably because it is established as the condition on which we may continue to have chicken and other things for dinner. Apart from the economics of land use, pig and poultry farming in the open are characteristically small-scale enterprises: the product is immensely better, but the relative price of food-stuffs makes “free range” less and less able to compete. The authors of Farming in Britain Today admit the inferiority of factory-farmed products, but say they are “here to stay” and “the housewife of today must reconcile herself". What does "efficiency” mean, then?

Contemporary agriculture is an industry, with the motives and tendencies and hopeless contradictions of all industries in capitalism. It fails to produce the wealth of which its resources are capable, relegating production to cost and profit. Its economics are those of the shortest term and the biggest penny, and inevitably inferior goods. It is sustained by a labour force kept in poverty and subject to primitive conditions and humiliations. The policies it is forced to pursue are pregnant with damage to human beings and their environment, but only profit is heeded. Yet, in the same view, the answers are obvious. Given the reorganization of society to production for use, agriculture could and would produce abundance.

Robert Barltrop

Except where otherwise stated, figures in this article are taken from statistics published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Letters: Let them eat meat (1995)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let them eat meat 

While substantially agreeing with Adam Buick’s analysis of the question of animal rights in the April Socialist Standard and in particular with the view that in a non-profit socialist society of production for use cruelty to animals can be expected to stop, I cannot agree that in such a society most human beings are necessarily going to continue to eat meat, as the article states. They may of course, but then they may not. And it is not a good argument to say, as the article does, that they will because they always have done. History shows perpetual change in human ideas and practices and one of the main points about socialism is that it will allow people to transform many aspects of the societies they have lived in.

Furthermore, it is not part of the Socialist Party’s agreed case that in socialism people will eat meat. This is a detail one can only speculate and express a personal opinion on. It should not therefore appear as other than a personal opinion in a journal whose articles express the agreed view of the organisation.

And how different in the end is what Adam Buick says from a recent anti-vegetarian letter in the Western Mail which stated: "In truth, it [an end to the farming of animals] will never happen because you want your chicken and chips, your lamb cawl and your Sunday roast."? 

Howard Moss,

Swansea

Reply:

The article wasn't "anti-vegetarian". It didn’t criticise people for being vegetarians. Quite the contrary. It said that vegetarianism was a perfectly legitimate personal choice (which had been made by some Socialists) and that the debate would continue into socialism where individuals would make their own choice as to whether or not to abstain from eating meat.

As you correctly point out, the Socialist Party as an organisation has no policy on vegetarianism; we are neither for it nor against it. We don’t presume to tell people what they should eat and what they should not eat; that’s a purely personal decision, it's entirely up to individuals as individuals. This implies, however, that some will choose to abstain from meat while others won’t. We equally respect both decisions.

Will this diversity of decision continue into socialism? You say that to answer "yes" is merely to give a personal opinion, but it can also be seen as—and was meant to be so taken—a reasonable assumption that can be made equally by a vegetarian as by a non-vegetarian.

But if some people are going to eat meat in socialism then animals are going to have to continue to be raised to be eaten in socialism. Not to have faced this, in an article on animals rights, and to have replied "the problem probably won't arise because by then we could all be vegetarians" would have been a cop-out. Besides, it would have infringed the neutrality we as an organisation maintain between vegetarians and non-vegetarians.

Editors

Hunting and killing at Tescos

Dear Editors,

As a Socialist Party member and a vegan, I'm afraid that I am forced to take issue with some of the points raised by Adam Buick in his article "Do Animals Have Rights?" (April Socialist Standard).

Firstly, it is highly debatable whether humans "have always eaten meat". There is a good body of evidence to suggest that early humans lived primarily, if not solely, on nuts, fruits and berries—a reasonable assumption, given that we are descended from herbivorous primates. The length of the human intestine, as compared with the much shorter bowels of obligate carnivores in, say the cat family, suggest that it is designed to deal with slowly digested vegetable matter rather than fibre-free meat.

Secondly, it is disingenuous to compare a human being eating meat to a fox eating a rabbit—as I have already stated, certain animals are obligate carnivores who cannot derive sufficient protein from plant sources. Human beings are not—and we are capable of making moral choices regarding our diet. In any case, visiting the meat counter at Tesco scarcely equates to hunting and killing one’s own food!

Adam Buick is, of course, quite correct to state that animals are cruelly treated largely because of the need for farmers to produce profitably. However, does he seriously believe that sufficient meat can be produced to satisfy the world's population even under socialism without the need for some kind of factory farming? Readers are doubtless familiar with the arguments that land can be used far more efficiently to produce plant proteins than to raise animals—that's even allowing for the intensive farming of animals which we all know takes place under capitalism. How much more inefficient in terms of land use would it be to attempt to farm only free-range animals?

Further, I would suggest that, just as farmers are compelled under capitalism to try and make a profit, so most of those who work in the meat industry do so in order to survive rather than because they enjoy it. With the need to work for a wage being removed by socialism, how many people will be prepared to continue killing animals when other essential and more rewarding work needs to be done? Those who wish to eat meat will of course be free to do so—however. they may well find that's this necessitates killing it themselves as few other people will be willing to do it for them.

Finally, Adam Buick is doubtless aware that vegetarianism is already growing at a rapid rate— particularly among young women. This means that’s more and more children are being brought up as vegetarians, which will almost certainly accelerate the trend. I feel that’s Adam Buick's comment that's "most humans are obviously going to continue to eat some meat" will be proved wrong quite soon— possibly even within his lifetime. 

Shane Roberts,

Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex

Reply:

Have humans "always eaten meat"? That depends on what you mean by "humans". Members of the existing—and only surviving—human species. Homo sapiens, have always eaten meat. We evolved not more than 100,000 years ago. but preceding species of Homo had been eating meat for many hundreds of thousands of years before that.

Going back even further, it is indeed true the now extinct species of upright-walking apes from which we are descended would have been mainly, but not exclusively (since even today chimpanzees eat meat, when they can get it), eaters of nuts, fruits, roots, etc. But at some point our ancestors began to add more and more meat to their diet. Most anthropologists see this changed diet as a key factor in the evolution of pre-humans into humans. Richard Leakey, for instance, writes in his book with Roger Lewin, Origins Reconsidered: 

  “Although some anthropologists argue that regular meat eating was a late development in human history. I believe they are wrong. I see evidence for the expansion of the basic omnivorous hominid diet in the fossil record, in the archaeological record, and. incidentally, in theoretical biology . . .
   "The initial expansion of brain size in hominids. which established the genus Homo, was more mundane. It concerned an adaptation that required more complex behaviour: the hunting-and- gathering way of life in embryo. But it also fueled itself, in a kind of positive feedback. Part of Bob Martin’s thesis about a species' ability to afford a large brain is that it must have a stable environment. stable in terms of food supply. Stable and nutritionally rich. The robust australopithecines managed to stabilise their food supply in the new prevailing environment 2.5 million years ago but their tough plant foods were not rich nutritionally. By broadening the diet to include meat, early Homo achieved both stability and rich nutrition. Meat represents high concentrations of calories, fat and protein. This dietary shift in Homo drove the change in pattern of tooth development and facial shape. The links in the chain join up yet more closely.
  “Our ancestors achieved this dietary shift through technology, and thus opened the road to the potential—but. remember, not inevitable—development of yet bigger brains."

In other words, modern anthropological research and theory confirms the 19th century view, as summarised by Engels in The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, that “with all due respect to the vegetarians, man did not come into existence without a meat diet”.

This is not a reason, we hasten to add. why people should not be vegetarians. One of the features of human behaviour is flexibility and we could all become vegetarians if we chose to. even though our distant ancestors had to eat meat for this flexibility to evolve. If this happens. as you seem confident it will, then Engels would no doubt see this as a neat example of the negation of the negation. 

Editors

Socialist cops & prisons?

Dear Editors,

Having read Adam Buick’s "Do Animals Have Rights?", I now know why so many animal rights activists so deeply distrust socialists. Of course neither human workers nor animals are born with natural rights. Such rights as they enjoy are the results of centuries of bitter struggle; by virtue of its power the capitalist class has the right to do anything it can get away with including exploiting animals and workers on a massive scale. Just as socialists want an end to the exploitation of workers so the animal rights movement wants an end to the exploitation of animals. Many want both as is evidenced by the slogan “Animal Liberation. Human Rights—One Struggle. One Fight!"

Adam Buick appears to oppose suffering and cruelty, but what can be more cruel and involve more suffering than raising an animal with the utmost care and kindness and then killing and eating it? If a socialist world is to be one without suffering and cruelty then the imposition of suffering and cruelty on animals by humans must end! And the debate isn’t just about the higher land mammals—it’s about sea mammals, insects, fish, reptiles and amphibians all of which appear on somebody’s dinner table. And “eccentrics" is a term of abuse not a scientific Marxist category, many people regard socialists as eccentrics but that does not invalidate socialism anymore then the alleged eccentricity of the animal rights movement rules out its argument.

On what evidence does Adam Buick base his claim that humans have always eaten meat and will continue to do so? The shape of our teeth, our lack of claws, the length of our get. the tiny genetic difference between ourselves and the vegetarian great apes, indicates the diet of the first humans was vegetable and that meat eating was a fairly late development caused possibly by food shortages resulting from climatic changes. Furthermore. many people do not associate the burger on their plate with the animal from which it comes. Many become vegetarian when they discover the shocking truth. And when was Adam Buick last on a farm? Farm animals aren't fed on vegetation and scraps unacceptable to humans—they’re fed on grains and beans which could be used far more efficiently by being eaten by humans. And it makes better economic sense to rear goats and sheep on marginal land for their milk rather than their meat.

It’s nice to know vegetarians will be free to put their case in a socialist society. But what if we employ civil disobedience? Will socialist cops kick and baton us and throw us into socialist prisons? And what of blood sports, vivisection and the trade in fur, skins and shells? Will such horrors continue in a socialist society?

Adam Buick is right when he says the problem is capitalism and socialism is the answer. But if he is to convince animal rights activists of this his critique needs to be far more informed and sympathetic.

Terry Liddle

London SE9

Reply:

What are you talking about? There won't be any cops or prisons in a socialist society. Nor will there be any trade in furs or anything else.

Editors

Calling an old comrade

Dear Editors,

I admired Paddy Small (Letters. March Socialist Standard) for his craftsmanship, his steadfastness to his principles, his support of his union and of the Socialist Party. I owe him a personal debt for guiding me to the Socialist Party and for helping me to acquire a Socialist library and helping me to understand it.

I would like to contact him again, so would it be possible to insert the following appeal in the Standard:

"Dear Paddy. 

Your recent letter to the Standard has really opened the floodgates of my memory. I would dearly like to write to you and share our experiences since last we met. Please write to me at: 26 Fig Street. Dromana. Victoria 3936. Australia.

Yours Aye. Joe Richmond."