Letter: Meat and health

The avian influenza creeping across Asia and now into Europe is bringing death to millions of chickens and threatening the health of people around the globe. The World Health Organization predicts that it may become the next pandemic, with the potential to kill as many as 7 million people.

Avian can be added to the list of other deadly ills, including SARS and mad cow disease, that are the result of meat consumption. The crowded, inhumane conditions that farm animals exist in -- crammed together with barely enough space to turn around and fed unnatural diets -- are reservoirs where viruses and bacteria multiply and spread.

How many people will die before we accept the fact that the best solution, for health and humanitarian reasons, is to stop using animals as food?

Jason Baker
Asia-Pacific director, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

I am writing in response to the statements of Guardian journalist George Monbiot regarding beef production in Brazil ("The real cost of Brazilian beef," Oct. 21, page 9). To say that 80 percent of beef production in Brazil takes place within the Amazon region is equivalent to saying that Taiwan is part of Inner Mongolia.

This is one of the most obnoxious and ignorant pieces of journalism I have ever seen in the UK press, unfortunately published on your own Web site.

Brazilian production has historically taken place in the regions of natural savannah grasslands after the areas were colonized in the 18th century. These areas, which were very poor, have been transformed due to a better understanding of how to manage poor-quality and acidic soil, and now are the breadbasket of the country and where most soybeans exported to China originate.

The southern fringes of the Amazon have been settled by cattle ranchers in the 1980s with government subsidies, but most of these early projects did not succeed because the soil and climate were not conducive to sustainable cattle ranching. With the high cost of controlling forest regrowth, this type of activity became uneconomical.

I hope this is enough information to counter the damaging statements of Monbiot, reacting out of nationalistic views to defend his own farmers who were hit years ago by the mad cow disease scandal, which originated from the cruel practice of feeding cows with dried cow meat to raise profits at the expense of consumer health.

I would also like to point out that Brazilian cattle from that region is fed exclusively with natural grass and nothing else, giving it the best environmental and health attributes among beef products available worldwide.

Tadeu Caldas
Cologne, Germany