The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

266 / the world peace diet
The Power of Community
The communities we grow up in and call home affect us all profoundly.
Understanding this, we can see why we view animals as commodities
and often find it difficult to switch to a vegan diet and lifestyle. Our culture
is completely saturated and defined by the exploitation of animals
for food.
While cultures tend naturally to replicate themselves, they can and
do evolve, or may be forced to change by outside pressure. The spread
of the herding culture from central Asia into the Mediterranean and the
Middle East and from there to Europe took several millennia and was
accomplished by physical force, domination of women, and indoctrination
of children, as Eisler documents in The Chalice and the Blade. 3
Jeremy Rifkin’s Beyond Beef documents how the cattle culture came to
North America from Europe and how European (especially British)
demand for beef and its enormous financial investment in American cattle
ranching supplied the capital that propelled our young country and
its economy. Lynn Jacobs’ Waste of the West documents the virtually
complete decimation of western grazing lands and the near eradication
of Indians, bison, prairie dogs, wolves, and all non-livestock “nuisance”
animals. To this day, federal and state agencies like the USDA’s “Wildlife
Services” still poison, shoot, den, and trap millions of animals every
year, including coyotes, bobcats, mustangs, prairie dogs, bison, beaver,
raccoons, blackbirds, badgers, and bears. It is a tragedy involving
unspeakable suffering.
When I was in Korea I marveled at beautiful terraced rice paddies
nestled in valleys and climbing up hillsides, efficiently raising enough
rice to feed the Korean people who, unlike in the U.S., could actually be
seen every day in the paddies tending the crops. With U.S. and European
capital investment, however, Korean culture was changing, and
American food corporations and U.S. television programs and advertising
were invading, creating demand for Western luxury foods, especially
beef. Texas cattlemen were traveling to Korea, taking the opportunity
to show investors how to convert rice paddies to cattle feedlots.
Instead of feeding many people with rice, an area of land would now
feed only a few rich people with beef and raise the price of rice beyond