Retired corporate high roller-turned-animal rights advocate Phillip Wollen has said that if meat were to be altogether eliminated from the human diet, the result would be the disappearance of malnutrition in the world.
The Australian was here on Sunday as a chief guest at the Graduation Day ceremony of the Bishop Cotton Boys’ School of which he is an alumnus.
“Animals are not just other species; they are another nation [and we must stop waging war against them],” he said while parodying the former U.S. President George W. Bush’s statement on Weapons of Mass Destruction in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. “The real axis of evil is not Iran, Iraq or North Korea; it is our dining table. And the real weapons of mass destruction are knives and forks,” he said drawing applause from the gathering.
Putting the issue of vegetarianism and animal rights within a geopolitical context, Mr. Wollen said that meat eating contributes directly to climate change and the growing water insecurity in the world. Livestock generates more green house emissions than all the trucks, buses, planes and ships in the world, he said while arguing that an end to animal farming can arrest the looming danger of climate change.
Stating that water shortages and not oil will cause nations to go to war in the future, he said, “It takes 50,000 litres of water to produce one kg of beef,” he said.
He remarked that when he was a boy scout at Bishop Cotton Boys’ in the 1960s, he had helped sink a well at Bannerghatta.
“We struck water at 80 feet. But today, Bangaloreans are digging deeper and deeper in the search for water. In China, there is no water to be had at even 300 feet,” he said.
He also pointed out that poorer nations in the world are selling their grain to Western countries which is in-turn fed to livestock.
“Children in the third world are going hungry because the West needs to feed its livestock,” he said and added that, “If the entire world follows the Western diet, we will need three planet Earths to sustain human beings.”
Averring that animal rights have become non-negotiable and that vegetarianism is the only sustainable alternative for the human race, Mr. Wollen declared: “Animal rights is the biggest social justice issue since the abolition of slavery in America.”
