Return to Eden
The United Nations standing committee on agriculture has recommended that
the world body announce its support for an organic planet. That is, all
agricultural products would be produced without fertilizer or pesticides.
The few cattle and pigs that this scheme permits would be fed Kentucky
bluegrass, exclusively. All chickens would be free range and would roam
anywhere they desired, regardless of nationality.
The big meat and grain exporting countries, including America, Canada and
Argentina, have called this proposal loony because it would hit the poorest
countries hardest--the very ones that support an organic world.
The Committee’s report, tentatively titled “Return to Eden” charges that
the world food supply “is highly dangerous, discriminatory, and
destructive. Mad cow disease has rendered the meat supply suspect. The
shipments of animal feed from the UK and other European countries to the
Third World have contaminated family livestock. Growth hormones uses to
fatten hogs, particularly in Germany, have found their way into Third World
herds that now have a tendency to speak German, further eroding local
culture.
“The West has regularly used poorer countries to test vaccines and new
strains of bacteria. In a similar manner agricultural technicians, largely
from America, are bribing small farmers in Africa and Asia to test
genetically manufactured seeds. This practice has become very prevalent in
India where native seeds are being contaminated by the genetically modified
variety. Indian scientists speculate that by 2030 there will be only one
dominant strain of corn, which will fan religious wars between Sikhs and
Hindus. At the very least India will have to significantly reduce its
pantheon of gods and goddesses, many of whom are named after field crops.
This will be a disastrous consequence for the earth’s bio-diversity--and
for the religious communities.”
The reports argues that “industrial food production is biased towards the
West with its heavy emphasis on meat-based protein. Medical science has
long recognized that this is a very unhealthy diet leading to stroke,
cardiovascular disease and periodontitis. Mad cow disease exposed the
criminality of this industrial meat production. Cows, road kill, and
battlefield remains are fed as protein meal to other animals to fatten them
for market. There is even evidence, which the United Nations Committee on
Final Remains is looking into, that dead from the various Yugoslav wars
going back to the 19th century have been ground into protein pills for
European cattle. This practice is not only unhealthy, unnatural, and
inefficient--it is blasphemous, especially for non-Western religions who
have strict laws against their dead ending up in dog food, even it is
consumed by elderly pensioners.
“Moreover,” the report continues, “developing countries resent the fact
that the West is trying to hook the rest of the world on meat consumption
when most poorer countries would much prefer rice, amaranth, and year-old
root crops. At the very least the industrialized world is forcing a
sanitized version of meat on other people who know the slaughtering and
butchering of animals is a bloody, messy, unhygienic activity, a far cry
from McDonalds Happy Meal.
“The West has long sent their leftovers to the less fortunate. The list
includes Christmas pudding, twice chewed hay, and well-worn Nike blacktops.
Shocking to say but, even when Britain knew full well that mad cow disease
had jumped to humans, that country still sent millions of tons of protein
feed rendered from cow brains and fecal matter to the underdeveloped world.
The effects have been devastating, more so in Africa, where half the
population is starving and the rest are killing each other. The world
should hold Britain responsible for these aberrations which have corrupted
a near-perfect Eden. First Britain colonized Africa with military power;
now the once mighty empire is using leftover table scraps to do its dirty
work.”
The reports suggests that the apparent increase in cannibalism in Africa is
“due to the introduction of cows who eat their own, force fed by the
commercial hand of Western man. Nor is the practice of cannibalism a modern
phenomenon as there is considerable evidence that British soldiers brought
home from Waterloo the bones of the French dead by the hundredweight. The
bones were used to fertilize English farmland. The cows ate the French, so
to speak. And the British ate both of them. Britain bears the primary
responsibility for upsetting the balance of nature.”
The UN agricultural committee is suggesting a literal return to nature, a
turning back of the clock, an Eden. Specifically, the committee calls for a
New World order in which all crops are grown organically. Large industrial
farms will be broken up into small lots “with equal portions given to
people according to their need. Animals will be part of the property
transfer as long as owners agree to let them die of old age.
“The original Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia will be the test basin and
crucible for the experiment, beginning with the biblical injunction to
separate wheat from chaff. This will be done by hand to guarantee full
employment. Saddam Hussein has promised to fund a basic agricultural
research center with profits Iraq receives from oil sales to Syria.”
Hussein is already talking about turning guns into plowshares and lying
down with the lion, meaning the United States. Islamic regimes in the
region have been supportive of the proposal which seems to legitimize male
dominated, repressive, tribal societies. Authors of the report, however,
disagree, claiming that “it is not possible for such dominance to appear in
this Eden where, as in the original Garden of Eden, mean and women were
equal. Persia, which was once the center of art. commerce, science,
mathematics, and philosophy, knows a thing or two about equality. After
all, the region is the cradle of democracy.”
Ordinarily such reports would be assigned to the UN dustbin. But the Eden
report is different because major Arab oil suppliers--Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait--have signaled an interest in the proposal which would appeal to
their constituents, conserve a vital resource, and be consistent with
religious tenets.. As more than one Arab diplomat noted, supporting an
organic world is hardly an act of war.
Perhaps not, but in the West even a 10% reduction in oil production would
be disastrous. Politicians are turning to the Bible and Greek classics for
a better understanding of this economic model. Plato’s Republic is a heavy
favorite, as is Thomas Moore’s Utopia.
The New Republican administration in Washington, largely made up of
born-again, Texas oilmen, is finding it difficult to argue with the Koran,
the Talmud, the Bible, and other holy tests. Many politicians fear that,
when scrutinized, contemporary economic practices such as price gouging,
cannibalism, downsizing, corporate welfare, slavery, and racism will be
found inconsistent with religious doctrine.
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