Senator Barack Obama responds to a question from vegan, Nikki Benoit, during a public meeting at Gibbs High School, Saint Petersburg, Florida (August 1st, 2008)
The transcript of the conversation between Nikki and now president-elect Obama appears below…
Senator Barack Obama: The young lady in the t-shirt, right there.
Nikki Benoit: Thank you, Senator, very much for your strong environmental position.
The United Nations actually has reiterated that factory farming is contributing more to global greenhouse gas emissions than all of transportation. I think that as a global community we really need to be the leader and moving more towards non-factory farming animal agriculture. It’s very egregious. There’s 10 billion land animals that we are funnelling our precious water and grain through when 70 per cent of all of our grain could help feed the world’s hungry. So, as the next leader of the most amazing nation in the world, how can we set the example on the more nutritional, plant-based diet that’s more eco-friendly and sustainable, that can maintain our water resources and all of our grain. Thank you very much.
Senator Barack Obama: Okay. Well, it’s a great question.
Now, I have to say in the interests of full disclosure, that I do like a steak once in a while. I’m just being honest. I like barbecue. I’m not going to lie. But the young lady makes a very important point and that is this: right now, our food system world-wide is under enormous pressure. It’s under enormous pressure because as a consequence of climate change, you’ve had severe changes in weather patterns. We don’t fully understand what these effects are. But, for example, Australia’s had huge drought which has taken a lot of crops. Grain production has been much lower. And supplies are tight. You’re starting to see riots around food in places like Haiti and other poor countries around the world. And what is also true is that as countries like China and India become wealthier, they start changing their food habits; they start eating more meat, more animals. And what happens then is because it takes more grain to produce a pound of beef than if they were just eating the grain, what ends up happening is that it puts huge pressure on food supplies.
Americans would actually benefit from a change in diet. I don’t think that that’s something that we should legislate but I think that it is something that, as part of our overall health care system, we should encourage because, for example if we reduced obesity down to the rates that existed in 1980, we would save the medicare system a trillion dollars. We would reduce diabetes rates. We would reduce heart disease. So, the fact that we subsidise some of these big agribusiness operations that are not necessarily producing healthy food and we discourage, or we don’t subsidise, farmers who are producing fruits and vegetables and small scale farming that gets produce immediately to consumers as opposed to having it processed. The fact that we are not doing more to make sure that healthy food is in the schools. All those things don’t make sense. It is important for us to re-examine our overall food policy so that we’re encouraging good habits and not bad habits. For example, just making sure there are more fruits and vegetables in school lunch programs. That would make an enormous difference in how our children’s diets develop. That would make us healthier over the long term. It would cut our health care costs and maybe it would help people elsewhere in the world, who are in less wealthy countries, feed themselves as well. So, it’s a great question. It’s important.
Websites:
Barack Obama – www.barackobama.com
Nikki Benoit – www.myspace.com/nikki1sky
Vegan Future – www.myspace.com/veganfuture
Duration : 0:5:0
“…that’s like …
“…that’s like forcing vegans to eat meat. ”
no it’s not.
Either way i think …
Either way i think it’s more appropriate to find a “greeneer” way of farming animals for human consupmtion than to stop people eating animals altogether. In gerneral people should stop eating fatty foods and if that means cutting down on eating processed meat and only eating fresh organic meat then that would make a significant difference to the environment, after all you can’t force people to stop eating meat because of vegans veiws on eating animals thats like forcing vegans to eat meat.
Given the crap …
Given the crap we’re feeding these animals, sure – who would want to eat it. You’re study’s apparently missing the land and other resource appropriations issues. We NEED to use our finite land for growing edible crops, and would use LESS if it were ONLY humans we were feeding. There are sustainable ways to maintain us on plant based diets, which, argue all you like, would require LESS land, water and fossil fuels when we eliminate animals.
actually my uni did …
actually my uni did a study abost this theory nd they found out that if we stoped eating meat thre would be more than triple the amout of starving peple in the world than there is today, something to do with we’d have to replace the foods that contained meat product with the grain tht animal eat but because only 1 third of what animals eat is good for human consumption there wouldnt even be enough to feed 2 thirds of europe and it would almost be impossible to grow the amount of grain we need
obama isent my …
obama isent my president!!!!!!!!
wales have even …
wales have even bigger brains than humans, but they still aren’t more intelligent, so it’s pointless
There are many …
There are many theories as to why the humans’ brain has developed to what it is today, and NO ONE has figured it out. NO skeleton of earlier hominids had flesh shearing teeth – do an image search for “homo erectus skull” – blunt teeth across the board. Our pH is like herbivores, our intestines are long like herbivores and MANY health issues are CURED with a plant based diet – too many clues that support plant consumption is best.
GO OBAMA!!!
GO OBAMA!!!
This makes me …
This makes me respect Obama a bit more, he knows his facts!
Animals suffer in …
Animals suffer in factory farms so that people can eat meat, develop heart disease and then experiment (torture) animals in a vain attempt to find a cure…to a largely preventable disease.
And we have flu …
And we have flu pandemics (!) thanks to factory farming.
Ok but not one word …
Ok but not one word how it would benefit the animals that are concerned with a honest treatment and that is disappointing
At this moment 350 000 000 000 animals die annually just for the lowest emotion of all and that is taste.
Compassion is the highest emotion and we should have compassion to all that lives for if it would happen to you or your relatives you would want compassion too. And there is no compassion in slaughtering huge amounts of animals most of them tortured to death.
believe me, it’s …
believe me, it’s not a torture. ôO
There is no torture …
There is no torture in not eating meat.. If people would only TRY being a vegetarian for a couple weeks they would see how they aren’t missing out on anything.
The question was a …
The question was a great question expressed very eloquently and directly covering many areas. Bravo Nikki!
You’re not a …
You’re not a vegetarian to any extent if you eat meat… I’m so sick of people saying they’re “semi-vegetarian” “almost vegetarian” etc. Sorry, not to pick on you but it is a personal pet peeve of mine.
I mean, I am a …
I mean, I am a vegetarian to a certain extent. I eat maybe a slice of ham a week at the most.
However, you’re missing an important point here. A great deal of scientists agree that evolution to the human species was sparked by our ability to harness fire to cook our meat, and therefore giving our brain more room to grow by the fact that we needed less of a jaw to handle raw meat.
If you consider that we cook meat, your argument on canine teeth goes out the window.
sorry, but I’d much …
sorry, but I’d much rather eat red meat and live to be 80 than live to be 100 with the torture of not eating red meat.
kann mir das …
kann mir das gesagte von Obama ins deutsche übersetzen?
I’m vegan! know …
I’m vegan! know your facts everyone! that vegan outreach lady sure did!
we scavengers…..
we scavengers…..
true,,,,,,but i …
true,,,,,,but i think we should try to atleast save our endagedred animals ect….we might move planets….u never know
you’re cherry …
you’re cherry picking my points. we CAN grind side-to-side as our skeletal structure allows for it…that’s my point. by design, we are more LIKE herbivores than carnivores, which begs the question “do we NEED to consume animals or the secretions to be healthy” – no, we don’t. we do it for taste and/or convenience, and in spite of the destruction that results.
I’ve NEVER seen …
I’ve NEVER seen anyone grind side to side, it’s nearly impossible to eat our food that way. Any doctor can tell you we resemble omnivores, not carnivores or herbivores. Can we digest what herbivores can? uhh no.
Lets just say a …
Lets just say a small part of what you are guessing is correct.
You will eventually die, so should your life be miserable? So if billions of animals are treated better or best simply left alone how does that not have a point or purpose?
Suffering a lifetime would matter more if it was you in agony.