To feed pigs. Increasing meat consumption in China s cities, Hong Kong included, demand an additional 20 million pigs each year. We are destroying biodiversity as we eat. But expectations have changed. Meat consumption in China rose from 20 million tonnes in 1991 to a staggering 63 million in 1998.
Opinions differ on how to improve yields, and on how far they can be improved.
Some agriculturists think we are close to our capacity. None would dispute that eating meat calls for more land. The current trend to eat more beef is a recipe to repeat China s tragic famine of 40 years ago the worst in human history. A famine caused, as much as anything, by ecological ignorance. Vegetarians are the antisocial ones, while the reactionaries seem to invoke the difficulty of giving up all animal products as a reason not to cut down on any .