A global icon for justice takes the lead, and speaks out against humanity’s brutality to animals
Published 27 October 2024
Justice Edwin Cameron’s historical keynote speech at the 5th International Social Justice Conference held in Cape Town on 17 October 2024, is now available in video.
Here are excerpts from his speech — one of the first ever, by an iconic world leader — calling for a better understanding of food security, and for the inclusion of animals in our moral circle.
View excerpts here:
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Red meat exports are set to escalate
Judge Cameron’s speech comes just as South Africa’s red meat industry gears up for 20% growth, in the next five years.
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Speaking in a webinar titled ‘The Beef with Climate Change’ on 22 October 2024,
Dr Andrew Bennie, Senior Researcher in Climate Policy and Food Systems at the Institute for Economic Justice in Johannesburg, said the growth strategy would be largely through exports.
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“Currently, only 5% of SA beef is exported and we want to grow this to 24%. Our growth strategy is to increase production by including more Black smallholder and emerging farmers in the industrial value chain,” he said.
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Asked by Compassion in World Farming’s Louise van der Merwe if the growth in the export market would involve the transport of live animals to slaughter in Mauritius, the Middle East, and elsewhere, Dr Bennie said he did not know the answer and referred our question to Dewald Olivier, CEO and Executive Director of Red Meat Industry Services, who was also a participant in the webinar. Mr Olivier ignored the question, but said: “There is hunger in South Africa and we must make sure there is food security.”
Published 17 October 2024
Industrialised agriculture and its impact on starvation in South Africa
In an urgent call to action, Justice Edwin Cameron, Chancellor of the University of Stellenbosch, and former Justice of the Constitutional Court, pointed a finger at industrialised agriculture for its role in the plight of starving children in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province.
As keynote speaker at the 5th International Social Justice Conference held in Cape Town on 17 October 2024, Justice Cameron was one of a number of South Africa’s respected leaders, brought together in a unified bid to reach the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger by 2030.
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“What is hunger?” he asked. “It is not just ‘feeling hungry’ which is a desire for food that expects and anticipates fulfilment. Hunger is different. Hunger is a gnawing, debilitating, preoccupying daily presence. It haunts the daily lives of millions of people, and menaces their very being."
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Yet, he said, according to a 2016 Demographic and Health Survey, 27% of South Africa’s children under the age of 5 are stunted from undernutrition; 3% are wasted and 6% are underweight. ​​
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In the Eastern Cape Province, the number of children suffering from severe and acute malnutrition had more than doubled over the last 18 months.
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Additionally, he added, 9 million of the 13 million school children in South Africa, “are dependent on school feeding schemes for their one and only meal of the day.”
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"How can this be?" he asked. “Despite the fact that we are a middle income country, we have a wretchedly high rate of hunger in South Africa. Why is it that we produce enough food to export, and yet our people go hungry?”
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Justice Cameron referred to a report by UN Special Rapporteur, Ms Hilal Elver, on the Right to Food. It stated: “The current industrial agricultural model has serious disadvantages. It generates food loss and waste, mistreats animals, emits greenhouse gases, pollutes ecosystems, displace and abuses agricultural fishery workers, and disrupts traditional farming communities.”
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The financialisation of the food system, said Justice Cameron, was also a contributory factor. Instead of alleviating the wretchedness of people in the grip of hunger, South Africa exported more than half of its maize harvest – 53% – for animal feed. In a global context, a third of the world’s grain, and two thirds of soya, maize and barley were used for animal feed.
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“And it is worrying and perplexing that our government seems to have a master plan to increase the amount of meat for export, rather to feed the children just a few hundred kilometres away in the Eastern Cape.​"
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"Key to reforming food production was the need for respect and social justice for “those hands, mostly black and dark-skinned hands, that produce the food we eat.”
In addition, while industrialised animal agriculture contributed to hunger, it was also bad for animals.
“The intolerable cruelty we inflict on sentient beings – sentient beings, like ourselves – in order to feed our greed for animal flesh, is deeply concerning.
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“We like to imagine that the eggs and milk and meat we consume are produced on happy farms. They are not. The concept of happy farms is almost entirely a myth – a myth that we embrace, because it lulls our own consciences, our feelings of guilt and shame.
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“They are conscious, they feel discomfort, pain and anxiety, they feel apprehension of suffering and death, they experience horror. They have thoughts, feelings, bonds.
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“We cannot deny these inescapable facts, yet we lull ourselves, we desensitize ourselves, we anaesthetise ourselves from these facts.
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“Some claim that meat-eating is natural, others say it has roots in cultural and religious practices. The way that industrialised production of animals for human consumption is done today has nothing to do with traditional religious or other practices.
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“Why are we willing to inflict cruelty on those who are slaughtered en masse, transported en masse, transported in ways that become an international scandal like the one in Cape Town Harbour a few months ago when tens of thousands of animals were trapped on a ship in the most unspeakably ghastly conditions?”
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But, Justice Cameron said, hunger is remediable. “Sustainable and far-reaching solutions are available to us if we exercise our agency, our determination.”
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Judge Cameron said ordinary young citizens around South Africa could draw inspiration from the “focused, strategic and principled anger” that drove the marches, some decades ago, for the provision of anti-retroviral medication for people suffering from HIV.
One of the simplest ways to eliminate hunger, he said, was to eat less animal flesh.
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“What is lacking is our belief in our own agency. What is lacking is our failure to embrace the responsibility, the power we have as citizens. Once we understand that we have power, we also have the duty to use it. We sit here today nourished. We need to make sure that others can be freed from the debilitating oppression of hunger.”
