Fit for the Future? On the consumption of animals and animal products.

The 2006 FAO report "Livestock's Long Shadow" already highlighted the devastating effects of livestock farming on climate and forests, soil conditions and land use, drinking water and biodiversity. On a positive note, it showed "the trend towards vegetarian diets in affluent countries." Almost twenty years on, the ecological and health consequences as well as the animal ethics problems from the mass instrumentalization of sentient fellow creatures as food supplies are more serious than ever before. The lecture will address the cultural and religious traditions as well as the political and economic power structures that preserve the status quo. The lecture discusses the individual and structural alternatives making it possible to exit the animal industry: a plant-based, ideally vegan diet, in-vitro food, advertising bans for and taxation of meat, the withdrawal of subsidies and the internalisation of external costs.

Kurt Remele completed Catholic theology and English/American studies in Graz and Bochum, since 2001 associate university professor at the Institute for Ethics and Social Teaching at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Graz. Several visiting professorships in the USA and England, Fellow of the Oxford Center for Animal Ethics. Retired since October 2021, author of the book "Die Würde des Tieres ist unantastbar. A contemporary Christian animal ethics"(Kevelaer: topos premium 2019).