When we think about food waste, we need to stop imagining half-eaten meals and instead focus on the waste involved in bringing food to the plate. It can require as many as twenty-six calories fed to an animal to produce just one calorie of meat. The UN’s former special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, wrote that funneling one hundred million tons of grain and corn to biofuels is “a crime against humanity” in a world where almost a billion people are starving. We might call that crime “manslaughter.” What he didn’t mention is that every year, animal agriculture funnels more than
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