This is but an indication of what is going to happen when billions of poor people become affluent enough to want the things that affluent Westerners take for granted.
The Guardian: “Fan Jianjun points to a concrete pipe jutting from the lake bank. Sludge spews from its mouth and arcs across the water, the surface bubbling with the bodies of flies.
Fan has lived in Houtonglong village all his 31 years. The water was clear, he says, before the pig farm was built and people’s health began to suffer.
No one consulted the villagers before Shengtai pig farm was built 100 metres from their homes. The farm produces 10,000 animals a year – a relatively small concern in the world of industrialised farming – but there is so much waste to dispose of, the village air is thick with the stench. In the rainy season manure escapes from the farm, covering the roads. Villagers are developing respiratory problems and Fan struggles to raise chickens and ducks, which die soon after hatching.
In the 10 years since the farm arrived, the villagers have tried to get it dislodged. “We pulled down the walls several times, and blocked the gate with mud and trucks,” said Fan, a self-employed businessman. Complaints to the local government have gone unanswered, so Fan turned to internet forums to raise awareness. “We can only hope the farm will stop polluting our environment,” he added. “Our village was once a very beautiful place.”
Pork is China’s favourite meat: last year the country produced 50m tonnes – more than half the world’s total – and as the disposable incomes of China’s 1.3 billion people rise, their appetite is growing. “Pork is wrapped up in ideas of progress and modernity,” said Mindi Schneider, a sociologist at Cornell University. Until the 1990s typical families only ate meat at Chinese new year.
Memories of the devastating famine that killed tens of millions in the early 1960s still weigh heavy on the Chinese psyche. “I’ve heard people talking about eating meat in ‘revenge,'” Schneider said. “It was so limited before. Now it’s like: ‘look at this progress, we can eat as much meat as we want.'”
In 1980 the average Chinese person ate 14kg of meat. Today that person eats over four times more, almost 60kg. In comparison, the average American eats 125kg of meat each year and the average Briton about 85kg.
The livestock industry is transforming accordingly. Seen from a hilltop 200 miles from Houtonglong, the future of Chinese pork production takes the form of 32 identical redbrick pig sheds, shaded by leafy trees.”
via China’s taste for pork serves up a pollution problem | World news | The Guardian.
An outsized image of Father Christmas beamed from the window, flanked by a manic array of snowmen, reindeer and present-stuffed stockings. The masseuses greeted customers in Santa hats.
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