So What's Wrong With The Heifer Project?
I think Heifer does some good work--they are committed to small scale, local agriculture as opposed to factory farming. But the emphasis on raising animals for food contributes to a general misunderstanding among North Americans about the causes of hunger, which are very much related to our consumption of a meat based diet . . .

Heifer Project International provides cows, sheep, and other livestock to rural
families around the world with the aim of fighting hunger. They claim to have more
than 300 projects in forty countries. With endorsements that cross the ideological
spectrum, from Ronald Reagan to Jimmy Carter, Heifer is virtually a sacred cow?—an
organization that everyone seems to love.
But there are problems with exporting animal agriculture to the Third World.

Globalizing American farming methods is as big a mistake as cultivating a taste for
lamb chops and barbeque among the world?s poor. Neither is the answer to starvation. Did you realize that an acre of prime agricultural land can produce 40,000 pounds of potatoes, or 30,000 pounds of carrots, or 50,000 pounds of tomatoes, but only 250 pounds of beef? The grain that could feed twenty people suffices for just one cow. Peasants cannot afford this kind of waste and inefficiency.

Thus in country after country, food security has suffered as people switch from rice, beans, and corn to eggs, dairy and meat to satisfy their nutritional needs.Worldwatch Institute documents the trend in Taking Stock: Animal Farming and theEnvironment. The authors point out that Taiwan increased its consumption of meat and eggs by 600% between 1950 and 1990. While the island nation was a grain exporter atthe beginning of this forty year span, it depended on massive imports of grain by the end of the period in order to feed its growing population of livestock. Food self-sufficiency is undermined when people increase their reliance on animal protein. The pattern has been repeated in the Middle East and Central America.

Mexico is one of the countries where Heifer works. Twenty-five years ago, livestock consumed only 6% of that nation's grain. By 1990, the figure had climbed to 50%, as increased numbers of cattle required more imported feed. Most of the meat produced in Mexico and other Latin America nations is exported for dinner tables north of the border while the little that remains at home is usually priced out of reach of the poor. [continued at top of next column...]

[continued from left column] Two-thirds of non-Caucasians on the planet are lactose intolerant and cannot digest dairy. Among blacks, the numbers are even higher. Writing in "Science in Africa," Dr. Harris Steinman points out that approximately 90-95% of Africans lack the enzyme lactase and are unable to metabolize milk sugar. The common symptoms of this genetic predisposition are nausea, vomiting and abdominal cramping. Despite this, Heifer is spending millions on initiatives like the Small Scale Dairy Project in Zimbabwe, when the last thing that a hungry child in Africaneeds is a milk cow.

Heifer seems wed to the belief that animal agriculture is the answer to the world
problems, even when evidence indicates the contrary. American's over consumption of
beef is damaging our health and ravaging the environment'a fact that Heifer's public
information officer readily admits. But then why is Heifer spending $123,558 to fund the "St. Helena Beef Cattle Project" in Louisiana, whose stated purpose is to boost beefproduction among American farmers? And isn't it a mistake to encourage people in developing countries to emulate a diet that we know is unsustainable?

A United Nations Environment Programme survey counted 6,500 distinct breeds of
domesticated mammal and birds in 170 countries across the planet, including cows,
goats, sheep, buffalo, yaks, pigs, horses, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese andeven ostriches. Unfortunately, much of this variety being lost because of programs likethose funded by Heifer, which is introducing Irish goats into Kenya. In China, their "Pixian Dairy Cattle Importation and Improvement Project" is using imported cattle to provide "high quality semen and embryo transfe ...for dairy development,? supposedly to increase the quality of the breeding stock. But the effort to "improve" the gene pool with foreign imports can have unforseen consequences. "The greatest threat todomestic animal diversity is the export of animals from developed to developingcountries," says the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, "which oftenleads to crossbreeding or even replacement of local breeds." Loss of diversity puts animals (and the people who depend on those animals) at heightened risk.

So that's my beef with Heifer. The roots of world hunger are systemic and usually lie in an unfair distribution of land, which is itself related to an imbalance of economic and political power. Addressing these underlying causes of malnutrition is essential. Hunger is not caused primarily by lack of food. In fact, the world currently produces enough calories to feed every person on earth an adequate diet.Unfortunately, too many of those calories are fed to cows and pigs rather than getting tothe people most desperately in need.

Heifer is now branching into praiseworthy efforts at reforestation and water purification. But the charity's insistence on putting animalagriculture at the center of their mission hampers their otherwise laudable goal of"ending hunger, caring for the earth."

Gary Kowalski is the author of "Science and the Search for God" (Lantern Books 2003), "The Bible According to Noah: Theology As If Animals Mattered" (Lantern Books 2001), "The Souls of Animals" (Stillpoint Publishing, Revised Edition 1999), "Goodbye Friend: Healing Wisdom For Anyone Who Has Ever Lost A Pet" (Stillpoint Publishing 1997) and other books that explore the connection between spirit and nature, available at www.kowalskibooks.com or from your local bookstore. More Information
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SOME ALTERNATIVES
to the Heifer Project

Tis the season……oh no, already? Fa la la la la on mindless, expensive gift giving!

In a survey conducted about holiday gift giving, the two factors most closely tied to holiday unhappiness were: Giving and Receiving Gifts.” What to do?

I want to practice humane gift giving and not buy stuff; everybody I know has too much stuff. Fighting crowds contributes to this Giver’s holiday unhappiness, so my shopping trip began with a google to “humane gift giving”. This produced so many places to shop I felt like I was already at the mall. Yes, the “Heifer Project” does indeed come up. I won’t argue with their good intentions, but gifting an animal would create great holiday unhappiness for this Giver, so I passed it up and kept looking.

My favorite store is www.globalgiving.com . GlobalGiving presents 500 pre-screened grassroots projects to choose from-- education and economic development to health and environment in over 100 countries. You can buy a gift card for as little as $10 that lets your gift recipients choose the project that most appeals to them in a series of shopping steps. The gift card (made of corn, not plastic) can be sent to you for insertion into your own holiday card or tucked into a stocking.

The first step is to choose a project: by topic or region, or you can use “Donation Wizard” that helps you pick a project. I chose Donation Wizard and answered four short questions which led me to Plant a tree in Haiti and help 155 families , described as: For years, villagers cut down Haiti’s trees. Then, erosion destroyed the farmlands. Soon, families had nothing to eat. Today, planting trees—reforestation—is their hope for a future.” Now that's a humane gift!

You can follow the chosen project and find out the impact of your gift. Project leaders post progress reports on GlobalGiving every 3-4 months. A gift that keeps giving—what a pleasant surprise. It's an efficient and transparent way to practice humane gift giving which will please both the giver and the receiver—I guarantee it.  Anna Sylvester