Meat eating is similar to consigning a corpse to an earthly grave. Both entail burying a dead body, in the belly in the first case and in the ground in the other. Only difference is that one grave is stationary and the other is mobile.
George Bernard Shaw rightly puts this in his famous poem:
We are the living graves of murdered beasts, Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. We never pause to wonder at our feasts, If animals like men could possibly have rights. We pray on Sunday that we may have light, To guide our footsteps on the paths we tread. We are sick of war, we do not want to fight, The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread, And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead. Like carrion crows we live and feed on meat, Regardless of the suffering and pain We cause by doing so. If thus we treat Defenceless animals for sport or gain, How can we hope in this world to attain The Peace we say we are anxious for?
Thus cruelty begets its offspring—War.
There is an alarming rise in global meat consumption. As per Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) statistical database, Since 1960 global meat consumption has more than trebled. This is attributed partly to the increase in affluence in many countries. A joint IFPRI/FAO/ILRI study suggested that global production and consumption of meat will continue to rise, from 233 million metric tons (Mt) in the year 2000 to 300 million Mt in 2020.
The consumption of poultry meat has increased from 9 million Mt in 1960, to 15 in 1970, 26 in 1980, 41 in 1990 and 68 million Mt in 2000, thereby overtaking the production of beef (60 million Mt in 2000). Consumption of meat in the U.S. is 124 kg/capita/year, compared to the global average of 38 kg. The countries that consume the least amount of meat are in Africa and South Asia.