Unintended Consequences

Most of you are probably unsurprised by this, but I have been fairly unexcited by the whole biofuels / E85 / gasohol furore.

Until recently, that is.

I was fully aware that food prices will be going up - significantly - because of the diversion of corn (maize) from food use to alcohol production. Now, I've never been opposed to producing alcohol from corn - in fact, I'm a bourbon fan, myself. Still, given that even were we to convert our whole corn output to alcohol, we would make at most a small dent in our petroleum imports, I remained unimpressed.
Then I realized that the food shortage will be selective. This looks like an organized, yet subtly disguised, attack on vegetarians (and especially vegans). After all, if we convert vegetable production to fuel production, shortages will fall disproportionately on the vegetarians.
Sure, we feed cattle with corn, but they are just as happy with other fodder (just ask our Canadian neighbours - after all, doesn't the Left think they do everything better in Canada?). And, as my new favourite young blonde country singer (whose name escapes me right now) asked: if God didn't want us to eat animals, why did He make them out of meat?

Why indeed?