Luxury of owning a pet

I read on cnn http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/09/14/pets.zimbabwe.ap/index.html regarding the sad situation in Zimbabwe on how pets are being slaughtered for food. What has happened to this poor nation that people are starving and resorting to this behavior??? I am aghast. I think about the state of the world and cry for it. I know one person cannot go at it alone but man, I can see dollars well spent helping others survive instead of blowing them up with bombs and underhanded political deals. I come home every day to my two precious cats and wonder if it had to come to it---to kill my pets in order for me to survive could I do it? Thankfully I live in a nation aplenty...albeit too plentiful with the obesity rate rising and alarmingly so in children.

I just see the world's priorities being heavily skewed and wonder where we are heading morally?