by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The environmental arguments for eating less meat are pretty clear-cut – less livestock means less deforestation, less water use and less greenhouse gas emissions – so claim those that would want us to get rid of livestock farming or at least reduce it.
But, according to the executive director of the Food Ethics Council, it's a more complex problem than the soundbites suggest.
Speaking at a Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum seminar in December 2009, Dr Tom MacMillan outlined how the practicalities of cutting our environmental impact by cutting down on meat are far from straightforward.
"When people have floated the idea that we should eat less meat, they have met a very hostile response," he said.
It's a sensitive issue, he said, and even those politicians who can see a need to curb consumption feel hamstrung and question whether they have a mandate from their constituents to drive down meat eating.
"The idea that eating less meat and dairy might be more sustainable has been on DEFRA's radar since at least 2005 but I think it's fair to say it's languished there a bit," said Dr MacMillan.
"There's concern about the public reaction...and nobody's comfortable talking about food consumption."
Stopping eating meat tomorrow as a nation would also cause ripples around the world, he said, and may simply displace the problems.
"In a world where we eat less meat it would be a lot easier to meet our commitments to the environment, animal welfare and social justice," he said.
"But if we simply cut back we might end up causing as much harm as good."
Some of the most climate-friendly forms of farming, he said, require the input of livestock in the form of fertilizing dung, grazing and other less-intensive land management techniques.
The equation that is often made, and was cited earlier, namely that less livestock means less deforestation, less water use and less greenhouse gas emissions, does not add up, especially not if the farming is done sensibly.
Livestock farming should and must be done only where it is suitable for it, such in the grasslands, when it comes to cattle and other grazers/browsers and not by creating more and more grazing land where there is naturally none.
The Food Ethics Council has been working with policy makers and the food production sector to look at the best way to actually address the problem, and move from entrenched positions to a dialogue that could make progress towards more sustainable levels of meat consumption without causing too many knock-on effects.
The council's report Livestock Consumption and Climate Change: A Framework for Dialogue, produced with the WWF, puts forward 27 potential interventions that could tackle the problem, from publicity campaigns seeking to shift consumer behavior to fiscal measures that take into account the emissions associated with animal products.
If the world would stop eating meat tomorrow what do those advocating the reduction or even the termination of livestock farming for food think would happen to the animals.
Some misguided people has suggested that they would all be nicely looked after and they would have a great life. This is not so for their only reason for existence is to become food.
The real truth is that, should the world go vegetarian tomorrow, all those animals would be destroyed for they no longer would have a reason to exist and they also would take up valuable land required for the production of vegetables.
The problem is that too many people who advocate the vegetarian way do live in cloud cuckoo land and not in reality. If livestock is not required for food, whether we are talking cattle, sheep, goats, etc., they have no reason of being, with the exception of sheep for wool and goats for some shrub clearing, and such, and would simply not exist. Period!
Time people woke up to reality.
Even our closest cousins in the non-human field, the Chimpanzees, are not vegetarians but are, in fact, omnivores who also hunt and kill prey for food. Reality is not all that cuddly.
© 2010
