Meat - Facing the Dilemmas

Contents0506070809131617181920210304222324Meat: the challengeConsumersTony McMichaelProducersJohn WibberleyAnimalsRuth LaytonEnvironmentTara GarnettThe big question: how should we farm animals in 2050?Richie Alford | Henry Buller | Joyce D’Silva | Temple Grandin | Matt HoweKen Laughlin | Richard Lowe | Jason Matheny | Nicholas Saphir | Steven TaitColin TudgeAnimals versus the environmentKate Rawles finds you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that caused itWhere next?Meat productionRoland BonneyMeat consumptionRussell MarshMeat tradeSteve SuppanColumnsWorldviewRaj Patel asks “If meat is murder, what is vegetarianism?”On the farmJohn Turner says we should face up to dairy’s dilemmasBusiness pageIndustry benefits if regulators learn from BSEPatrick van Zwanenberg and Erik MillstoneRegularsFrom the editorNewsReviews – readingReviews – eating | Tim FinneyUpcoming eventsFood Ethics, the magazine ofthe Food Ethics Council, seeksto challenge accepted opinionand spark fruitful debate aboutkey issues and developments infood and farming. Distributedquarterly to subscribers, eachissue features independent news,comment and analysis.The Food Ethics Councilchallenges government,business and the public to tackleethical issues in food andfarming, providing research,analysis and tools to help. Theviews of contributors to thismagazine are not necessarilythose of the Food Ethics Councilor its members.Please do not reproduce withoutpermission. Articles are copyrightof the authors and images ascredited. Unless otherwiseindicated, all other content iscopyright of the Food EthicsCouncil 2007.Editorial team:Tom MacMillanElizabeth AdamsRebecca O’ReillySamuel HarrisGeoff TanseyDesign & printing:PEP the PrintersBrightonSpecial thanks to:Bruce ScholtenLaura DavisPrinted on at least75% post-consumerrecycled paperISSN 1753-9056Food Ethics Council39 – 41 Surrey StreetBrighton BN1 3PB UKT: 0845 345 8574or +44 (0) 1273 766 654F: +44 (0) 1273 766 653info@foodethicscouncil.orgwww.foodethicscouncil.orgThe Food Ethics Council is aregistered charity (No. 1101885)Cover image: © iStockphoto.comEric Isselée

From the editoror Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, theF great granddaddy of gastronomes,meat was central to a decent meal.Of three menus he designed, even themost frugal has four different meatcourses. He quipped:“It is difficult to conceive of a peoplesubsisting merely on bread and vegetables.If such a nation existed it wouldcertainly be subjected by carnivorousenemies... If not it would be convertedby the cooks of its neighbours...”1Hardly more different, then, from SylvesterGraham, the pioneering vegetarianwho was ordained as a Presbyterianminister the year Brillat-Savarin died.Graham campaigned for moral restraint,preaching vegetarianism alongsidetemperance, chastity and baths.Today our meat habit faces some testingdilemmas and they would be easierto solve if we, in rich countries, ate lessof it. Yet, when it comes to finding solutions,we may be better off looking tothe Frenchman than to the preacher.What are the problems? Some aredown to how our meat is produced. Themost eye-catching is climate change: thelivestock sector, which as well as meatproduces dairy, eggs, leather, wool andmore, accounts for some eight percentof UK greenhouse gas emissions. Globallyit is around a fifth, which says moreabout how much else we spend moneyon in the UK than it does about the efficiencyof our production methods.The environmental toll extends wellbeyond climate change to water scarcityand biodiversity loss from clearingforests to make way for pasture or feedproduction. The Food and AgricultureOrganisation (FAO) is worried becauseit expects global meat demand by 2050to be more than twice the 229 milliontonnes we put away in 2000.2Poor animal welfare is also a problem.Most of the near-to-a-billion animals weslaughter globally each week – whichwould stretch just short of the moonif they stood in a line – lead lives wewould not want to witness. Just underhalf are intensively produced pigs andpoultry, and that is where FAO projectsmost growth.Meat consumption is an influence onthese production problems but alsocomes with problems of its own. The218 grams a day of meat we eat on averagein the UK – 342 in the US – isn’tgood for us, as several reports havespelt out this autumn.3 In particular,eating lots of red, intensively farmedand processed meats is linked to higherrisks of heart disease and some cancers.As well as poor diet, of course,there’s food-borne illness to worryabout, with livestock contributing muchto the UK’s estimated £1.5 billion annualfood poisoning bill.So, eat less meat. It won’t solve all ourproblems – it certainly won’t be enoughto stop climate change – but it seemsan all-round sensible thing to do. Yet itisn’t that simple. Meat-eating is harshlyunequal: to our 218 grams, people inSub-Saharan Africa average only 36,well below the consumption many nutritionistsfavour; for the half of a percentlivestock contribute to the UK’seconomy, the livelihoods of 1.3 billionrural people around the world dependintimately on their animals. With this inmind Tony McMichael (p.5) argues for‘contraction and convergence’ towardsa world-wide average of 90 grams a day– it is countries like the UK and US thatneed to do the contraction.As Tara Garnett (p.8) explains, for theclimate it also matters which meatyou’re eating, how it was producedand what else you might eat instead.Whether animals eat waste food, oilseed-based feeds, cereal-based feedsor grass – and even the type of grassland– can tip the balance towards oneproduction system or another, or eventowards producing meat instead of doingsomething different.Much is made of the trade-offs thateating meat presents. For example,some measures to reduce greenhousegas emissions come at a cost to animalwelfare. We’ve explored some ofthese dilemmas in previous reports onFarming animals for food and Drug use infarm animals. In this edition Kate Rawles(p.13), a member of the Food EthicsCouncil, unravels the argument thatanimal welfare is a luxury we can nolonger afford.In other words, the challenge is notonly to eat less but also to eat bettermeat – produced in more humaneand environmentally sound productionsystems yielding, as Henry Buller (p.9)has found, a better quality product. So,more Brillat-Savarin than Graham. Yetthat also makes meat cost more, raisingfood access issues that Raj Patel (p.19)explores.But perhaps the real challenge is lesswhere to head than how to get there.Here are three suggestions. First, mixedfarming: as Ruth Layton (p.7) and RolandBonney (p.16) explain, mixed systemscan combine high animal welfarewith good environmental performance.However, mixed farming may be a casualtyof the race for incrementalimprovements in feed conversion efficiency.Second, international governance: withoutwell-financed multilateral agreementscovering livestock and feedtrade, enabling countries to exploittheir comparative advantage to exportat the expense of their environmentslips easily into forcing them to do so.Finally, urban abattoirs: policy needsto get beyond hoping health concernsmight dent our appetite for meat. Wewill eat meat more sustainably whenwe understand it better, not when weare more frightened of it. There are allsorts of reasons to bring abattoirs backinto town, as Tim Finney (p.23) suggests,and what better time to start than thisYear of Food and Farming. That waymore meat might pass the transparencytest (p.16): that we’d still eat it ifwe knew where it came from.Tom MacMillantom@foodethicscouncil.org1 Brillat-Savarin, JA. (1825) Physiologie dugoût. Available at ebooks.adelaide.edu.au.2 Steinfeld, H. et al. (2006) Livestock’s longshadow. FAO.3 WCRF (2007) Food, nutrition, physicalactivity and the prevention of cancer.www.dietandcancerreport.org. McMichaelAJ. et al. (2007) Food, livestock production,energy, climate change, and health. TheLancet, September 13.www.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 03

Morecambe Bay– three years on Super-squeezeOur offer to subscribersFour issues of Food EthicsCovering one major theme each quarter, the magazineis designed to be essential reading for anyone with an activeinterest in food and farming. Each issue includes analysis,debate, reviews and upcoming events. Subscribers receivethe magazine in print and can download it online.Free publicationsThe Food Ethics Council provides research and analysis topromote better food and farming. As a subscriber you willreceive free copies of any printed reports that we produce.To subscribe visit www.foodethicscouncil.orgor call us on 0845 345 8574.Alternatively, please fill and send the form below.I want to subscribe to Food EthicsNameOrganisationAddressTownPostcodeCountryE-mailPhoneComment fromFelicity Lawrence,Jeff Rooker,Peter Ainsworth,Chris Kaufmanand Zad PaddaWe will keep this information in a database as long as you subscribe.We will not pass your details to any third party without your permission.£12 – unwaged£20 – individual£28 – non-profit/educational£76 – business (3 copies)“Cutting-edge analysis thatprompts real debate.”Zac Goldsmith, director ofThe Ecologist"...a welcome forum for a debatewe urgently need..."Professor Peter Singer, authorof EatingThink critically, keepinformed, subscribe today!Annual subscription rates including 20% discount:Non-UK: please add £5 for postage to Europe, £10 for rest of the world20% offCard payment preferred – subscribe directlyat www.foodethicscouncil.orgPlease return this form to:Food Ethics Council, 39 – 41 Surrey St., Brighton BN1 3PB UKThe Welsh Quality of FoodStrategy, out for consultationuntil 31st December, hasethics at its heart.This puts Wales at theforefront of governmentefforts in the UK to grapplewith the overlapping issuesaround food – not justhealth, the economy andenvironmental issues, butalso well-being, social justice,freedom of choice, animalwelfare and more.Why? Because setting outclear ethical principles canprovide an overarchingframework for betterdecision-making in foodpolicy. Amid complex issuesand competing interests,ethical principles help uskeep sight of the big picture:What is the right thing to do,all considered? Why? Who isit good for, is it fair and whodecides?Taking an ethical approachencourages rigour when usingconcepts like sustainabledevelopment. It identifiesclear shared referencepoints for negotiatingdisagreements and it providesa strong rationale for openand accountable decisionmaking.The three principles at thecentre of the new Welshstrategy are similar to thosein the Ethical Matrix, a tooldeveloped by FEC foundingmember Ben Mepham andused in many of our reports:1. Well-beingFood should be safe andnutritious, contributing topublic health and reducingthe burden of diet-relatedill-health;newsWelsh Assembly first on food ethicsFood production andconsumption shouldcontribute to social andcommunity cohesion andto the health and wellbeingof the environmentand farm animals.2. JusticeFood should be accessibleand affordable to all;Food should be traded fairly,respecting the needs andrights of all people involvedin the process of gettingfood from farm to fork.3. AccountabilityThe whole food chain shouldbe transparent to publicscrutiny and answerable toall people who depend onit;Food should be accuratelyand honestly labelled, inline with national andinternational food safetyregulations, enablingcitizens to make choices.How these principles relateto food quality should beexplained more clearly in thestrategy, but we see this as avery welcome and importantstep. We hope others willfollow and improve uponthe approach that Wales istaking.Do you think this is a goodway to frame the strategy?You can read the full strategyand let the Welsh AssemblyGovernment know whatyou think by visiting theirconsultation page (new.wales.gov.uk/topics/health/ocmo/consultations/qualityfood/?lang=en).If you want to respond to any of the articles in this issue or raisea different point, please write us a letter. Our contact details areon the contents page.

Meat: the challengeConsumersContraction and convergence is good for our healthTony McMichaelThe world is eating more and more meat, andmeat production is contributing increasingly toglobal greenhouse gas emissions. Both excessmeat consumption and a change in the globalclimate pose risks to human health.In 2006 the Food and Agricultural Organization(FAO) issued an important report, Livestock’slong shadow, drawing attention to the impact ofthe livestock production sector on the world’sclimate. The major contributor is entericmethane from ruminant (digastric) grazers –cattle, sheep and goats.Modern humans come from a long line ofmeat-eaters, starting from around two millionyears ago. The widely-accepted ‘expensivetissue hypothesis’ argues that the introductionof meat into the ancestral human diet lessenedthe need for a large and heavy-duty intestinefor digestion and fermentation of plant foods.The gut is a metabolically expensive organ torun. Hence, this dietary shift released preciousenergy that could, via the ‘experiments’ ofnatural selection, be reapplied to another veryenergy-intensive organ, the brain. The earlyhuman gut thus contracted and the brainexpanded.That brain subsequently powered the evolutionof human culture, including the capacity toreshape and exploit diverse environmentsaround the world. Eventually farming emerged,livestock were domesticated, food suppliesexpanded and human populations grew. Thosetrends continued over ensuing centuries, andhave accelerated dramatically in recent times.Globally, both total population size and totalextrasomatic energy use, mostly from fossilfuels, have increased about fourfold since1900.As wealth has accrued and food productionhas become increasingly mechanised, so unitcosts have declined and consumer preferenceshave ‘risen’. Today’s uptrend is for a one-thirdincrease in total meat consumption in theworld by mid-century. FAO argues that this isnot a sustainable trajectory. Either our meatproduction methods must change radically orconsumption levels must decline. Or both.So, the wheel has come full circle. The ancientdietary shift that boosted our cerebral capacityhas led to a crowded and wealthier modernworld in which there are too many of us wantingto eat too much meat, mostly from ruminants.Hence the now-substantial contribution of thelivestock sector to global total greenhouse gasemissions. Estimates by both the UK SternReport and the FAO indicate that this sectorcontributes around one-fifth of total globalemissions. Methane from the ruminant gut isa problem because, molecule for molecule, itcauses much more warming than the betterknowngreenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.Nutrition scientists recommend an individualintake of around 50-100 grams of meat per day,to enhance the diet and to provide sufficientiron and vitamin B12. The high-income worldis, on average, now way above that level, beingwithin the range of 200-300 grams per day. TheUS has the highest per-person daily intake. Incontrast, the average intake in Sub-SaharanAfrica is around one eighth of that Americanlevel.As a world community, we must now considerthe various facets of this environmental andpublic health dilemma:Meat consumption is now rising rapidly inmany parts of the world.There are great differences, at the moment,in per-person levels of meat consumption –some of this reflects cultural preference, somereflects access and affordability. The latterrepresents a moral challenge in inequity.The livestock sector is contributing asubstantial (though under-recognised)proportion of global greenhouse gasemissions.There is moderately persuasiveepidemiological evidence that the risk of largebowel cancer increases at higher levels of redmeat consumption. The risks of breast cancerand of obesity and heart disease may also beincreased, especially in relation to the high fatcontent of meat from intensively producedlivestock. The World Cancer Research Fund’scomprehensive report on Food, nutrition,physical activity and the prevention of cancerexamines this evidence thoroughly.1In a recent paper in The Lancet we proposethat the world should commit to reducing theglobal average daily intake of meat, especiallyred meat from ruminants.2 This would be partof the evolving portfolio strategy – acrossvarious sectors of commerce, energy use andhuman behaviour – to mitigate climate change.The fairest approach is ‘contraction andconvergence’, where the world’s nations agree toreduce average per-person meat consumption(currently just over 100 grams per day) and todo so equitably. High-consuming populationswould reduce their intake and low-consumingpopulations could increase their intake up tothe agreed average level.To avoid an increasing contribution to globalwarming from the livestock sector, werecommend a global average target figure of 90grams of meat per day – with not more than 50grams from ruminant animals. Indeed, manypopulations have potential access to other,often healthier, sources of meat; in Australiait would be good for the environment andfor the nation’s health to eat more kangaroomeat, which is lean and contains omega-3 fattyacids.This would be a win-win strategy. Globalwarming would be slowed. Health risks wouldbe reduced in high-consuming populations,and there would be gains in nutritional statusin lower-income countries where deficienciesof iron, protein and energy in the diet wouldbe reduced, conferring particular benefits onchild health and development. Any increasesin cancer, heart disease or obesity-relateddiabetes in those lower-income countrieswould be limited by the ceiling intake figure of90 grams/day.Phased in over several decades, this would begood for the planet, for global equity and forpopulation health.Professor Tony McMichael is anepidemiologist at the AustralianNational University, Canberra.His particular interest is studyingenvironmental influences onpopulation health, especially today’slarger-scale influences from climatechange, food systems and theurban environment.1 WCRF/AICR (2007) Food, nutrition, physical activity, andthe prevention of cancer. www.dietandcancerreport.org2 McMichael AJ, Powles JW, Butler CD, Uauy R. (2007)Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, andhealth.The Lancet, September 13.www.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 05

John WibberleyProducersRural livelihoods depend on a Highway Code for tradeMeat: the challengeInternationally, livestock integrated withinfarm-household systems and landscapesprovide huge benefits. By-products ofmanure/urine become crop inputs enrichingsoils and composts, and potentially generatingbiogas and natural pesticides. Hides, skins,horns, wool and feathers sustain craft andutilitarian businesses. Livestock provideentrepreneurial farmers everywhere withvaluable assets. They store wealth capable ofnatural capital increase and regular cash-flowgeneration with good management. They canutilise otherwise wasted crop by-productsas feedstuffs or bedding. Extensively grazedanimals maintain landscapes and countrysidebeauty required by civil society and tourism.Milk, meat and eggs greatly enrich humandiets when taken in moderation, though theycan cause obesity and associated diseaseswhen consumed to excess (also losing foodconversion efficiency compared to directvegetable consumption).In short, properly integrated livestockimprove the energy-efficiency of farmingsystems, the quality of human diets,environmental management, the livelihoodsof rural communities and the health of urbanpopulations. By contrast, the trend towardslarge-scale, intensive livestock offers some‘economies of scale’ to a point beyond whichcheapness threatens animal welfare, diseaseproliferation (e.g. bird ’flu), environmentalpollution (when manures and effluentsbecome a cumulative problem rather than astrategic resource), livelihood risk, food safetyand public health, and generates bureaucracyto seek to avert all these. The consequentstress on farmers is coupled with a drop in theoverall energy-efficiency of farming systemswith lengthened food chains. Moderatescale family farming aggregates production,protection and societal benefits.Currently, many livestock farmers worldwideface huge livelihood challenges characterisedby cost/price squeezes which produce lowermargins per animal sold and ratchet up thetrend to keep more animals per farm in orderto try to compensate. Many livestock farmershave left, except where tiny numbers oflivestock are involved on a truly subsistencebasis such that their products scarcely enterthe market system and feed inputs are largelyhome-grown.This polarisation between tiny and hugelivestock units most heavily eliminatesmedium-sized enterprises (arguably thosemost capable of giving the best aggregatebenefits). Food chains lengthen as distancesincrease between concentrations of animalsand concentrations of the consuming public,with additional transport and animal welfareimplications. All this means extra costand bureaucracy for EU farmers with tightregulation to minimise animal sufferingduring production, restricted journey timesfor live animals in transit, improved animalcomfort, a ban on the burial of fallen stockand close monitoring of all this by vets andhealth inspectors. Corresponding legislationto require the upgrading of silage clamps andother buildings, while suiting good farmers’aspirations, is often introduced so quicklythat they cannot afford to implement itand thus another farm is lost. Concentratedrisks, as recently seen in the UK, can leadto shutting down large areas of the countryfollowing disease outbreaks like foot andmouth, and bluetongue; meanwhile, greaterselective control approaches to alreadyendemic diseases such as tuberculosis haveso far been denied.Dumping chicken bodyparts unwanted byWestern markets displacesmany small farmersThe pressure for unregulated trading comingthrough the WTO is leading to the leastcostproduction of livestock, with immenseethical and practical problems. Countriesbest equipped to produce cheaply, owing tolow labour costs combined with adequateinfrastructure and logistics, are able to flooddistant markets with animal products whichhave become commoditised. Production,transport, food safety and other standardsassociated with many of these systems fallshort of those set for EU farmers to theconsiderable extra cost of the latter. Boththe poorest tropical farmers and manywelfare-compliant EU farmers are penalisedby this far from level playing field. In WestAfrica, cheap chicken arrives from afar tosell at prices half that required to cover thecosts of small-scale, private-enterprise,home-produced poultry, thus destroyingfarm livelihoods. In the poorest nations,dumping chicken body parts unwanted byWestern markets (all but breasts and legs)displaces many small farmers. Furthermore,the industrialisation and commoditisationof animal production leads to huge wastageunbelievable to small-scale mixed farmersin Africa – such as the frequent killing ofsurplus young males. A third of the food webuy in the UK ends up being thrown away.Dairy farms are in particular crisis: in theIsle of Wight fewer than 20 percent of thedairy farms existing a decade ago are stilloperating; in Iowa, USA, 5,000-cow herdsare common. Yet Send a Cow has recentlydone studies showing huge positive impactsof a single cow on farm-household systemvitality and viability in Uganda – and, in suchintegrated systems, the carbon-footprint(notably methane and manure) is offset byrecycling, by fodder and tree planting suchthat over 5 years it is 2.5 times positive!A long-term vision for agriculture requiresa Highway Code for agricultural tradegovernance. This would consist of minimalbut relevant national and internationalregulation to aggregate benefits and avertthreats, delivering:Conserved, biodiverse landscapesproducing food, with farmers ‘there to care’for land;Vibrant rural economies adding value tofood and non-food farm products;Networks of equitable, relationalcommunities.Professor John Wibberley isan agriculturalist and resourcemanagement consultant. Heis Visiting Professor at theRoyal Agricultural Collegeand serves in RURCON, anotherwise all-African teamof Christian Developmentleaders and practitioners insub-Saharan Africajohn@wibbs.fsnet.co.uk.06 Winter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.org

Meat: the challengeAnimalsGood animal welfare must be our starting pointRuth LaytonA wise colleague once pointed out that“poverty is sustainable”. So is poor animalwelfare. As sustainability storms up thepolicy agenda, animals are all too often lefton the margins.Our job at the Food Animal Initiative(FAI) is to design, implement and promotesustainable food production systems basedon good animal welfare. We talk about the‘three Es’ for sustainable food productionsystems: they should be Ethical, look afterthe Environment and be Economicallyviable. By ethical we (and the Oxford EnglishDictionary) mean doing the right thing, andthat means the right thing for animals aswell as for people.This is no mean task, so let’s put it inperspective. In 2006, world-wide, 24million pigs, 884 million poultry, six millioncattle and 17 million sheep and goats wereslaughtered for human consumption – everyweek. That amounts to an annual globalmeat production of 276 million tonnes. Thisis expected to rise to 465 million tonnes by2050.Poverty is sustainable. Sois poor animal welfareGlobally, eight percent of meat productionis from grassland-based systems of beef andsheep (ruminants), compared to 46 percentfrom the landless or intensive productionof pigs and poultry. To cope with increaseddemand for meat and other livestockproducts, livestock production is rapidlyshifting from grassland-based systemstowards more intensive landless productionof pigs and poultry. Over the decade to2001/3, pig meat output rose by 30 percentat world level, with the increase accounted foralmost entirely by Asia. The total productionof poultry meat grew by around 75 percent,again with the greatest expansion in Asia.In contrast, over the same period, ruminantproduction rose by 12.5 percent. This shifttowards landless production is contrary towhat FAI views as the most sustainable wayforward for food production, which is a moveto mixed agriculture that allows animal andcrop production to benefit from each other.Our approach is based on understandingthe animal first and designing the systemaround this knowledge. We championanimals because their voice, though wellheardthrough animal welfare organisations,cannot be acted upon unless alternative highwelfare systems are provided and promoted.We encourage farmers, industry partnersand NGOs to understand what we call the‘sustainable potential’ of a system and toput their energy into developing systemswhich have good sustainable potential asthis makes business sense in the long term.This concept of sustainable potential is oftendifficult to embrace for large producerswhose livelihoods have evolved aroundsystems which have no sustainable potentialbut which are enjoying considerable currentsuccess.A system with sustainable potential hasto take care of people, animals and theenvironment whilst being economicallyviable. So, in animal welfare terms, suchsystems as the conventional battery cage orthe farrowing crate are not an option. Scienceprovides us with overwhelming evidence thatthese systems do not and will not provide forthe needs of the animals involved. Althoughthe major food buyers are increasingly awareof this evidence, the major driver for themove away from systems such as ‘crates andcages’ is that a significant proportion of theircustomers tell them they do not want foodfrom these systems.There are increasing examples of producersmoving to systems with better welfarepotential, such as free range eggs and porkproduced from outdoor systems (whichdo not use farrowing crates), and there isa growing demand for pork from pigs thathave not had their tails docked.If we measure some of the high animalwelfare-potential systems – free rangeegg production being a good example – interms of a specific welfare outcome such asmortality, the system would often compareless favourably than a cage system. However,with scientific knowledge and best practicehusbandry techniques, we can reachthe full high animal welfare-potential ofsystems such as free range. By contrast, theconfinement of a conventional cage meansthat birds will never be able to move about,investigate their environment and engage inactivities important to them.Once producers move tohigh-welfare systems theydon’t want to turn backThe burning question is whether highanimal welfare-potential systems also havesustainable potential in terms of economics,people and the environment? The shortanswer is that the proof of systems likefree range lies in their growing marketshare. Anecdotal evidence tells us that onceproducers make the move to these systems,they don’t want to turn back – the foodthey produce is as safe and often bettereating quality. The environmental debate, ofcourse, rages. Our work at FAI shows thatsuch systems are the most environmentallysustainable as they have the potential to beintegrated into mixed agricultural systemswhere animals and crops are grown side byside for the benefit of all.Ruth Layton is a veterinarysurgeon. She is a founder andDirector of the Food AnimalInitiative and currently sits on theFarm Animal Welfare Council,which advises governmenton matters relating toanimal welfareruth.layton@faifarms.co.ukwww.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 07

Meat: the challengeTara GarnettEnvironmentMeat costs the climate but mitigation isn’t simpleOur growing world is hungry for meat.According to the Food and AgricultureOrganisation (FAO), demand in thedeveloping world for meat and milk is set todouble between 2002 and 2030. Populationand per capita demand will rise. The rise inthe developed world will be more mutedbut starts from a high base. The averageBrit consumes around 44 grams of animalprotein a day, compared with the developingworld where consumption is less than halfthat, at 21 grams.1Does this matter, environmentally? Yes,according to the FAO. In a major reporton the environmental impacts of livestockfarming it states: “The livestock sectoremerges as one of the top two or three mostsignificant contributors to the most seriousenvironmental problems, at every scale fromglobal to local.”2Livestock’s contribution to climate changeposes particular challenges. In the samereport, the FAO calculates that livestockaccount for 18 percent of total anthropogenicgreenhouse gas emissions. Cows and sheepburp a lot releasing methane, which has aglobal warming potency 21 times greaterthan CO2. Livestock of all kinds also releasenitrous oxide, 300 times more potent thanCO2. The 18 percent also takes into accountcarbon losses from land or forest clearanceto make way for livestock rearing.The FAO figure is global. The figure is highbecause agriculture is a relatively big playerin the economies of many developingcountries. In the developed world, wherethere are greater emissions from transport,manufacturing and domestic energyuse, livestock make a relatively smallercontribution to overall greenhouse gasemissions even though in absolute terms(owing to greater animal numbers) emissionsmay be higher.One EU report draws upon both top-downand bottom-up studies of the environmentalimpacts of products consumed in theEU, including food.3 On the basis ofenvironmental input-output calculations itconcludes that the food sector in its entiretyaccounts for up to 31 percent of the EU-25’sgreenhouse gas emissions. Meat and dairyproducts account for about half of these foodrelated emissions.What about the UK? Using published data,it is possible to calculate that our productionof livestock products in the UK contributesover six percent to the UK’s greenhousegas emissions. When it comes to UKconsumption – taking imports into account– this rises to eight percent.Of course, we also need to take into accountthe emissions that livestock help ‘save.’ Ifwe did not eat meat or drink milk we wouldhave to expend energy and emit greenhousegases to produce substitute foods. Moreover,livestock provide us with leather, wool,manure (soil fertiliser) and other animalbasedproducts; without them, we wouldhave to grow or manufacture substituteswhich again require energy to produce andwill inevitably generate greenhouse gases. Itis important to recognise too that livestockcan and do make use of waste food and byproductsthat may be going spare, and grazeon land that cannot not be used productivelyfor any other form of agriculture. In otherwords, while livestock farming generatesconsiderable volumes of greenhouse gases, itis undoubtedly the case that were livestocknot being reared, greenhouse gases wouldstill be emitted as we go about producingsubstitutes for the goods that livestockcurrently provide.So, what can we do to reduce greenhousegas emissions from livestock? Variousapproaches are being considered and adopted,largely in the developed world. One optionis to modify the feed: for example, cattle fedmore cereals and oilseed cake, and fewerfibrous foods such as by-products or poorquality grass, tend to produce less methane.Other approaches include breeding moreproductive animals (such as higher yieldingdairy cows) meaning that fewer animals needto be reared per given quantity of milk ormeat. More effectively managing the wasteoutputs of livestock rearing, mainly manure,is the focus of further activity. Indeed themanure can be anaerobically digested, withthe resulting methane used as a fuel source.However, some measures may havedamaging consequences for animal welfareand raise the question of what our ‘ethicalnon-negotiables’ might be. Other measuresmay affect biodiversity. There may be‘second order’ impacts to consider too, withnegative consequences for climate changingemissions. For example, to what extentmight livestock consumption of oilseed cakelead to further deforestation to make wayfor, say, soybean plantations?We need to do our thinking with globalpopulation growth in mind. By 2050 theglobal population is projected to top ninebillion. Demand for land, for food and forenergy will grow. If land is used for livestock,however efficiently, it means that therewill be less available to grow other food orbiofuels. As a result, hungry people may beforced to farm on ever more marginal landswith – among other things – damagingconsequences for carbon storage.Bearing in mind the multiple pressures onland use, global increases in population, theimportance of other non-climate-relatedenvironmental issues, the ethical obligationto care well for the animals we use and thelimitation of technological-managerialsolutions, a key conclusion we would drawis that if we are serious about tackling foodrelatedgreenhouse gas emissions, we needto consider making significant reductions inour overall production and consumption oflivestock products, while seeking to maximisethe benefits that livestock can bring.Tara Garnett co-ordinatesthe Food Climate ResearchNetwork (FCRN) at theUniversity of Surrey’s Centrefor Environmental Strategy.She has recently published aworking paper for FCRN onthe climate impacts of themeat and dairy sectors.t.garnett@surrey.ac.uk1 100 grams of chicken contains around 30 grams ofprotein.2 Steinfeld, H. et al. (2006) Livestock’s long shadow. FAO.3 EIPRO (2006) Analysis of the life cycle environmentalimpacts related to the total final consumption of theEU25. European Commission Technical Report EUR 22284.08 Winter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.org

How should we farmanimals in 2050?What principles should underpin livestock farming in future? Where shouldwe be in 40 years and how will we get there? We asked some of the peoplewho influence how animals are farmed today…The big questionSteven TaitThere will always be consumers who willbuy on price – now and in 2050. But themore consumers are informed about animalwelfare and the more the media continue togive highly effective voice to these concerns,the more the retail sector will react.This is already happening. The growth in ourown farm animal welfare scheme, FreedomFood, from seven million animals to 160million in four years is just one indicator thatretailer strategies are being increasinglydriven by corporate social responsibility.However, the industry will polarise betweenhigh-value, high-quality production,primarily based in this country, and moreintensive systems, primarily based overseas,with cheaper food products imported intothe UK. Again, this will be driven by retailersresponding to the differing demands of theircustomers. In the UK, we need to focus onanimal welfare, environment, quality, andprovenance as our differentiators.I hope that the welfare standards thatlivestock are reared to overseas will alsoimprove, but it is likely that their standardswill lag behind those of the UK. I doubt thiswill cause more consumers to move awayfrom buying on price alone.Continued improvements in the way inwhich we rear our livestock, here or abroad,require food production to be kept at thetop of consumers’ minds.Transport of live animals is likely to beone of the most difficult welfare issues toovercome. It has been driven mainly by theclosure of small abattoirs and it frustratesattempts to provide locally sourced products.The government must put resources intorebuilding and supporting local abattoirs toalleviate this problem.Matt HoweSustainability may be a buzz word for sometoday, however, as we look towards 2050,it is clear that it will become a part of oureveryday lives and govern many of our dayto-daydecisions.In 2050, McDonald’s will have justcelebrated our 75th anniversary in the UK.If Big Macs and milkshakes are to continueas a feature of our menu, it is vital that weassure a sustainable supply chain, and therecent changes that we’ve made to ourcoffee offer are a good example of what Imean.All the coffee we sell is Rainforest Alliancecertified, served with British organic milk,making it one of the most ethical productson the high street. As well as deliveringhigh quality beans, the Rainforest Allianceaddresses both social and environmentalcriteria in their certification process. It is thisholistic approach that sets it apart and makesit a sustainable, long term, platform.The foundation of our business is the 100percent British and Irish beef in our burgers.It is vital we make the same progressivemoves to help establish a sustainable beefsupply chain.So will we see a similar certificationprogramme for beef as we see in coffee?Possibly. What is beyond question is theneed to develop a foundation for economicand ecological efficiency in conjunctionwith strong animal welfare standards. Ecoefficiency,as defined by the World BusinessCouncil for Sustainable Development,addresses many of these aspects.It is this drive for Eco-Efficiency that I believemust underpin the beef industry as weapproach 2050.Ken LaughlinThe last 40 years have seen rapid changesin world agriculture.This topic can onlybe addressed by making a series ofassumptions about changes to 2050 whichdefine a new ethos. These are:Animals will continue to be farmed formeat and milk and that fundamentalanimal welfare requirements aresatisfied wherever this occurs.The fallacy of growing edible cropsfor biofuel production will havebeen exposed and will have ceased.In the key drivers for meat and milkproduction environmental impact will be amajor component of economic evaluation.Therefore in animal production simplefeed efficiency – food weight in, to saleableyield out – will have been replaced byspecific efficiencies of energy, protein,phosphorous etc. This means that retentionand excretion will be determined, andthe latter has a major impact on globalwarming potential.Feed and energy-intensive meat and milkproduction will have been relocated toclimatically suitable areas of the globecloser to the main grain and proteinmeal producing regions. These regionsalso require less use of primary energy inhusbandry systems in order to maintainthe health and welfare of the animals.Thus food production will be drivenby the need to feed people efficiently.Fundamentally inefficient productionsystems which may give a small minorityof consumers a ‘feel good’ factor willhave been eclipsed by a global productionsystem that addresses the broader ethos ofsustainable food production for all peopleacross the whole planet.Steven Tait is Head of Sales and Marketingat the RSPCA / Freedom Food Ltd.www.rspca.org.ukMatt Howe is Senior Vice President ChiefSupport Officer at McDonald’s Restaurants UK.www.mcdonalds.co.ukDr Ken Laughlin is Vice President of Policy and Strategyfor Aviagen, which breeds poultry. He has providedtechnical advice to poultry farmersin all regions of the worldwww.aviagen.www.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 09

Henry BullerIn 2050, we should be farming animalsin an ecologically sound and morallyacceptable way to produce meat anddairy products compatible with a healthyhuman diet. We are currently a long wayfrom this, yet it needs to happen and I cansee three drivers of change.First, the amount of meat and dairyproducts we eat is going to have to falldramatically. There is a growing concernfor the human health and ecologicalconsequences of meat production andconsumption.Second, the way we farm with animals isgoing to have to change completely. WithinEurope, in particular, consumer awarenessof animal welfare is on the increase. Farmanimal welfare legislation is expandingwhile more and more animal productsintegrate welfare concerns through qualityassurance mechanisms.The third driver is substitution, whetherthrough meat surrogates or through thesynthetic production of meat protein.Although still in its infancy, this has thepotential to reduce substantially ourdependence on intensively reared animalsin many foodstuffs.Critically, these agendas need to worktogether; less meat and dairy, betteranimal welfare, more ecologicallysound farming. The problem is that theydon’t work together, but in opposition.Moral absolutism clashes with individualfreedom, while market forces turn ethicalconcerns into trade advantage; is itacceptable, for example, that differentiallevels of welfare should be a basis formarket segmentation?The environmental and land-useimplications of more extensive husbandrysystems are considerable, yet the moralobjection to intensive husbandry isgrowing. What is needed is public debate.For too long, animal farming has beenhidden from view and public scrutiny,largely because consumers have simplynot wanted to know and other food actorshave benefited from this. Making theanimals more visible and acknowledgingtheir lives is the first, essential step in abetter direction.Henry Buller is Professor of Geography at theUniversity of Exeter, currently leading a majorinterdisciplinary research project on the links betweengrazing, meat quality and biodiversity.www.relu.ac.uk/research/projects/Buller.htmHow should we farmanimals in 2050?Joyce D’SilvaIf we continue down our current path, meatand dairy consumption will have doubled.The majority of farm animals will be housed,dairy and beef cattle will be zero-grazed.Biotechnology breeding techniques willproduce highly productive animals.The downside will be the health and welfareof the animals themselves. There is a definitecorrelation between extreme selectivebreeding and the fragility of animals. Basichardiness will have been lost. Chickens willreach slaughter weight in less than five weeks,but lameness will set in at an earlier age andrates of sudden death syndrome will have shotup. The productive life of the dairy cow will bedown to less than two lactations, as lameness,mastitis and infertility kick in ever earlier.Welfare will be a forgotten concept.10 Winter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.orgNumber crunchingIn 2006, globally, we slaughtered 24 million pigs, 884 million poultry,six million cattle and 17 million sheep and goats – every week. Thatadds up to 276 million tonnes of meat, with demand expected to reach465 million tonnes by 2050. The livestock sector employs 1.3 billionpeople worldwide but in the UK only accounts for about 0.5 percent ofthe economy, with meat amounting to about half of that. The livestock sectorcontributes eight percent of UK greenhouse gas emissions byconsumption and about 18 percent of global emissions, 35 percentof which are down to deforestation. Meat consumption ranges from an average36 grams a day in Sub-Saharan Africa to 218 g/d in the UK and 342g/d in the US – equivalent to three quarter-pounders.The big questionMethane emissions will have increasedas will nitrous oxide. With animals beinghoused, ever more cereals will be neededto feed them, so more nitrogen fertiliserswill be used. Fields which once held grazinganimals will be converted where possible toarable for feed crops or for biofuels. Obesity,type 2 diabetes, heart disease and dietrelatedcancers will have soared in thehuman population.We can do it differently. We can radically cutour meat and dairy consumption. Meat willbe viewed as a treat and people will buy onlyhigh welfare products produced on mainlyorganic or mixed, free range farms.Fewer animals overall will ease greenhousegas emissions. Animals will be bred backto resilience and slower growth rates. Dualpurpose dairy and poultry breeds will becommon. No animals will face an earlydeath due to their gender. All animals willhave outdoor access, their bodies won’t bemutilated and long distance transport willend as on-farm or near-farm slaughter isrevived with the aid of new technologies.Human health will improve as we all eat amore plant-based diet.We all have a choice to make. I know whichscenario I would choose!Joyce D’Silva is ambassador for Compassionin World Farming.www.ciwf.org.ukReferences at www.foodethicscouncil.org

Nicholas SaphirAt the beginning of the 1960s we spentaround 28 percent of our disposable incomeon food and drink. Food shortages andrationing were of recent memory, chickenand salmon were luxuries. Today we spendless than 12 percent. Intensively reared £2chickens and farmed salmon are now staplefoods.Range, innovation, functional benefits andquality are already becoming the drivers ofchoice with price becoming less important.Animal welfare matters and focus groupscontinue to influence UK legislation. Butmany consumers still buy intensively rearedpoultry, eggs, dairy products and importedveal.So what will change over the next 40 years?The developing world will continue todemand more animal protein as disposableincomes increase. Animal welfare will notbe a major concern for those who will beenjoying a full diet for the first time. Forthe developed world, campaigns againstobesity and increasing awareness of theenvironmental damage caused by livestockproduction will be the key drivers that movefood consumption towards quality ratherthan quantity. Here animal welfare will beof growing interest to consumers but comesecond to quality and environmental cost.will challenge many who have basedtheir business model around commodityproduction. Our growing understandingof environmental costs may surprise us:‘seasonality’ and ‘local’ may be easy catchwordsto focus our thinking, but we do notyet know whether evidence will support areturn to basics. The true environmentalcost of shipping ‘out of season’ produce,even refrigerated, may prove to be farlower than the environmental cost of ‘inseason’ local alternatives. If environmentalevidence supports a move towards longlifemilk and consumers accept the call, thewhole UK dairy industry could change, witha resurgence of low cost spring production.If reducing pollution from livestock requiresfundamental changes in feeding regimestowards or away from grass fed production,the challenge to UK farming could befundamental.We have much still to understand. However,what is important is that with change,especially a move towards quality, innovationand environmental improvements, comesopportunity. The end of production subsidieswas just the start of a UK farming revolutionthat will require change to be embracedrather than feared.Nicholas Saphir is Executive Chairman of OMSCo,the organic milk suppliers’ co-operative.www.omsco.co.ukColin TudgeIf things go on as they are then we’vehad it. By 2050 much of our farmlandwill be under water and what’s left willbe used for livestock feed or biofuel.Most people will not be fed at all (andsombre politicians and intellectuals willtell us the world is overpopulated).But we could in the next few decadesestablish agriculture that is actuallydesigned to feed people. In my latestbook, Feeding people is easy, I call this‘Enlightened Agriculture’. The focuswould be on staples, grown on thearable scale, plus varied horticulture.Animals would be slotted in whereverthey were complementary: sheepand cattle fed primarily on grass andbrowse, in places where food cropsare hard to grow; pigs and poultryfed on surpluses and leftovers. Thesystems would be intricate and hencelabour-intensive – all economiesshould have a strong agrarian base.Husbandry, including animal welfare,would be excellent. Such farms wouldproduce ‘plenty of plants, not muchmeat, and maximum variety’ – whichin nine words summarises modernnutritional theory and is the basis of allthe world’s great cuisines.But if we (humanity) are to achieveEnlightened Agriculture, then we haveto take matters into our own hands.If we rely on the present-day powersthat-bewith their crude, obsessivelymonetised and ruthless economy, thenwe are dead. We need a people’s buyoutof the world’s food supply chain.With a growing band of friends, I’mworking on it.Where does that leave UK farming? Thetrend away from a price-based, volumedrivenculture is good news, though itTemple GrandinThe most powerful engines that drive change are economic. The tremendouspurchasing power of large food companies can bring about huge improvements.In 1999 I implemented animal welfare audits of the US slaughter plants thatsupplied McDonald’s Corporation and Wendy’s International. During thatyear I saw more improvements than I had seen in a 25-year career priorto it. When major meat buying customers insisted on improvements, majorchanges occurred.Colin Tudge’s latest book, Feeding people is easy,is available from Pari Publishing.You can find out about his buy-out atwww.colintudge.comHow was change brought about? Activist NGOs bring attention to animalwelfare issues but, if that is where things stop, the executives of mostcorporations treat such concerns as abstractions to be left to their legal orpublic relations department. l took executives on their first tours of farms andslaughter plants. When they saw good practices they were pleased and whenthey saw emaciated, neglected animals they were horrified. Welfare was nowno longer an abstraction and they implemented changes.To direct these huge economic forces into changes that work requires peopleto work on farms and slaughter plants to develop practical new systems. Weneed lots of young people to work in the field to implement new farmingsystems.I have worked for over 35 years designing and implementing practical systemsfor handling animals. Legislation and policy making that occur in cities faraway from farms are not enough to make real, effective improvements.Temple Grandin is a professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University. Half the cattle in theUS and Canada are handled in equipment she has designed for meat plants.lamar.colostate.edu/~grandin/www.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 11

Jason MathenyI hope and expect that by 2050 livestock production will bein global decline, with meat replaced by cleaner, healthier,and more efficient meat substitutes. Each year, 50 billionland animals are raised and killed to feed humanity. Theuse and welfare of these animals has rightly become thefocus of intense debate. Livestock production destroys wildhabitat, wastes natural resources, contributes to climatechange, and causes many human diseases.Fortunately, there is significant progress in developingtechnologies to replace livestock. Plant-based meatsubstitutes have improved markedly over the last decade,and their market share is now doubling every five years.Thanks to advances in food chemistry, it should soon bepossible to produce plant proteins indistinguishable fromground meat.Producing meat in vitro, in incubators rather than inlive animals, is technically feasible now using tissueengineering techniques, and research is proceeding tomake it economical. Eventually the world’s meat supplycould be produced from a few cells. We should acceleratethe development of these technologies, so that we candecrease livestock production and its numerous insults tohuman health, environmental quality, and animal welfare.Jason Matheny is the director of New Harvest, a nonprofit researchorganisation working to develop new meat substitutes, including meatproduced in a cell culture rather than from an animal.www.new-harvest.orgRichie Alford12 Winter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.orgHow should we farmanimals in 2050?Richard LoweIn 2050 meat and dairy products will still be a vital component ina healthy balanced diet for the majority of consumers. However,UK production may have significantly reduced and tracts ofgrazing land may have been converted to arable production.Our UK production values will be to farm animalsin a welfare and environmentally friendly mannerto provide safe, traceable wholesome food.Climate change and consequent weathervolatility will make food supply less certain and, tomitigate this risk, food policy will need to becomemore cautious. There will be greater pressureto maximise agricultural land usage for cerealproduction (and to a lesser extent bio-fuel) andfor countries to ensure they have a secure foodsupply.The big questionThere will be competition for land use and, in the UK, this will maintainhigh values for agricultural land. For tracts of lowland grassland in the UK,the opportunity cost of not putting this grazing land into cereal productionor bio-fuel production may be too great to pass up. Livestock grasslandscould therefore become largely restricted to those areas not suitable forarable production.The process of change will be gradual because a significant numberof people farm livestock for reasons other than making a profit. Butundoubtedly our livestock sector will shrink in size and be divided betweensmall part-time hobby farmers and big, highly efficient meat and dairyunits. The big units, which will be the most efficient and environmentallysustainable, will not subsume all the smaller units because the value ofland in the UK will be too high for this to happen.So UK livestock production will be a smaller industry but producing higherquality, welfare friendly and environmentally friendly products.Richard Lowe is Chief Executive of the UK Meatand Livestock Commission. www.mlc.org.ukMeat and dairy products have been an essential aid to human survival anda major driver of development.Over the last 50 years, animal productivity in the developed world hasincreased significantly in response to demand. This has been at the expenseof the well-being of the animals themselves and also the livestock keepers.The environment has been plundered to fuel this production.In addition, the gap between rich and poor has grown, both within nationalboundaries and across them. Over-consumption of meat and dairy productshas contributed to significant health concerns.So, in contrast with today, meat and dairy production in 2050 should bebased upon production and marketing systems that are equitable. Laws willensure that the poor in our global society have sufficient access to meat anddairy products to achieve a balanced and nutritious diet. The rich will besatisfied with sufficient. In a dominant global market economy, the key issuewill be ‘getting the price right’: ensuring a just and fair price is paid for allproducts, reflecting social, environmental and production costs.The laws will be based upon good stewardship of the earth’s resources,optimising resource use locally, avoiding excess resource movement ordumping (such as stock movements, air pollution, nitrogen leaching, etc).The rights of livestock and their keepers to a comfortable life will be upheld.Shorter food chains will ensure closer connections between consumers andproducers, stricter control and higher quality.Richie Alford is a member of the International Programme Team of Send a Cow, responsible forsupporting the programmes in Southern Africa. He was born and raised on a dairy farm in Devon.www.sendacow.org.uk

Animals versusthe environmentIs animal welfare a luxury in the fight againstclimate change?Kate Rawlesfinds you can’tsolve a problemwith the samethinking thatcaused it…Dr Kate Rawles is anenvironmental philosopher.Having lectured for nineyears in philosophy at theUniversity of Lancaster shenow runs courses in OutdoorPhilosophy. She is a memberof the Food Ethics Council.kate@outdoorphilosophy.co.ukThere is no such thing as ethics-free farming.Farming by its very nature affects animals andother living things, ecosystems, and people’shealth and livelihoods. Explicitly or not, itcannot help but take a position on what theseeffects and relationships should be – on howthese various ‘others’ should be treated. Andwe are all party to this in-built ethics, becausewe all eat the products of farming.This is not a comfortable place to be. Thedevelopment of husbandry systems thatkeep large numbers of animals in confinedconditions has led inexorably to animal welfareproblems that are systematic rather thanthe result of occasional bad management.The recent UN Global Environment Outlookreport confirms – again! – that the waymodern societies meet their needs is damagingthe world’s ecological systems to such adegree that our own future is in jeopardy; andthat the way these societies supply themselveswith food is amongst the most significantcauses of this ecological mayhem. What’smore, despite our immense impact on animalsand the environment, the human species hasnot even succeeded in meeting its own basicneeds, with one in five people across the worldsuffering malnutrition and about the samenumber – in excess of a billion people – lackingclean drinking water.My focus here is on the environment andanimal welfare. In particular, I’m concerned byrecent suggestions that animal welfare mayhave to be compromised to help tackle climatechange. Unpacking the ethics behind industrialfarming reveals that this is as misplaced astrying to promote traffic calming throughmotorway expansion.Earth auditThe recent United Nations ‘Earth Audit’ oughtto be shocking. It isn’t, but only in the sensethat we’ve heard it all before. Like the earlierMillennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)report, it tells us that the speed at whichhumans have used the earth’s resources overthe last two decades has put “humanity’s verysurvival” at risk.1 Key factors in the degradationof natural systems that support life on earthinclude habitat change, climate change, invasivespecies, over-exploitation of resources, andpollution such as nitrogen and phosphorus.In all of this, agriculture plays a critical role.More land has been claimed for agriculturein the last 60 years than in the 18th and 19thcenturies combined. An estimated 24 percent ofthe earth’s land surface is now cultivated. Waterwithdrawals from lakes and rivers have doubledin the last 40 years, so humans now use between40 percent and 50 percent of all availablefreshwater running off the land. And, of course,there’s climate change. The United NationsFood and Agriculture Organisation argues thatlivestock, primarily cattle, are responsible fornearly one fifth of the world’s entire humancaused climate change emissions2 – that’s morethan every plane, train, car, motorbike andskidoo on earth.3In sum, industrialised societies, of which farmingsystems are a key part, are unsustainable. Thisway of living is promoted across the worldas what it means to be developed, successful,progressed. Yet this way of living, and the values,ethics and worldview that go with it, simplycannot be sustained into the future withoutecological collapse. It cannot be shared by 6billion people, let alone the projected 9 billion.As the WWF Living Planet Report puts it sopowerfully, if everyone enjoyed the lifestyle ofthe average Western European, we would needthree planet earths.4So where do we go from here? Steven Hawkinghas seriously suggested searching for otherplanets. Remaining earthbound, one approach isto try to technofix the problem – to increaseefficiency and reduce waste to such an extentthat we can retain industrialised lifestyles,and share them, without causing ecologicalmeltdown. Huge efficiency gains can certainlywww.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 13

e made. But even the most optimisticassessments of what can be achieved inthis way do not allow us to roll out thecurrent conception of what it meansto lead a ‘developed’ lifestyle acrossa population of 6 billion people. Mostanalysts argue that, in industrialisedcountries, climate change-related energyconsumption needs to come down 80-90percent in the next ten or at most 15years.5WorldviewsSo what’s behind the pickle we’re in? Inpart, how we see the world. If we reallywant to make a go of ‘one planet living’we need to change our worldviews, andthe ethics that go with them, in threemain ways.make the most of these resources. Grabas much of them as you can, as fast aspossible!The first change on our agenda, then, is toacknowledge that the earth’s biophysicalsystems have limits. We cannot endlesslyextract resources at one end and endlesslyemit pollution at the other withoutconsequence.b) The allotment mindsetAcknowledging these environmental factstakes us to what has been called ‘shallow’environmental ethics. This tells us thatresources are finite and that we reallydo need to look after them. It asks us toact within the earth’s limits: to use finiteresources carefully and not to overusesometimes accompanies this. So long,earth, and thanks for all the fish – butnow we can make our own.This, of course, is absurd. So thesecond key change in our mindset isto acknowledge that we have a muchmore profound relationship with naturalsystems than the need to marshal themas a set of resources from a position ofdetachment. We are not on the outsideof ecological systems looking in. We arepart of ecological systems, not apart fromthem. Our experience of life may distanceus from the source of all our basic needsin ecological systems. But however manylayers of technical brilliance intervenebetween natural resources and our endproducts, we cannot detach ourselvesfrom our ultimate dependence onecology. For all our technology, weremain earthbound creatures, relying onecological systems for our basic needs, asthe MEA report points out.iStockphoto © Steve Manna) Infinite earth and frontier ethicsFirst, modern industrialised societiesare inclined to see the earth as a “sortof gigantic production system, capableof producing ever-increasing outputs”,6or as a vast repository of resources.Crucially, this earthly production systemor repository is often assumed to beinfinite – both in terms of its capacityto provide us with resources and itscapacity to absorb the pollution that ourconsumption of resources produces. Thismeans that industrialised societies tend tooperate in ways that ignore unavoidabletruths about biophysical systems. Someforms of farming, astonishingly, haveto be included in this. Ray Andersondescribes this as “the linear, take-makewasteindustrial system, driven by fossilfuel derived energy,” operating as if theenvironment has no limits.7 This kindof mindset inclines us towards ‘frontierenvironmental ethics’, which tell us torenewable ones. Our responsibilitiestowards the environment, in this view,are those of carefully managing a suite ofnatural resources in our own interestsand those of future generations.Constraining our activities in relation tothe earth’s limits is clearly crucial. Butshallow environmental ethics, importantthough it is, is not enough.For one thing, it doesn’t challengeanother of our worldview’s assumptions– that humans are somehow on theedge of ecological systems. This is theallotment mindset. The environment isout there, and we go out and take fromit when we need to. We have to lookafter it – but we are not really in it. Anextraordinary techno-optimism – theview that sooner or later we won’t needto be so careful because we will find waysof manufacturing our own resources –14 Winter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.orgc) Human-centred, resource valuesThe third worldview problem is the viewof earth and other living things as a vaststore of resources for humans. This isat the heart of shallow environmentalethics. The ecologically informed versionof this mindset recognises biophysicalsystems as a source of resources and ofother ‘ecological services’ such as cleanair and water. A sophisticated version ofshallow environmental ethics could eventake interdependence on board, acceptingthat we are part of ecological systemsand that harm done to them will reboundon ourselves. But the bottom line is thesame. The value of other living things,of habitats, of ecological and biophysicalsystems is considered to be instrumental,and only instrumental. Any value theyhave exists only in relation to theirusefulness, in various ways, to us: and thisis our sole reason for caring about them.Of course, the environment is a resourcefor humans, and like all species, we haveto relate to it partly in this way. But it isnot only a resource. The vast complex ofastonishing diversity, energy and sheerwill to live that is ‘the environment’ hasvalue far beyond its usefulness to us.Basking sharks and blue tits, savannasand rainforests, clouds, stars and streamshave value beyond the extent to whichone species amongst millions happensto need them. To deny this is to take anastonishingly arrogant stance, positioninghumans as the only species of true worthand the rest of relevance only in relationto ourselves. This is a pre-Copernicanview of ethics; the values equivalent ofbelieving the sun spins round earth.

The third key change is to acknowledgethe intrinsic as well as the instrumentalvalue of other living things and systems– and to act like we mean it. We can callthis ‘earth ethics’. Earth ethics tells us thatthe ultimate source and measure of valueis not ourselves, and certainly not oureconomic systems, but the bigger contextof which we are a part – the earthitself on which we, and our economies,inescapably depend. We are, in effect, partof a community and for it to continueworking, and the members of it flourish,we need to act accordingly. A pragmaticsensitivity towards others in the face ofinterdependence and a deep respect forothers in their own right are implied bythe community metaphor.More of the same only louderSo what about the argument that furtherintensification of animal based agriculturewill be a necessary part of our responseto climate change? Is climate change sourgent animal welfare becomes a luxurywe simply cannot afford?Leaving aside the highly contestedquestion of whether furtherintensification and the correlativecontinued high dependence on fossil fuelbased energy will actually enable us toreduce our carbon footprint, it shouldalready be clear why this suggestion isso profoundly mistaken. The worldviewand ethics identified as contributingto environmental collapse are exactlythe same as those underpinning theproblematic treatment of animals inintensive farm systems.Like any major industry, the primarygoal of modern livestock systems is tomaximise profit. One way to do this isthrough economies of scale – makingfarms larger and keeping more animalson them, managed by fewer people. If theanimals are confined, less of the food fedto them is ‘wasted’ by the animal movingaround, and more is turned into meator eggs. The result is highly mechanised,industrial-scale systems that keepenormous numbers of animals in confinedsituations. Attendant animal welfare issuesinclude severe reduction in behaviouralrepertoires, boredom, stress, socialdeprivation or social crowding, high levelsof surgical and drug based interventions,stereotypical behaviours, and other ‘vices’such as tail biting, as well as pain andfear. These problems are not caused byindividual farmers, but are the inbuilt logicof the system that so many farmers arenow part of.Animals in these systems are viewed andtreated as components in a productionline. They are part of a process that aimsto turn animal feed into human foodas efficiently as possible. ‘Advances’ inmodern farming methods mean we nolonger have to understand and respectanimals as sentient living beings to achievethis. The underlying ethic of this kindof farming endorses this treatment ofanimals as commodities or things ratherthan as living, feeling, experiencing beings.So the treatment of other animals andother living things purely as humanresources, as things or products, is at theheart of both problems – environmentaland animal welfare. And, as Einstein said,you can’t fix a problem with the samekind of thinking that caused it. Dealingwith climate change by bringing aboutmore of the same can never work.Intensifying agriculture as a response toclimate change cannot be the solution. Itis as if, having learned that a loud noiseis making us deaf, we respond by turningthe sound up even higher.Big bold solutionsThe wake-up calls of climate change,the accelerated extinction of our fellowspecies and systematically poor levelsof animal welfare have a shared rootcause in the mindset that sees othersin purely instrumental terms as a set ofresources for humans, and ourselves asdetached and separate managers of theseresources. These issues are all connectedand cannot be tackled separately. To takethem together is to see that industrialisedsocieties are heading in the wrongdirection and that profound changes areneeded.Farming is both implicated in this andstrongly positioned to show the wayforward. Farming affects all of theseissues. And we all have a stake in itsfuture. What sort of farming with whatsort of ethics, underpinned by what sortof worldview, do we want? One that leadstowards ecological disaster or one thatleads us towards a saner, healthier, fairerfuture for all? The general answer is clear.To get there, we need to understandourselves as members of a livingecological community in which others aretreated with respect. This does not meantreating them as sacrosanct and unusablebut it does mean treating animals assentient beings with social, behaviouraland other needs, and it does meanworking with the grain of living systemsrather than against, ensuring that farmingis compatible with biodiversity andminimising its climate change impact.What this means in practice is beingworked out by some of the farmersand researchers contributing to thismagazine, and many others. Onerepeated conclusion is that, overall, theworld’s farming needs to involve feweranimals, leading a higher quality of life.This apparently goes against consumerdemand. We are told that consumerswant more, cheaper meat. But we alsoknow that this is not compatible with asustainable future in any sense of thatphrase. Consumers as citizens clearly dowant there to be such a future. Sooneror later this will be translated intomarket demand. Farming is compelledby business imperatives but in addition itcan and should demonstrate leadershiphere – ethical and sustainable leadership.It should promote agricultural systemsbased on respect for other forms of lifebecause that is the right ethic, and alsobecause we need to think like that tocontinue our tenancy on the planet.And farming can help us experience aswell as know what this means. We canintellectualise ourselves into a betterenvironmental ethic only so far. Weneed to feel it too. Modern ways ofliving leave us feeling disconnected fromecological systems and other forms oflife. Anyone who has been involved in thehusbandry of fulfilled animals on farmsthat co-exist with a rich diversity of wildspecies knows how truly and powerfullyfarming can reconnect us with meaningful,sustainable and ethical ways of makingour living on this, one, earth.1 This article is based on a chapter in The future of animalfarming, edited by Marian Stamp Dawkins and RolandBonney, to be published by Blackwell in 2008.1. UNEP (2007) Global Environment Outlook 4. MillenniumEcosystem Assessment (2005) www.millenniumassessment.org.2 Steinfeld, H. et al. (2006) Livestock’s long shadow. FAO.3 Rowlatt, J. (2007) Meet daisy the cow – global climate’senemy number one. www.bbc.co.uk.4 WWF (2004) Living planet report. WWF.5 Henson, R. (2006) The rough guide to climate change.Rough Guides Ltd.6 HRH The Prince of Wales (2007) A sense of harmony.Resurgence 242.7 Anderson, R. (2007) Mid-course correction.Resurgence 242.www.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 15

Roland BonneyMeat productionWe need mixed farming not single-issue solutionsWhere next?There is a saying: ‘Live life as if you will dietomorrow; farm like you will live forever’.As far as farming goes, this is more than anice idea – it is an absolute necessity if ourgrandchildren are going to be able to producethe food they need and not just inherit adenuded asset that we have raped for shortterm benefit.Technical innovation has driven agriculturaldevelopment. With the advent of new breedingtechnologies, herbicides and veterinary drugswe can achieve growth rates and silage yieldsthat were previously thought impossible. Wecombat diseases that were once devastating.Some of this – perhaps much of it – can rightlybe seen as progress. Yet it has turned us intoan industry that believes there is a quick fixfor every problem. There is not. We cannotexpect to increase output year on year tofeed a growing demand, maintain profits andreduce costs simply based on new inventions.Nor should we pretend the best answer to thechallenges around livestock farming – for theenvironment, for health, for livelihoods andfor animal welfare – lies just one step alongthe technological treadmill.We should not pretendthe best answer to thechallenges aroundlivestock lies just one stepalong the technologicaltreadmillOur focus must now shift from beingobsessed with more production to truly meetthe environmental and ethical demands oftoday. We must never confuse good landmanagement with good business – they aredistinct and, despite overlaps, do not alwaysmatch up. This is a challenge for businessstructuring. Farmers who find new ways ofworking the land which reflect risk, investmentand asset values, will deliver huge benefits.Generally speaking, mixed agriculture is thebest approach for healthy soils and land use,but it is not always the most efficient in termsof labour, skills or equipment use.By mixed agriculture I mean integratinganimals on land which is used for croppingin a rotation, such that fertiliser and fuel(both which are derived from fossil fuels)are reduced at the same time as the farmproduces quality animal protein.A study in the US has shown that farmerscan help countries meet targets for reducinggreenhouse gas emissions by storing carbonin their fields through no-till farming.1If this idea were taken a little further toinclude grain production in a rotation withlivestock and alongside tree planting, wewould see all kinds of benefits such ascarbon sequestration, reduced nutrient loss,more efficient water use and the provision ofenriched farm environments where animalscould be kept without trimming their beaksor removing their tails.What steps will help us move in thisdirection? The first, I believe, is for both theindustry and policy makers to agree there areno silver bullets. Single-issue thinking blindsus. It is vital to see the whole picture and notfocus on facts taken out of context such as‘ruminants emit methane’ or ‘intensivelykept animals convert feed more efficientlythan extensively kept animals’. Mixedagriculture has the potential to provide uswith sustainable food production systems.Let’s look for solutions for how we can makeit work.Second, we need to welcome the challengeposed to industry by growing consumerawareness of livestock farming’s footprint.We must demand a transparent food chainwith explicit advertising and marketingstandards, where people get what theythink they are getting. We can talk foreverabout reconnection, communication andtransparency, but the litmus test is simple: ifyou’re worried how consumers would react ifthey saw your operation, then you’re doing itwrong, whatever ‘the market’ is telling you.This approach requires a significant mindshift – 60 years ago farmers responded tothe call for more and cheaper food – we canrespond again to the need for environmentalcare and good animal welfare if we understandthe issues.Third, then, farmers must know the facts.We need to understand for ourselves thescience and evidence of climate change,16 Winter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.orgwater shortages and animal welfare, sothat we can take informed decisions thatare appropriate to our own farm. Only inthis way can we deliver reliable, sustainablesolutions and become the credible, relevantand authoritative voice we ought to be as theprimary food producers and custodians ofthe land and animals in our care.If you are worried howconsumers would react ifthey saw youroperation then you’redoing it wrong, whatever‘the market’ is telling youTo understand the facts fully we cannot justlook to science. We also need to talk to ourfinal customers, the public, to really graspthe environmental and ethical challenges weface. If we want to make wise investmentswe need direct, informed dialogue with thosewho ultimately eat our products.As farmers we have to show leadership andstart to hold the rest of the food chain toaccount – not just see ourselves as victimsof circumstance. If people want secure,sustainable supplies of affordable food wehave to show the way, not based on pastself-interest but on future opportunities andneeds. We need to farm like we’ll live forever,and we can’t wait until tomorrow to start.Roland Bonney has morethan twenty years ofprofessional farmingexperience in NewZealand, Australia and theUK. In 2000 heco-founded the FoodAnimal Initiative.roland.bonney@faifarms.co.uk1 Kloeppel, J. (2007) Beneficial effects of no-till farmingdepend upon future climate change. Press Release,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, October 14.

Where next?Meat consumptionIf government can take on flying it can take on meatRussell MarshMeat and dairy consumption accounts foraround eight percent of UK greenhouse gasemissions – not far off the contribution fromaviation. But, in the debate about climatechange we don’t hear much about meat’scarbon impact; it doesn’t make headlines orform part of policy proposals.Yet this will change. The climate changebill, announced in the Queen’s Speechin November, will lock this and futuregovernments into legally binding emissionreduction targets to 2020 and 2050. Giventhat UK CO2 emissions are currently rising,meeting these targets for a 26-32 percentreduction by 2020 and a 60 percent reductionby 2050 is going to be very challenging.Reaching these targets is going to requireaction in every sector of the economy. Bothaviation and farming will have to be a partof this.Despite a similar level of emissions, aviationgets more attention than meat and dairy.Though the UK government was initiallyhesitant to tackle people’s ‘freedom to fly’,it is now leading European efforts to bringaviation into the EU Emissions TradingScheme and it has recently announced thatit will levy a ‘carbon tax’ on planes leavingthe UK. And industry is responding. Airlinesare falling over themselves to be seen asthe greenest, while the Soil Association andmajor supermarkets are grappling with theenvironmental and social footprint of airfreightingfood.There are precedents forintervening in peoples’lifestyles where there is aclear public benefitBy contrast, there has been little fuss aboutmeat and dairy. Why? Because it is highlysensitive. Diet is an emotive, personal issueand most people don’t want the governmenttelling them what they should and shouldn’teat. The worry is that the only way to tacklethis issue is to try and persuade people to bevegetarian or vegan. This would be politicallyimpossible.But, as the recent actions on obesity andsmoking have shown, and indeed theaction on aviation, there is a precedent forintervening in people’s lifestyles where thereis a clear public benefit.So what can we learn from action in these twoareas that may help in developing appropriateinterventions for the meat and diary sectors?The smoking and obesity debates show ustwo things. First, that the links to health areimportant, and may, for food, be a strongerdriver for action than climate change. There isplenty of evidence that a more balanced dietcontaining less animal protein is better foryou. A communications initiative linked tothe health benefits of a diet lower in animalprotein is likely to have more resonance thanone purely focussed on the carbon impacts.The second thing they show us is theimportance of information and evidence.If the government is going to take action itneeds a robust evidence base to justify anyintervention. For obesity and smoking thisevidence was readily available and is nowbroadly accepted by the public. The samecannot be said for the carbon impacts of ourfood, although this is starting to change:research in this area is starting to providesome compelling figures.Likewise, if the government wantsindividuals to take a particular action – eathealthier food for example – they need toprovide us with the information that enablesus to make the right choices. This in turn willhelp drive the market in the right direction.In nutrition this is happening though foodlabelling. Retailers and producers are nowproducing, selling, and advertising morenutritionally balanced products.Labels are being introduced specifying thecarbon footprint of food under an initiativeby the Carbon Trust. A number of retailersand individual food companies are startingto calculate the carbon footprint of theproducts they produce and sell. This is givingthe industry much better information aboutthe carbon emissions associated with theirproducts and where in the supply chain thoseemissions arise. Not surprisingly, severalhave discovered that the big carbon impactscome from producing the raw materials.Often this means meat and dairy. As thisevidence base develops it will increase thefocus on the need to tackle greenhouse gasemissions from the livestock sector.So, things are starting to happen. It islikely that the combination of the ClimateChange Bill and carbon footprinting foodproducts will increase pressure to takeaction in farming. Yet this is unlikely to beenough. Look again at the aviation industry.Information on the carbon implications offlights alone does not change the frequencywith which people fly. The question for meatand dairy is whether the government will bebold enough, as it has been in other areas,to respond to the evidence and intervenefurther.Will government be boldenough to intervene overmeat and dairy?It could start with the food provided throughits own institutions and on the public estate,and commit to reducing the animal proteincontent (or the carbon emissions) of themeals served. And perhaps the time has cometo consider how to introduce a carbon priceinto this market to focus the industry ondeveloping low-carbon solutions. Whateverthe government chooses to do, it will have todo something – it cannot ignore this sectorany longer.Russell Marsh is Head of Policyat Green Alliance, which workswith senior people ingovernment, parliament,business and NGOs to makeenvironmental solutions apriority in British politics.rmarsh@green-alliance.org.ukwww.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 17

Where next?Steve SuppanMeat tradeFood safety needs a new global fundThe Food and Agriculture Organisation(FAO) is right to be nervous about theenvironmental and social consequences ofthe expanding world demand it projects forlivestock products.1 Yet it should be moreworried still about the negative feedbacks –for example food-borne illness and animaldisease – that may stop the meteoric rise ofmeat and dairy in its tracks. It is in everyone’sinterest to ensure that international trade inthis sector is better governed.The first step to better governance is toaccount for such feedbacks and for the fullcosts of industrialised animal farming onthe environment, public health and ruralemployment. Food safety is a case in point.Perhaps a third of developed country residentsand a greater portion in developing countriesare affected by food-borne illness at leastonce a year. About three quarters of diseasecausingpathogens are to be found in meat,poultry and dairy products. A relatively smallnumber of pathogens, such as Salmonellaand Campylobacter, account for the majorityof reported cases of zoonoses (animal tohuman disease transmission). Well-resourcedgovernments can focus surveillance andintervention to prevent or mitigate outbreaksof well-known pathogens.However, pathogens evolve in prevalence andseverity, increasing the difficulty of targetingmeasures to protect human and animal health.Pathogens in today’s headlines, such as E coli0157:H7, were unreported thirty years ago.The intensification of livestock productionin concentrated animal feeding operations(CAFOs) may have led to low-pathogenicviruses, such as that causing avian influenza,to become highly pathogenic.2Yet FAO and OECD, in their agriculturaloutlook for 2007-2016, assumes “‘normal’conditions for the meat sector, which is tosay an absence of animal disease outbreaksand no explicit accounting of animaldisease restrictions on production, trade orconsumption”.3 It also assumes CAFOs willbe the rule, not the exception, as the sectorexpands.Combining these assumptions – more CAFOsand less disease – makes heavy demands ofinternational governance. These demands arenot being met.The problem is this. CAFOs rely on thepre-emptive use of antibiotics, primarily inanimal feed, to ward off contagion. Sincethe World Health Organisation (WHO) hasidentified antibiotics in animal feed as acontributor to growing human resistanceto antibiotics, the Codex AlimentariusCommission, a joint WHO/FAO programme,has undertaken work to develop standardsthat would facilitate trade in meat and dairyproducts from animals given such antibiotics.Yet, rather than make recommendations onanimal welfare or Good Agricultural Practices(GAP) to de-intensify livestock productionand reduce the need for antibiotics, Codex’smandate confines it to setting a standardon the maximum residue level (MRL) of aveterinary drug in livestock products forhuman consumption. Such MRLs are theresult of an FAO/WHO risk assessment – anegotiated scientific consensus – and, even ifMRLs are respected, the antibiotic resistanceworrying the WHO could worsen.No mechanism currentlyexists to steer us towardsthe win-winFrom a trade policy perspective, thereis more incentive for countries to useCodex standards, which are recognisedas presumptively authoritative by theWorld Trade Organization (WTO), thanGAP or animal welfare practices, whichare not WTO recognised. No multilateralpolicy mechanism currently exists to steerus toward the win-win, which is betteragricultural practice, fewer CAFOs and fewerantibiotics.But that’s not all. Many developing countriesare not only unable to implement Codexstandards, but often have not estimated thecosts of meeting export requirements orevaluating the safety of imported foods. Thecurrent terms of WTO-coordinated ‘Aid forTrade’ do not extend to providing the neededinfrastructure or training for personnel.FAO, WHO and others have recognised thatglobal supply chains for products of animalorigin globalise sanitary and phytosanitary(SPS) risks. Although SPS measures tomitigate these risks are recognised as globalpublic goods, their financing continuesto be ad hoc, and is usually triggered by18 Winter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.orgtrade concerns. In the time it takes toraise an international voluntary fund todo surveillance and begin mitigation orcontainment of a transborder contagion,the costs of successful intervention oftenincrease steeply.In theory, the costs of SPS measures shouldbe internalised in food and livestock prices.Yet, without government intervention,primary producers have little market powercompared with processors and traders,and hence seldom receive a premium forimplementing the standards required ofthem. Even if farmgate prices internalisedsuch costs, there is no current mechanismto finance the public health mitigationcosts resulting from transborder foodborneillness. As food products become moreglobalised, like the hamburger derived fromcarcasses from five or six different countries,the need for a permanent Global SPS Fundbecomes urgent. The financing mechanismsfor such a fund need not be limited to thetemplate of governmental contributions toa Global Environmental Facility, but couldtake advantage of recent innovations inpublic finance.4Continued reliance on ad hoc andunderfinanced SPS systems will wreakhavoc not only on public health, but alsoon the meat and dairy sectors. Without fullcost accounting and a well-financed SPSregulatory system, ongoing investments inintensified meat and dairy production couldwell make that supply chain unsustainable.Dr Steve Suppan is SeniorPolicy Analyst and Director ofResearch at the Institute forAgriculture and Trade Policy.ssuppan@iatp.org1 Steinfeld, H. (2006) Livestock’s long shadow. FAO.2 OECD-FAO (2007) Agricultural outlook 2007-2016:31-32.3 Otte, J. et al. (2007) Industrial livestock production andglobal health risks. PPLPI, FAO.4 Kaul, I.& Conceição, P. (eds.) (2006) The new publicfinance. UNDP/OUP.

If meat is murder, what isvegetarianism?A letter from AmericaWORLDVIEWMarco Flavio Marinucci © Flaviophoto.comRaj PatelRaj Patel is the author ofStuffed and starved:markets, power and thehidden battle for the worldfood system(Portobello Books).With all the evidence that industrial meatproduction is bad for the environment,cannot be sustained equitably for the planet, is aprofligate waste of resources, accelerates globalwarming, and is a vector for all kinds of nastydisease, we might be tempted to enjoin everyone togo vegetarian. And there’s much merit to the idea.Research shows that vegetarians and vegans havea smaller carbon footprint than their carnivorouscounterparts. In the United States, where about2.5 percent of the population is off meat, there’sa marked difference between the annual CO2output of vegetarians and the average population.One recent study found that an ordinary US dietcontributed nearly 1.5 tons more CO2 than avegetarian one, and switching from meat-eating tovegetarian could cut US national greenhouse gasemissions by up to six percent.Vegetarians can also feel smug about their health. Arange of studies have shown that vegetarians have alower chance of dying from stroke and heart diseasethan the average population. One of the largeststudies of its kind was carried out in the UK, where33,883 meat-eaters were compared with 31,546non-meat-eaters. In that study, meat eaters weremore likely to smoke and to be more overweight.But, and this should give us pause, a range of studiesalso conclude that in other diseases, vegetariansand similarly health-conscious meat eaters fareequally well.It’s the ‘similarly health-conscious’ that oughtto set off alarm bells, because it suggests thatvegetarianism isn’t spread randomly throughsociety and that being vegetarian is associated withother kinds of health-increasing behaviour. This isborne out by the evidence.In the US, recent survey data find a link betweenoccupation and diet. Manual workers tend toeat more meat, and beef in particular, than theircounterparts in service or professional occupations.Further, eating less meat is linked to higher levelsof education though not, strikingly, with higherlevels of income, which suggests there’s somethingcultural going on.This leads to an interesting twist to our thinkingabout meat and its absence. Certainly it’s true thatbecoming vegetarian can improve your life chances,other things being equal. But precisely becauseother things aren’t equal, the commandment to bevegetarian isn’t one that all of us can follow withequal ease. There is a host of social obstacles thatstand between the majority of the population in theGlobal North, and sustainable eating patterns.We already know, from studies in California forexample, that the amount of time you spendcommuting and your level of obesity are directlyrelated. We know that poor people are less ablethan the rich to live near their places of work.We know, further, that 14 percent of US fastfood meals – dense in animal meat – are eaten incars. This comes not from a particular nationalfondness for the interior of cars as dining venuebut because, for many of America’s working poor,the only chance they have to eat a meal is en routefrom one job to the next.Further, it’s much harder to be vegetarian if youdon’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables.If you live in a poor neighbourhood in the UnitedStates, you might be subject to ‘supermarketredlining’, a phenomenon named for its similarityto the banking practice of pinning red lines ontolocal maps to denote the areas where the bankwould make no loans. Supermarket redliningis like this, but with food. It is an increasingfeature of American geography that low incomeneighbourhoods are overwhelmingly less likelyto have fresh food markets, and far more likelyto have fast food outlets and convenience stores.The consolidation of supermarkets meansthat in Boston more than half of fifty big chainsupermarkets have closed since 1970, and thenumber in Los Angeles County has fallen byalmost 50 percent as the markets concentrate inonly the well-to-do areas.The choices that each of us make, then, aren’t madefreely. And there are some profound obstacles thatprevent society’s poorest from choosing a healthydiet. In the Global South, being vegetarian is a defacto state simply on the grounds of income. Inthe Global North, vegetarianism is the prerogativeof the middle class.So what changes, then, would be required tomove all of us in the Global North towards a moresustainable diet? For a start, we ought to dispensewith the idea there’s a magic bullet. No singleintervention can unpick the morass of culture andclass that pushes poorer people to unsustainableeating habits. In moving towards sustainableeating, it is important to jettison the kind ofthinking that reduces diet to individual choice.Instead, a range of policies are needed, fromencouraging fresh fruit and vegetable marketsin low income areas, to increased governmentsponsoredsocial housing nearer places of work,to building cities with walkable environmentsand green space, to living wage legislation, toa reduction in the length of the work day, andto some fairly serious investment in educationand healthcare to stamp out the injustices thataccompany our differential access to food.It is impossible, in short, to talk about meatin America or elsewhere without talking aboutclass. And, if we want to eat sustainably, that’s aconversation we can put off no longer.www.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 19

Punishing our pinta?We should face up to dairy’s dilemmasON THE FARMJohn TurnerJohn Turner is a farmernear Stamford in Lincolnshire,where he runs a 100hectare mixed farm togetherwith his brother andparents. He was a foundingmember of FARM.john.turner@farm.org.ukIt’s been something of an annus horribilis forlivestock. From foot and mouth to Norfolkturkeys, bluetongue to Shambo and the ongoingdilemma of how to deal with bovine tuberculosis,a sorry list of ‘disasters’ has blighted theircontribution to farming. And that’s withouteven venturing into climate change and cows’generous capacities for generating methane.Even though our own animals are thankfully haleand hearty, the enforced restrictions to controldisease in other parts of the country have hada profound impact. It has meant that our storelambs, which have been grazing the clovers onthe farm over the summer, currently have nomarket and, nationally, a vast surplus of lambawaits shelf space when there is little seasonaldemand.However, one story above all else has left mefeeling particularly exasperated: The Timessuggested that Defra had put forward plans toencourage us to replace fresh milk with UHT. Thearticle, which must have coincided with a newsvacuum that day, provided an opportunist (ifcreaky) platform to showboat about civil serviceinterference with the great British pinta. Yetdrowned in the ensuing wail of protest was anopportunity to look objectively at the role oflivestock within food production and actuallyplan for its future, rather than deal with the firefightingbusiness of disease prevention, climatechange and animal welfare scare stories.It has been three years since we ceased dairyproduction here at the Grange, yet I can stillvividly remember my father’s comment that forall the fuel, electricity, water, straw and animalfeed that came up the farm drive, there wasrelatively little that went back down the drive byway of produce. And that is the inescapable truth;animals are not particularly efficient vectors iftheir sole function is converting resources suchas water, energy and feed into food for us.Of my four children, one is vegetarian andone vegan – in each case a decision arrived atthrough their own conscience. Sharing withthem a common interest in food and music, wespent some time at various festivals throughoutthe summer, which reminded me that diets arechanging and that vegetarian food has comea long way since being a sufferance borne bydedicated disciples. Both family and a widerawareness of cultural changes have promptedme to re-evaluate where livestock will fit intoour future plans; not because I’m no longercomfortable with the ethics of using animalsand their products for food, but because ofthe inherent inefficiencies associated withthe systems of livestock production needed toremain competitive within today’s markets.There are few mainstream markets, forinstance, that distinguish between grass-fedand ‘commercially reared’ beef. Grass-fedlivestock systems convert a feed few of us wouldentertain in our own diets into a variety ofuseful products and at the same time fulfil thejob of managing and maintaining permanentpasture and upland areas with a fraction of theinputs their mechanical or human equivalentswould consume. In contrast, most commercialbeef (often distinguished by having both thetaste and texture of cardboard) relies on wheat,barley, soya, potatoes and a whole range ofother feedstock, which would be far moreefficiently used if we just ate it. Ironically, thelatter system is held up by the food industryas the benchmark and the criteria for gradingmeat and rewarding farmers using the grass-fedsystems at a considerable disadvantage.On my own breakfast table, the milk that I usedto bring home fresh from the morning’s milkinghas been replaced by a substitute made fromoats. It’s more by instinct than hard evidencethat I have convinced myself the environmentalfootprint of my box of ‘Oatly’ is far smaller thanthe pinta that it replaced. That is why I hopethe thorny issue of mapping out a sustainablefuture for livestock within farming is debatedmore openly and we take the opportunity tolook honestly at both the resources livestockconsume and the role they play. And it is alsowhy I hope the press will understand thatunless such a dialogue happens, the pages thatcover livestock will continue to be dominatedby negative stories about pollution and diseaserather than the positive role animals canactually play within farming systems.20 Winter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.org

The Business PageIndustry benefits ifregulators learn fromBSEPatrick van Zwanenbergand Erik MillstoneOne calamity seems to follow another in themeat industry: BSE, foot and mouth disease(FMD), bluetongue, and the threat of birdflu. The reasons these disasters present suchprofound challenges lie partly in the practicesof modern agriculture and food production –which may cause and exacerbate the scaleand seriousness of disease outbreaks – butalso depend on how government and industryhave responded to these threats.The policy mistakes that contributed to theBSE saga have rightly been subjected toa searching public inquiry and sustainedeffort by the UK government to reformsome aspects of the ways in which policiesare made and justified. They needed to be.Mistakes meant that we took considerablylarger risks to human health from BSE thanwe should have done. The mistakes adverselyaffected consumer confidence and trust ingovernment, livestock farming, and the meatproducts industry. That lack of trust spilledover and affected consumer attitudes to arange of other food issues, notably aroundinnovations in agricultural biotechnology.Consumer trust depends not just onconfidence in the expertise of advisors andthe competence of policy-makers, but also onconfidence that advisors and policy-makersput consumers’ interests first.As one of the aims of food regulation is toengender consumer trust in the productsprovided by the private sector, one mighthave thought that the food industry would beparticularly keen to ensure that government’sregulatory reforms did not fall short ofexpectations. But, as on-going problems withfood safety policy demonstrate, that is justwhat has happened.The decision to create the Food StandardsAgency (FSA) in April 2000 was, in part,a decision to separate regulation fromsponsorship in respect of food safety. Butthree key areas of UK agricultural and foodpolicy-making remained unreformed, namelyBSE, pesticides and veterinary medicines.The continued lead role over BSE, first byMAFF and later DEFRA, is bizarre. It istantamount to maintaining the pretence thatBSE is primarily a veterinary problem ratherthan an issue of human health. DEFRAshould be developing agricultural policywithin a regulatory framework that isconcerned with public health and set by theFSA, rather than the FSA struggling to dealwith public health within the parameters setby DEFRA’s approach to agriculture.By the same logic, primary responsibilityfor policy on pesticides and veterinarymedicines should also be transferred to theFSA. The FSA is supposed to represent andprotect the interests of consumers, while theVeterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD)sees drug companies as its customers, andthe majority of members of the VeterinaryProducts Committee have numerouscommercial and consultancy interests in thecompanies manufacturing and marketingveterinary medicines. The VMD has alsobecome increasingly dependent on theanimal drug companies for its funding.One example of the consequences: theSoil Association has criticised the VMDfor doing the bidding of the animal drugindustry when it revised its proposals soas to allow the veterinary drug companiesto advertise prescription-only productsdirectly to farmers, despite the provisionsof an EU directive prohibiting that practice.It is now clear, in the wake of the mostrecent FMD debacle, that veterinarymedicines can harm veterinary health andthe livelihoods of livestock farmers, as wellas public and environmental health. DEFRAand the VMD are not protecting consumers,livestock or the long-term interests of thelivestock and meat industries.One of the most acute problems withBSE policy-making was that scientificuncertainties were not always disclosed,not just to the public but even to ministersand some senior officials. This meant thatministers were sometimes unaware of thescope for precautionary decision-making orthat public policy decisions were in practicebeing taken by expert advisors rather thanministers. In response, the Food StandardsAgency recommended in 2002 that allits expert advisory committees shouldconduct their business in open sessions.It insisted that unorthodox and contraryscientific views should be considered, andthat advisory committees should alwaysprovide a clear audit trail showing how andwhy they reached their decisions, wheredifferences of opinions had arisen, andwhich assumptions and uncertainties wereinherent in their conclusions.The FSA rules do not apply to othergovernment departments and agencies.DEFRA’s rules and procedures, forexample, continue to exempt the VMD andthe Pesticides Safety Directorate, and theiradvisory committees, from proper scrutinyor accountability.Even where the rules do apply they needfollowing. Recently assessing new evidenceindicating that mixtures of artificial coloursand a preservative adversely affectedchildren’s behaviour, one problem at theFSA was that the advisory committeefailed to follow those procedural rules, andthe FSA’s Board and its officials failed tonotice.Some lessons have been learnt from BSE butmostly just the easy ones. Sponsorship andregulation are still not properly separated,and science and politics are entangled inways that hide decision-making from duescrutiny, and that undermine ministerialresponsibility for making policy choices. Itis in the food industry’s long term intereststo persuade ministers and officials thatreform must go further.Patrick van Zwanenberg is a Research Fellow at theScience Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex.p.f.van-zwanenberg@sussex.ac.ukErik Millstone is a Professor of Science Policyat the University of Sussex, who combines hisscholarly studies with an active engagementin food policy debates.e.p.millstone@sussex.ac.ukNext issue - March 2008WaterIf our food is too thirsty...To receive your copy subscribe now atwww.foodethicscouncil.orgwww.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 21

eview readingStuffed and starved: markets, power andthe hidden battle for the world foodsystemRaj Patel 2007 Portobello“Unless you’re a corporate food executive, thefood system isn’t working for you” says Patel, acontributor to this edition of Food Ethics. He justifiesthis claim with a dazzling array of facts andstories. He argues that epidemic obesity and millionsleft starving are both the direct consequenceof a system controlled by a shrinking number ofpowerful corporations.Patel describes the global food system as a battlefield,and while consumers have only recently been wrestlingwith the problems of how to eat well, farmers have longbeen fighting against appropriation by national and globalbehomeths. With our menu crafted by the biggest playersin the supply chain, we lose sight of what food is for andbecome disconnected from its production and the joy ofeating it.But there is hope! In his closing chapter, Patel reminds usthat, whatever the wound, people have always fought back.He rallies us to reclaim our food sovereignty. ROBlueprint for a green economyQuality of Life Policy Group | 2007Conservative PartyMuch awaited environmental policy proposalsfrom a committee set up by the UK’scentre-right to its own party’s leadership.The chapter on food and farming includesrecommendations for CAP reform, strongerregulation of supermarkets and a newPublic Diet Institute. TMChallenging health inequalitiesElizabeth Dowler & Nick Spencer (eds.)2007 | The Policy PressFocusing on the strategies adopted by agovernment that specifically set out toreduce health inequalities, this book criticallyexamines UK policy and programmesintroduced by New Labour over the last 10years. RODevelopment economics betweenmarkets and institutionsErwin Bulte & Ruerd Ruben (eds.) | 2007Wageningen AcademicA thorough, no-frills primer on agriculturaldevelopment economics. Contributors considerthe relationships between such factorsin development as trade policy, land tenure,technology and food security. ROFood is differentPeter M Rosset | 2006 | Zed BooksA clear and accessible account of the impactof trade liberalisation on farming and, inparticular, on small farmers throughout theworld. Rosset sets forth his argument forrebuilding the global food system, taking itoutside the reach of the WTO. ROGenetically modified diplomacyPeter Andrée | 2007 | UBC pressAn analysis of the global politics of agriculturalbiotechnology that investigatesin-depth a central site of political struggle –the 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.In fine detail, Andrée looks at the internationalwrangling to determine genetic engineeringregulations and discusses the clashin perspectives that it has engendered. ROThe global food economyAnthony Weis | 2007 | Zed BooksA sweeping overview of the contradictionsand crises in the global food economy, thetemperate grain-livestock complex and theshift from colonialism to global marketintegration in the South. The author arguesthat multilateral regulation entrenchesan uneven playing field, and outlines thebattle between more corporate industrialagriculture or more ecological approachesthat recognise the rationality of small farming.GTMoveable feastsSara Murray 2007 Aurum Press LimitedAn entertaining and highly informative accountof the way food is moved, processedand packaged. Murray argues that theodysseys of food have rarely made it intothe history books. This amusing descriptionof the quest for sustenance redresses thatbalance. ROSlow Food nationCarlo Petrini | 2007 | Rizzoli Ex LibrisA witty, powerful and principled manifestofor a new gastronomy from the founder ofSlow Food: “I am a gastronome. No, not theglutton with no sense of restraint… No, notthe fool who is given to the pleasures of thetable and indifferent to how the food gotthere. I like to know the history of a food andof the place that it comes from…” TMSustainable food production and ethicsWerner Zollitsch et al. (eds.) | 2007Wageningen AcademicAn impressively rapid turnaround for thisbook-full of papers delivered at the 7thCongress of the European Society for Agriculturaland Food Ethics in September 2007. A550-page snapshot of the state of the art inethical research, analysis and debate on foodand farming. RO22 Winter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.org

eview eatingBy Tim FinneyTim Finney gave up aneasy life in the BBC totake on the organicmeat business at EastbrookFarm back in1995. He now spendssome glamorous time inpursuit of abattoirexcellence within the EU.www.helenbrowningorganics.co.ukThis isn’t strictly a restaurant review. Ican’t remember what I ate – probably asalami sandwich with yellow mustardas a late breakfast – exactly where I wasor even the year. What sticks, though,is the stream of people pouring into theslaughterhouse off Schlachthofstrasse inthis rich industrial north German city.The canteen was their preferred place forbreakfast. No Starbucks for them.The quality and provenance of theingredients is irrelevant here. Andit’s not as if the place had any specialcharm. What’s remarkable is that theslaughterhouse was where it was, justanother city-centre building, and thatthe locals treated it as an essential partof their city infrastructure, clearly seeingit as a perfectly normal place to buy andeat food.If I’d written this 100 years ago I expect people would wonder why. I’m no historian but my guessis slaughterhouses everywhere were located where they best served people, which means close towhere people lived and worked. But no longer. Ever tried to visit a slaughterhouse? Ever really seenone or known what it was as you drove past? Ever knocked on the fortress-like gates and asked if youcould pop in for a meal? You’d be locked up. Almost without exception, the slaughterhouse has beencondemned to the remotest industrial estates, as far from prying eyes as it is possible to be. It wouldbe easier to break into a prison.A slaughterhouseSchlachthofstrasseA city inNorthern GermanyThere’s something wrong here, and it’s a wrong that just keeps getting worse as pressures push widerthe ‘distance’ between the meat and its eaters.I understand that people, given a choice, avoid mess and smell and inconvenience. In the world ofmeat and animals and eating, there’s lots of smell and mess. But without the smell and mess, can weunderstand what’s really happening? This anaesthetised life seems so simple. Someone else does thekilling, somewhere else, and someone else does the clearing up, thank God. But are you happy to eatwhat comes out of this process? And even happier when the chicken is even cheaper than last weekor beef mince is on BOGOF?My German experience wasn’t perfect and German slaughterhouse operators are themselvesunder pressure from their urban authorities to get the hell out of town – shamefully, most have.What it brought home to me, though, is that in a more rational world, we would be asking theslaughterhouses to come into town, please. They would have windows, too, so people could see intothem. We would naturally use them to feed us directly, either from their canteens, restaurants orbutchers’ shops; we would be proud of our family working in them, providing their neighbours andcitizens with good fresh food with low food miles. We would see for ourselves, and smell and hear,what exactly was involved in this far from anaesthetised world, and we would be much better ableto decide whether we really wished to eat meat. It’s hard to make rational decisions on this when allyou’ve got to go on is a plastic pack, its reddish contents and a label you might not always believe.How I rate itOverall ****Fairness ***Health **Animals ****Environment ***Taste ****Ambience ***Value for money *****(maximum five stars)As far as I can recall, by the way, breakfast was completely satisfactory, though the service was alittle haphazard and some might have found the smell disconcerting. My fellow diners seemed veryhappy. I’m now working with a superb new UK abattoir and, if I have my way (which is unlikely), itwill become one of the best places to eat in the south of England. At the moment it is not and sadly itisn’t in a town centre either.www.foodethicscouncil.org | Volume 2 Issue 4 | Winter 2007 23

upcoming events4th - 5th Dec ‘075th - 6th Dec ‘076th Dec ‘0714th Dec ‘0717th - 18th Dec ‘0718th -19th Dec ‘07Jan ‘08 (tbc)2nd - 4th Jan ‘0816th Jan ‘0816th Jan ‘0829th - 30th Jan ‘0829th Jan ‘0829th Jan ‘086th Feb ‘087th - 8th Feb ‘0828th Feb ‘084th Mar ‘082nd Apr ‘082nd - 4th Apr ‘086th - 9th Apr ‘0824th - 27th Apr ‘0828th - 30th May ‘083rd - 6th June ‘0818th - 20th Jun ‘0819th - 22nd Jun ‘08A Practical Seminar on the Common Agricultural PolicyAgra Europe | www.agra-net.com | London, UKBiowastes and the Carbon EconomyThe Composting Association | www.compost.org.uk | Telford, UKRachel Carson Memorial Lecture: Food Security or Food Democracy?Pesticide Action Network UK | www.pan-uk.org. | London, UKWhat Does ‘Green’ Mean: Seeking to Understand and Meet Conflicting Aspirations for FoodAssociation of Applied Biologists | www.aab.org.uk | London, UKFunctional Foods: Authentication WorkshopAssociation of Applied Biologists | www.aab.org.uk | York, UKEffects of the Environment on the Nutritional Quality of Organically Produced FoodsUniversity of Reading | www.apd.rdg.ac.uk/organicfoods | Reading, UKSoil Association ConferenceSoil Association | www.soilassociation.org/conference | Tbc, UKA Climate of Change: Agriculture, the Solution not the ProblemOxford Farming Conference | www.ofc.org.uk | Oxford, UKFood and Climate ChangeResurgence and Friends of the Earth | www.resurgence.org | London, UKThe Heat is On!Natural England | www.naturalengland.org.uk | Newmarket, Suffolk, UK4th Annual Brussels Climate Change ConferenceEpsilon Events | www.climate-policy.eu | Brussels, BelgiumClimate Change and its Impact on HealthThe Royal College of Physicians | www.rcplondon.ac.uk/event | London, UKConsumer Attitudes Towards ‘Healthy’ FoodHaymarket Events | www.haymarketevents.com/conferences | London, UKMeasuring ‘Green’ - Does Life Cycle Analysis Make Sense for Food?Association of Applied Biologists | www.aab.org.uk | London, UKGreen Retail - Maximising Your Green PotentialEventrus | www.eventrus-corporate.com | London, UKBiofuels - a Solution for a Low Carbon Future?Society of Chemical Industry | www.soci.org | Bristol, UKCorporate Carbon FootprintingHaymarket Events | www.haymarketevents.com/conferences | London, UKThe Business Response to Climate ChangeResurgence and Friends of the Earth | www.resurgence.org | London, UKFood Security and Environmental Change - Linking Science, Development, and PolicyGlobal Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) | www.gecafs.org | Oxford, UKFood & Drink Expo 2008www.foodanddrinkexpo.co.uk/index.php | Birmingham, UKThe Real Food FestivalBrand Events Group | www.realfoodfestival.co.uk | London, UKSustainable Consumption and Alternative Agri-food SystemsSEED Unit, Liège University | www.suscons.ulg.ac.be | Arlon, BelgiumThe Royal Show 2008The Royal Agricultural Society of England | www.royalshow.org.uk | Stoneleigh, UKOrganic World Congress: Cultivate the FutureIFOAM | www.ifoam.org/events | Modena, ItalyRoyal Highland Show 2008Royal Highland Centre | www.royalhighlandshow.org | Edinburgh,UKAutumn 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 3 | www.foodethicscouncil.orgWinter 2007 | Volume 2 Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.org