Meat - Facing the Dilemmas

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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
Page 4 and 5: Morecambe Bay- three years on Super
Page 6 and 7: John WibberleyProducersRural liveli
Page 8 and 9: Meat: the challengeTara GarnettEnvi
Page 10 and 11: Henry BullerIn 2050, we should be f
Page 12 and 13: Jason MathenyI hope and expect that
Page 14 and 15: e made. But even the most optimisti
Page 16 and 17: Roland BonneyMeat productionWe need
Page 18 and 19: Where next?Steve SuppanMeat tradeFo
Page 20 and 21: Punishing our pinta?We should face
Page 22 and 23: eview readingStuffed and starved: m
Page 24: upcoming events4th - 5th Dec ‘075

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