Meat

I have been inspired today to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) regarding Simon Fairlie’s new book Meat: A Benign Extravagance, published by Permanent Publications. George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian today, also comments on it and graciously admits that Fairlie has challenged him over a number of points including his statement that veganism is the only ethical response to the inequalities of human malnutrition and the unjust use of large tracts of land for feeding unsustainably high numbers of livestock for the meat and dairy industries. Monbiot now acknowledges that veganism is not the only answer and that not all meat is bad meat. This has also sparked some lively debate on the Permaculture facebook page. Good, I am glad you are all still paying attention!

Fairlie agrees that our current models of meat production and factory farming are deeply flawed and undoubtedly environmentally damaging but he also argues, in a well researched and dispassionate way, that some livestock and modest meat consumption can be part of a sustainable model of food production. I do not have enough knowledge of land use and agriculture to be able to accurately assess the robustness of Fairlie’s analyses of different methods of food production but his arguments are convincing and thought provoking.

The element that struck me most sharply was the deep complexity of food production and the role of animals in the landscape. What does happen to trees and crops, for example, if you stop culling deer and rabbits? Would a vegan society be able to reconcile itself to culling or controlling pests? Fairlie also points out how a mechanised, politicised culture has contributed to inefficient practices such as banning the feeding of waste to pigs, who are natural omnivores and do a brilliant job of converting waste food, including meat and bonemeal, into energy. Feeding the same waste to herbivorous cows, however, is plainly wrong. Somehow in the political melee that accompanied BSE and Foot and Mouth we ended up with a ban on this food recycling across the whole of Europe and we now have large amounts of waste meat and bonemeal going into landfill or being incinerated in a system that is both counter-intuitive and inefficient. And meanwhile the pigs are increasingly being fed soya from North America and the Amazon….

I am, like Fairlie, a modest but enthusiastic meat eater and I have always felt that eating meat is not ethically wrong per se. After all, a great many of us do it across the globe and have done so for a very long time. One of the arguments levelled against this book is that the only message that people will take is ‘eat meat’, which is simplistic and reductive. It presents a great many sophisticated arguments and in no way lets meat eaters off the hook. The vision that Fairlie presents is of a radically different British landscape of energy descent, ruralisation, localised food production and a return to low-tech, low carbon farming techniques.

I have a deep respect for those who have chosen a vegan lifestyle for ethical reasons and I have no doubt that it is a very healthy and vital way to live, especially for those who opt for raw food diets. Livestock and domestic animals, however, form an important part of our cultural and natural heritage and it is only relatively recently that the industry of meat has reached its perverted heights of animal welfare injustices and unnatural farming practices. Meat is cheap and meat is easy, it comes in little plastic boxes and you don’t even have to touch it.

In practice this has strengthened my resolve to source good meat and to continue to reducing the amount that I eat. I have already considerably reduced my consumption but I must confess that the odd sausage of dubious origin has snuck in from time to time. This is an important book because it is important to continually question how we live, what we eat, how we use our precious land and how we might live and work in a low-carbon future.

Please read it for yourself. Meat is available from Permanent Publications by mail order or online priced £19.95. ISBN 13 978-1856230551

Simon Fairlie is also the editor of the Land Magazine and runs Chapter 7, an organisation that provides planning advice to smallholders and other low income people in the countryside.