Meaty issue we can front-foot
Ilove that my mum scours the UK papers and sends me articles to inspire my columns; this week’s was about the unexpected success of a vegan sausage roll. Bear with me here. The vegan sausage roll in question was created by UK bakery chain Gregg’s, which has been overwhelmed, literally, by demand. The company’s share price has shot up and in February it issued its third increased profit forecast.
Why the roll has been such a raging success is slightly unclear, but its effect on the company’s bottom line is unarguable. Some put it down to the tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign, which spoofed the same kind of look and feel Apple would use to launch a high-end mobile phone.
But the weight of thinking is that it’s more likely to do with the growing trend towards nonmeat eating. This isn’t a flash in the pan. Most UK supermarket chains now have vegan food ranges catering for vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians – those who go meat-free for a few days a week.
In Australia, Melbourne ground to a halt last week when animal rights activists blocked a major intersection. Their protest was to urge the Government to take an active role in transitioning farming from animal to plant-based businesses.
Going meat-free is a growing trend here, as well. The Better Futures report, released in February, found that one in 10 Kiwis said they were now vegetarian or mostly meat-free. Countdown supermarket has said it’s adapting its range to include more plant-based meal solutions such as vege burgers, ‘‘mince’’ made from plants, and other proteins such as falafel.
Last year, Air New Zealand launched its meatfree Impossible Burger on limited flights. It’s vegetarian but uses an ingredient called heme, an iron-containing molecule which comes from soy plants but is the same thing that makes meat sizzle and smell meaty.
For most people the reasons behind their decision to go meat-free are clear: the big three are concern for animals, the planet and personal health.
As a country whose wealth is based largely on the production of meat and dairy, there’s a fair bit of feeling that we should be backing our primary industries, not coming up with new-fangled vege alternatives.
But I think this is a trend that’s here to stay and New Zealand could get ahead of the debate. Let’s face it, we’ve shown before that we can take a world-leading stance on issues.
While Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison chose to describe the protesters as ‘‘unaustralian green criminals’’; New Zealand could take a different approach.
Having watched thousands of young people join the Strike 4 Climate Action last month, it seems New Zealand should be preparing for a different future. What about listening to what people are saying, paying closer attention to what is clearly becoming a worldwide trend, and looking at how we could become early adopters of new technologies and ways of doing things?
The Government’s own first System of Environmental-economic Accounts published last year showed that about 60 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions are mainly due to methane emissions from agriculture. That figure had risen between 1990 and 2015.
I reckon if the next generation can take simple actions to better protect the environment, they will. And that will see more of them eating less meat and looking for plant-based alternatives.
There’s just one tiny thing that might stop this from taking a real foothold; the smell of frying bacon on a weekend morning and the lack of a decent vegan sausage roll for morning tea.
Banning fascism is a more troubling proposition if you have a proclivity to declare almost everyone with whom you disagree of being a fascist.
Afew years ago, then-race relations commissioner Dame Susan Devoy made comments supportive of secular alternatives to describe Christmas. There was a reaction against this from some quarters that was in proportion to the supposed offence. There’s nothing new about that, of course, since the disproportionate outrage style of commentary is the style of the times.
For what it’s worth, I have to say that I am not terribly invested in the ongoing secular attachment to Christmas. It is supposed to be a religious season, after all, and New Zealand is becoming more irreligious over time.
The continuing approximation of the holiday for commercial and cultural purposes is not something that Christians should be particularly bothered to preserve.
In any event, Devoy pushed back by pointing out she was not trying to ban Christmas and lacked the power to do so. The contrived controversy blew over, as they usually do, when the next shiny object appeared. Few would even remember the uproar. Understandably, however, Devoy did not forget.
The day after the Christchurch shootings, she wrote for The Spinoff something different to the ‘‘this is not us’’ message of Jacinda Ardern.
Several commentators and even some members of Parliament have given similar views before and since. New Zealand is quite rotten, the argument goes, and New Zealanders are an often racist, bigoted and benighted people. It’s a sincere and legitimate viewpoint – even if it’s one that most Kiwis probably reject.
However, what struck me about Devoy’s argument was the manner in which she related the shootings to the ‘‘War on Christmas’’ story of a few years before. I’ll quote the relevant part below, but I’d also encourage you to go and look at the piece itself. It was hardly the only point the race relations commissioner made and I wouldn’t want to represent that as being the case. But addressing those who over-reacted to her Christmas comments, Devoy wrote: ‘‘Do not write an op-ed today crying about how shocking [the Christchurch] murders were. Because you helped
make it happen. You helped normalise hatred in our country. You helped those murderers feel that they were representing the thoughts of ordinary New Zealanders.’’
The implication that the terrorist was inspired and radicalised by the likes of Duncan Garner and The AM Show is pervasive, pernicious and without evidence.
Devoy is no longer a state servant. She did not to seek reappointment after her first five-year term in office expired last year. That was the same year the Human Rights Commission was found to have an appalling culture, despite its long history of lecturing others. However, while she was not speaking for the state, Devoy’s comments were quite something from somebody who had occupied such an important position.
And this is why civil libertarians ought to be concerned at calls for more censorship after the Christchurch murders. Because while those in favour of more state control of opinions protest that they are only talking about extremist views, the polarised political times have produced a tendency to soften the definition of extremism.
Banning fascism is a more troubling proposition if you have a proclivity to declare almost everyone with whom you disagree of being a fascist.
Last year, my Stuff colleague Damien Grant wrote a column that seemed to be about immigrants and the difficulty society has in coping with them. However, at the end of the item he revealed that what he had written actually described the disruption and adaptation that occurs constantly through internal generational change.
His point was that the challenges presented by one set of newcomers are no different in nature to the challenges we have always faced and coped with in relation to another set of newcomers.
For this sentiment, he was denounced on Twitter as a white supremacist. God knows why, given that the obvious intent of his words was to counter populist criticism of immigration. It can only be assumed that since Grant is a libertarian, there was a knee-jerk impulse to refuse him the benefit of the doubt.
And this gets to the problem with censorship. Those in favour of more Government regulation of opinions invariably point out that they wish to restrict the most odious forms of speech which, in theory, should be reassuring. Yet we live in an era when all the loudest people spend quite a bit of time accusing each other of being Nazis all day.
Justice Minister Andrew Little is now expediting a review of hate-speech laws and there are few reasons for old-fashioned liberals to be optimistic about it. This is ironic given that, less than a fortnight before the atrocities in March, he was patting his Government on the back for the removal of blasphemy laws from the Crimes Act.
With the help of the human rights establishment, it seems like Little just may be the man to bring them back in another form.