Smell the meatless future

Does the National Party hate vegetarians? It is a facetious question but also an apt response to the bizarre over-reaction of MP Nathan Guy to the news that Air NZ is offering a meat-free burger on flights from Los Angeles to Auckland.

Guy tweeted that it is ‘‘disappointing to see Air NZ promoting a GE substitute meat burger’’. The former primary industries minister believes that Air NZ should showcase the best locally sourced beef and lamb, not pseudo-meat from the US.

He is not alone. NZ First’s primary industries spokesman, Mark Patterson, who is also an Otago sheep farmer and a fan of rodeos, thought the issue deserved a press release. Patterson calls Air NZ’s choice ‘‘a slap in the face’’ for New Zealand’s ‘‘$9 billion red meat sector’’.

Unsurprisingly, industry body Beef

+Lamb New Zealand made similar noises about the national carrier’s decision to offer alternative meat on two of its daily flights.

This disproportionate response makes the meat industry and its political cheerleaders look defensive and even hysterical. They would do better to wake up and smell the meatless future.

A 2016 Roy Morgan survey found that more than

10 per cent of New Zealanders identify as vegetarian, up from about 8 per cent in 2011. Women are more likely than men to avoid meat, although male vegetarianism is growing faster.

Some may be eating less meat because of highminded reasons to do with animal suffering, but for others it is more pragmatic. Meat is murder on the bank account, with red meat becoming too expensive for many New Zealand consumers, as

reported this week.

‘‘We are quite a low-income country now. Consumers often can’t afford a good meat cut even once a week,’’ said Beef+Lamb’s Melissa ClarkReynolds only one day before her organisation complained about Air NZ’s meatless burger.

Plant-based proteins can offer meat substitutes at the cheaper end of the market, driven by rapid technological advances. New Zealand is aiming to position itself as a producer of high-end, luxury steaks – the expensive real thing in a world of synthetic fakes, not meat for the masses.

This is why Guy, Patterson and others reacted as they did. They think an Air NZ flight should serve as a shop window for increasingly unattainable produce. Instead, a message was sent about resources and health that was only amplified by their objections.

Patterson even called meat substitutes an ‘‘existential threat’’ to our secondbiggest export earner. That sounds like hyperbole but there is a grain of truth to it. The vast majority who still identify as carnivores know in their guts that they should eat less meat.

Writing at The Conversation in 2017, academics Julian Savulescu and Francis Vergunst described the ethical problems of meat eating. As well as the massive environmental costs in terms of land and water use, and greenhouse gas emissions, there is the effect on the global poor. Another 3.5b people could be fed with the grain we feed to animals.

Finally, there are growing health costs. Red meat consumption is known to be a key contributor to New Zealand’s skyrocketing bowel cancer rates. In this context, red meat advocates knocking Air NZ’s menu choice risk looking as backward as climate change deniers.

This disproportionate response makes the meat industry and its political cheerleaders look defensive

and even hysterical. They would do better to wake up and smell the meatless future.