Farmers right to challenge the claims that meat-free is best
NO one can deny that veganism is on the rise. It is also plainly true that meat-free meals are increasingly popular, even among those who still eat meat some of the time. So it is no surprise that supermarkets, driven to a large extent by what their customers want to buy and eat, are boosting their ranges and extending their offerings in these areas.
What’s not so clear cut, however, is whether or not a wholesale switch to ready-meals made from a range of plants, many of them grown overseas on land turned over to farming in sometimes questionable ways, is either good for the environment or good for our health.
There is strong evidence that increasing our intake of fresh vegetables and fruit is good for us. It is also true that all meat production methods are not the same and that eating pasture-grazed beef and lamb, for example, from high welfare UK livestock farms is a good deal better for the planet, and probably for our health, than consuming imported meat produced in very different ways.
That is why the National Sheep Association is right today to raise the issue of why several of our major supermarkets are planning to significantly extend their meat-free product ranges, in the case of Tesco by some 300%. If they are doing so because, bluntly, there is more money in selling highly processed plant-based meals to a susceptible portion of the public that has swallowed the cult of veganism, that’s absolutely fine. Supermarkets are in business to make money for their shareholders and cashing in on a trend is one of the things that they do. But if they are taking liberties with the evidence about the relative value, to the environment and human health, of a vegan ready meal made from ingredients grown in the tropics, versus a couple of lamb chops served up with freshly cooked British vegetables – all produced within a few miles of home – then they deserve to be challenged.
Because while it is everyone’s absolute right to eat what they want and while the objections to meateating by vegetarians and vegans, on whatever grounds, are perfectly legitimate, the facts do not back up claims sometimes made that all nonmeat diets are better, in every case, than all diets that include meat.
Increasingly conservationists, environmental campaigners, nutritionists and medical experts are coming round to the view that the health and environmental benefits of the food and drink we consume are far more complicated than many in the food industry have so far acknowledged. But most agree that a balanced diet of locally-produced food, reared to high welfare standards, ticks most boxes.
Farmers in the UK rightly complain that, with some honourable exceptions, not all supermarkets show the right level of support for UK-produced meat.
Several fail to acknowledge the huge difference, both in quality and welfare standards, of beef, lamb, pork and chicken produced in the UK and that produced in many other parts of the world. A bit more support would go a very long way. And it would also help the environment rather more than promoting vegan ready meals.