Getting to the meat of the matter

WE’VE grown used to seeing a flourish of vegan products hit the grocery shelves every week and now vegans are reaching far beyond their original narrow base. This month saw the announcement of an American investment fund that promises not to buy shares in any company connected with the use of animals for food, cosmetics, or clothes. That excludes 43% of the US stock market and the research is so costly that the management fee required is higher than the norm.

Nonetheless, for true believers, this is a price worth paying. From vegan leather to fake fur and plant-based cosmetics, animal-free products of all kinds are a growing part of the retail scene. Now, with the seriousness of climate change being at last appreciated, the emissions inherent in meateating have become a serious issue, with our own Climate Change Committee—as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—saying we need to reduce our meat consumption to avoid disastrous global warming.

No wonder it sometimes looks as if the cards are beginning to be stacked against us omnivores and that a new morality is emerging that will make meat-eating a vice and its adherents a persecuted minority. Yet, the facts do not support this largely sentimentalist campaign and there’s no reason why we should allow this lobby to have its way.

First, to deal with climate change—it’s quite true that, if the whole world stopped eating meat, we would reduce our emissions very considerably, but nothing like as much as if we stopped using fossil fuels. What’s more, we in the rich countries produce a much higher proportion of emissions from our use of fossil fuels than from our meat-eating. And that is, of course, precisely where the vegan argument gets into trouble.

The manufacture of fake fur and so-called ‘vegan’ leather is itself energy intensive and usually uses significant amounts of chemicals —themselves producing further emissions. In fact, if you buy a vegan handbag and eschew a leather one, you are unlikely to have reduced your contribution to global warming at all.

The Climate Change Committee has shown how we get our emissions to net zero and that involves a reduction of meat eating of only about 20%. Well, we all ought to be able to manage that by eating less and better. That very change to eating better meat could get rid of intensive beef-rearing, re-establish the importance of mixed farming and, through natural animal fertilisation, enable grassland to absorb much more carbon. That enhances the natural cycle by which emissions are drawn back into the soil instead of being sent off into the atmosphere.

Veganism doesn’t help us improve the fertility of the soil, it doesn’t contribute to bringing back the biodiversity that monoculture has so reduced and it makes no contribution to the climatefriendly agriculture that should be our aim.

It’s also simply illogical. Why refuse to use fur or leather, which would otherwise be wasted, and instead make fake fur or chemical leather that uses up new resources? Much better to campaign for high standards of animal welfare, insist on the use of every part of the carcass and stop the breeding of animals simply for their fur.

Human beings have kept animals for millennia; our countryside and landscape depend upon husbandry and the design of our bodies makes us omnivores. I say to those who can’t bear (or don’t want) to eat meat or drink milk —fine, be a vegan—but don’t preach holierthan-thou cant to the rest of us.

We produce a higher proportion of emissions from fossil fuels than from eating meat

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