Anti-meat campaign is misguided

MEAT production came under fire once again after a BBC investigation looked at its effect on the environment for a programme aired this week. However, for farmer Patrick Holden of the Sustainable Food Trust (SFT), the real issue lies not in meat itself, but in ‘the tendency to treat it as if it were one single commodity, referring to its global impact rather than critically differentiating between livestock systems that are part of the problem and those that are emphatically part of the solution’.

Perversely, condemnation of red meat may be pushing well-meaning consumers to make worse choices for the environment. Mr Holden points out: ‘The least sustainable meat is intensively farmed chicken and the most sustainable is grass-fed, or mostly grass-fed, lamb and beef.’ These dietary changes are making it harder for agriculture to respond to climate change. Arable farmers in the East of England could reduce their reliance on fertilisers by rotating profitable crops with grass and clover, but ‘the only way we can turn that grass and clover into food is through ruminant animals’. As red-meat consumption declines, Mr Holden says the farmers he talks to are questioning the sense of switching to a practice that would lose them money. He counters: ‘We need to be discerning in our dietary choices, differentiating between the products that are compatible with sustainable agriculture and those that are not. In the UK, this means we need to eat more ruminant meat—mainly grass-fed lamb and beef.’

Although ruminants do produce greenhouse-gas emissions, Mr Holden points out that recent research led by Oxford University’s Myles Allen has challenged established metrics, which don’t take into account the fact that methane, unlike carbon dioxide, degrades relatively quickly in the atmosphere (Town & Country, July 17). Mr Holden believes that, ultimately, a labelling scheme is required to help the public make the best food choices. ‘The SFT is on that case.’ CP