Pressure mounts on BBC over meat documentary
To redress the balance and fulfil the requirement to provide impartial programming in the public interest, the BBC has an obligation to remedy the misleading impression created by Monday night’s documentary ‘Meat - A Threat to our Planet?’
The corporation also needs to give the UK livestock industry a voice in similar programming in the future, according to the UK’S three levy-funded meat bodies who said that the livestock industry was being used as a scapegoat in the carbon emissions debate,.
In an open letter to the BBC, Alan Clarke, chief executive of Quality Meat Scotland (QMS), Jane King, chief executive of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) and Gwyn Howells, chief executive of Hybu Cig Cymru / Meat Promotion Wales (HCC) said that the programme had given an unbalanced and inaccurate view of the environmental challenges facing livestock production.
They said that this had potentially misled UK consumers about how their meat was produced:
“By concentrating on the issue at a global scale, it failed to show the positives which sustainable production in the UK offers over the systems featured,” read the letter.
Stating that the programme focused heavily on intensive farming practices in the US and South America, the trio said that little or no time was given to the other side of the debate – and the significant efforts of UK agriculture to reduce our environmental impact.
“The UK industry did not have a voice in the programme, despite being produced and aired on a terrestrial station to a UK audience.
“This was an inexcusable missed opportunity to present a solution to those who want to continue to enjoy meat but have become concerned about environmental impact, often on the basis of unbalanced reporting such as this,” they wrote.
The organisations’ leaders also called into question the claim that meat production had a greater environmental impact than transport:
“The highest volume of CO2 is produced by the fossil fuel industries, with livestock farming contributing just 4 per cent of the UK’S CO2 emissions.”
They said that given this statistic, cutting meat consumption would not reduce the UK’S overall CO2 emissions nearly as significantly as structural changes in the energy and transport sectors:
“It is fair to say the red meat industry has been used as a scapegoat in discussions around carbon emissions, most likely because reducing red meat intake can be easily portrayed as a ‘simple’ lifestyle change.
“Suggesting that people should reduce the amount of red meat they consume is not the answer to improving the UK’S environmental impact and reducing carbon emissions.
Responsible and strategic livestock farming is a highly productive industry which produces a large amount of food for the population. When carried out effectively, carbon emissions can be minimised.