Minister must defend livestock farming
TO get where we’re going today, I’m going to stitch together elements from the last two weeks articles... the fallacy of the environmental benefits of veganism, and internet fuelled beliefs that don’t stand much analysis.
And these two topics come together in what I believe to be an unholy bit of nonsense, where a corporate giant can advertise their highly industrialised fungus-based ‘meat substitute’ as being better for the environment than my beef or lamb. And riding high on that gossamer wave of ‘It must be true, I saw it on YouTwitFace’, the myth becomes ‘fact’.
Quorn is the product, and you have probably seen the ads, endorsed by ‘celebrities’. It’s a product of monster corporate interests – the petro-chemical industry helped fund its inception. It’s registered as a trademark, and ‘grown’ in carefully guarded processes. The basic stuff is produced using this fungus – or mould – fed on glucose and ‘fixed nitrogen’. I can find no-one prepared to talk about how much of either is used, or the source of these ingredi
ents. But it’s a pretty fair bet that nei- ther appear out of thin air by magic. In any event, in my view it is most certainly not ‘good’ for the environment.
There are multiple layers of processing, and finding the ingredients of a ready meal on the supermarket shelf isn’t simple, as the Quorn element is often simply referred to as such – or as ‘mycoprotein’.
A multitude of processes and ingredients go to make these ready meals marketable. As well as hard to fathom chemical additive substances, sometimes they’re using egg yolk, pea fibre, milk proteins, and palm oil – to mention but a few.
Obviously, some variations can’t therefore be called vegan. Those, I suspect, involve even further complications and processing… but I’m sure it’s all good for you.
And as for palm oil going into this stuff? Well, you can say that, in a very real sense, your ready meal ‘may contain traces of ground up dead orangutan’.
Saying that something like that is greener than my beef, which is primarily raised on untilled unfertilised rough pasture, is about as big a lie as you can tell. But somehow, it’s legally unchallenged – oh, how I wish I had an industry body who would pursue such hurtful dishonesty… all the way to court. Or better yet, a Defra Minister who would stand up.
In this internet informed world, the idea becomes the perceived reality. So many people see what they want to and it becomes accepted. It doesn’t matter that they can walk out on to Dartmoor and see what my cows are made of – in essence, rainfall, fresh air and the occasional bit of sunshine, utilising the medium of a beautiful bio-diverse landscape.
But they can’t go into the ‘meat substitute’ factories, and see all the industrial processing and resource consumption that feeds into them. I’m happy to discuss what fossil fuel inputs I use, and indeed, could get by without them if push came to shove. Whereas the intensely processed ‘meat substitute’ business are a bit coy about this… preferring to stick to generalisations. They cannot exist without complex bought in ‘inputs’… because that’s what they are made of.
Moving on, but connected in every way, we need to revisit the Climate Change Committee, or more specifically, one of their technical advisors. One of the contributors to the CCC’s ‘Behaviour change, public engagement, and Net Zero’ report, is called Dr Joseph Poore. He researches agriculture and the environment at Oxford, and appears to be a vegan evangelist. You can easily find videos of him online, earnestly explaining to an adoring wide eyed eco-woke child that being vegan is much better for the environment.
He tells her: “Feeding grass to cows is equivalent to burning coal.” Let that statement sink in for a moment. Cows eat grass made with carbon sequestered from the air ‘yesterday’, while burning coal releases carbon hitherto locked away for hundreds of millions of years. There’s plenty more… go and check it out yourself.
Wake up, Minister George Eustice. Look at what you’re endorsing by your silence. Where’s your integrity man?
‘Oh I wish for an industry body that would pursue such hurtful dishonesty ... all the way to court’