On Thursday Eat more beef – after all it’s ‘made’ on plants
Read Anton’s column every week in the Western Morning News
AS a brilliant marketing swizz, and to be right on trend, I’ve invented a new concept. This week, we’ll be marketing ‘plant-based beef’. And unlike the reconstituted far travelled ultra-processed ‘plant-based’ stuff you might foolishly buy in the supermarket, with a list of ingredients you’ve barely heard of, from all over the world ...ours will have just one ingredient. Bits of a 28-month-old Belted Galloway steer.
He lived his life within a couple of miles of where he was born, and was slaughtered after a 25-minute journey. He was ‘made’ almost entirely of a wide variety of naturally occurring herbage. Grasses, yarrow, ribgrass, knapweed and rattle all ‘infest’ the land he fattened on, and previously while he was with his mother on the hill, he and mum would’ve eaten whortleberry – billberry to you guv – gorse stems, heather, rushes, and a further assortment of wild grasses.
Admittedly, over his first winter, and now through his last few months, he will also have seen the occasional mouthful of cattle nuts.
These nuts are made of various lowgrade cereals and veg by-products that don’t quite make the grade for human consumption. I have to maintain a record of all of this, with a full analysis of the ingredients, but whatever the strident anti-meat brigade say, you and I wouldn’t have wanted to eat what he ate.
In the interests of fairness, I should observe the inevitability that he’ll also have inadvertently ingested a wide selection of invertebrates during his time with me. I mention this detail to be fair and accurate, and to put things in perspective. And for balance, it would be reasonable to point out he doubtless also provided habitat for various ‘passengers’ himself at times…nothing is as simple as it appears in the picture books.
But, critically, I can’t really claim my steer was 100% ‘plant-based beef’ because it wouldn’t be strictly true.
However, and this is the point, compare him to a veggie burger made of 20 ingredients from across the globe, which have a hidden impact beyond measure. Each of the crops that go into it are grown in what is, by definition, a man-made mono-culture, devoid of anything much bigger than invertebrates – the wildlife that lived on that land before it was tilled is gone. And what do you imagine is the fate of any fluffy doeeyed…er…does who manage to sneak onto fields of crops to graze at night? Generally, wildlife that attacks commercial crops on any scale is dealt with in only one way. Can you guess what that method is boys and girls?
You see, I can be completely open about how my ‘plant-based beef’ is raised. I can take you to the hill where he was birthed, introduce you to his mum, his sisters and aunties in their extended matriarchy. I can show you the fragrant green hay his pals are currently munching – and the equally sweet smelling wrapped bales of haylage they’re moving onto in a month or two. We could identify the impact his life has had on the planet to a pretty fine degree, and mostly within walking distance. Then, of course, we could come back to the farmhouse and eat him! But I want you to compare this with a ‘plant-based’ meal out of the supermarket.
You know, the ones with the glossy adverts telling you how good they are for the planet, but mysteriously omit any mention of the Brazilian soya, or Indonesian palm oil therein. In a very real sense, by eating such garbage you are killing orang-utans.
I note they also claim to be better for you, although I’m not aware of much evidence of how such a heavily processed diet will effect consumers in 20-30 years.
Oh, we both know that there’s research proving conclusively that living on a diet of raw bacon and foie gras will make your arms fall out and your head explode…. at least 10 minutes sooner than if you ate something else. But hey! You’ve gotta die of something.
Look, you can adopt whatever diet you wish – it’s none of my business. If you can’t face the idea of eating dead animals, then don’t. But don’t think you’re signalling your virtue, or saving the planet…because that evidently isn’t true. Each of us is part of a dense web of interactions, impacting eco-systems right across the planet.
And all the self-righteous wrath directed at beef, and me, won’t change that. Ironically, to lower your impact, you’d probably do better to buy a bit of re-constituted moorland vegetation in the form of some ‘plant-based beef’, from that halfwit Coaker.
‘Eat what you like. But don’t signal your virtue on saving the planet. That evidently isn’t true’