Meat eaters are destroying the planet, warns WWF report

[8ball]

And where will that leave consumers? Will it still support large numbers of livestock? Some animals are more polluting than others perhaps a change of diet will help or maybe there will be less available.What about all those who want to take up something along the lines of a western diet when it comes to meat? Can this be supported?

I’m going to hazard a ‘no’ for that last bit.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I like the post on the whole, but this bit did make a bit of tea come out of my nose...

Well the problem is both much more easily solved and much less easy to solve than some seem to make out.

 

[editor]

Overpopulation rhetoric is eco-fascist nonsense, overconsumption rhetoric is liberal nonsense.

Whereas encouraging people to eat less meat is a fucking great idea on multiple levels.

 

[CNT36]

Well first we need to characterise the problem correctly. Firstly, very broadly, living standards are improving on every continent except Africa. Infant mortality reducing, malnutrition reducing, life expectancy increasing (and for the Malthusian-minded among us, reproduction falling, often sharply).

Clearly there are areas on these continents that are continuing along lines of unsustainable production, and in many cases accelerating along those lines. To take one example, the cattle farming of Argentina has largely switched to the barn model in recent years, which is both horrible for the cows and horrible for the environment. Much of this beef is exported (although Argentines themselves eat a lot of it), but it doesn't go to Africa. For the majority of the people in sub-Saharan Africa whose living standards are falling while the rest of the world improves, meat is either not on the menu at all or it is a very rare luxury.

So the driver of change to ever less sustainable (and ever more cruel) production isn't the poor. It's the consumption habits of rich. Can we support 'loads of cheap meat for all'? Hard to see how. Can we move away from 'loads of (comparatively given wages) cheap meat for the rich'? Yes, and we'll need to, but not all meat production is equally unsustainable - pretty much all of British lamb production, for instance, is far more sustainable than, say, Argentinian beef.

What are the social and political means by which we produce a shift away from unsustainable practices? That's the real question here. And I think it's a cop-out to blame individual consumers. These are processes that need changing at the systemic level. I'm not going to have a go at a single mum on a limited budget opting for a multipack of chicken thighs at Lidl that can feed her whole family for a couple of quid. The danger as ever in this is that the burden and blame get placed on the wrong people - the poorer globally and the poorer locally - the people for whom 'choices' are in reality far more constrained.

Well I haven't had a go at individual consumers. My "where does that leave consumers?" wasn't so much about their desires but about what would actually be available to them after the broader changes you talked about in your previous post in the context of Larry's population post and my response to it. It is also about what choices are available rather than what they choose. My mention of additional people wanting to eat meat was talking about those with the increasing living standards you describe and again not so much about their choices but availability. The change of diet I mention didn't necessarily mean no meat but could be a switch to a more sustainable source. It is as you say a structural change required.

 

[WouldBe]

Was out for a walk a few years ago and happened across a field full of massive carrots. Not even particularly wonky but kind of the size of your forearm.

That's what I meant by wonky. Too big / small / nobbly / straight / curved whatever pathetic excuse supermarkets have for rejecting perfectly edible food. There was an article on countryfile a while back where the farmer was having to plough a sizeable amount of his carrots back into the ground for this reason which will rot down releasing CO2 and methane into the air.

 

[8ball]

Whereas encouraging people to eat less meat is a fucking great idea on multiple levels.

I'd probably be encouraging people to eat more vegetables, and a greater variety of them.
Achieves the aim you stated, but without inadvertently encouraging the replacing of meat with other kinds of nasty processed crap.

 

[8ball]

That's what I meant by wonky. Too big / small / nobbly / straight / curved whatever pathetic excuse supermarkets have for rejecting perfectly edible food. There was an article on countryfile a while back where the farmer was having to plough a sizeable amount of his carrots back into the ground for this reason which will rot down releasing CO2 and methane into the air.

I've seen more wonky veg in the supermarkets more recently so figured they had been making some progress with this issue. Some of that could be window-dressing, I guess.

 

[editor]

I'd probably be encouraging people to eat more vegetables, and a greater variety of them.
Achieves the aim you stated, but without inadvertently encouraging the replacing of meat with other kinds of nasty processed crap.

Thing is, almost every new trendy fast food joint coming to Brixton is meat themed. There's burger and chicken joints everywhere, with the awful Meat Liquor mob opening up next.

We've got a very long way to go before meat stops being seen as central/essential to UK diets.

 

[8ball]

Thing is, almost every new trendy fast food joint coming to Brixton is meat themed.

Really? The whole BBQ thing died out a good few years back round here.
Lots of new vegan and veg*n-friendly places....

 

[editor]

Really? The whole BBQ thing died out a good few years back round here.
Lots of new vegan and veg*n-friendly places....

Oh, there's usually a token vegan item on the menu which is better than nothing, but the recent 'restaurants' have are all been chicken themed ('Bird,' 'Other Side Fried' etc) or all about meaty burgers ('Meat Liquor' etc).

 

[8ball]

An eruption of trendy chicken places isn’t what I would have expected at this point.

Is that very localised to Brixton, or happening in other bits of London too?

 

[editor]

An eruption of trendy chicken places isn’t what I would have expected at this point.

Is that very localised to Brixton, or happening in other bits of London too?

Most of the ones coming to Brixton are expanding from Camden, Shoreditch or whatever.

e.g. Other Side Fried are already in Pop Brixton, Dirty South Lewisham, Peckham Levels, Kerb Camden, Feast Canteen Hammersmith. Other Side Fried - Fried Chicken / London / Mon - Sun
Bird are in Islington, Camden, Stratford and Canary Wharf.
Honest Burgers are everywhere etc etc

Meat is money!

 

[8ball]

That 'other side fried' is cheaper than I would have expected in London.

 

[Big Bertha]

That 'other side fried' is cheaper than I would have expected in London.

They are really good. Cheap as well imho

 

[Spymaster]

That 'other side fried' is cheaper than I would have expected in London.

Ace chicken burgers. Brioche buns too!

 

[8ball]

I’m a little sceptical of brioche buns.

 

[8ball]

I just read that chicken burgers are having a bit of an uptick due to being perceived as healthier than beef burgers.

If you’d asked me a few years ago, I wouldn’t have guessed that this would have been the logical follow-up to a media/market driven boom in veganism.

Are these places trading through the shutdown, I wonder...

 

[Pickman's model]

I’m a little sceptical of brioche buns.

Very nice with ice cream in

 

[editor]

They are really good. Cheap as well imho

1/10 for the feeble troll attempt there.

 

[8ball]

Very nice with ice cream in

With or without the chicken?

 

[Pickman's model]

With or without the chicken?

Without, nó space for the ice cream with chicken in

 

[8ball]

Without, nó space for the ice cream with chicken in

I sense a lack of ambition in you.

 

[editor]

That 'other side fried' is cheaper than I would have expected in London.

There's no mention I can see of their chickens being particularly well treated, so maybe that's why. In fact, very few of the press releases I get about meat based fast food businesses make any mention of animal welfare - and even when they do, the labels are often wildly misleading.

The labels and lingo supermarkets use to get you to buy their chicken – Which? News

Chicken is the UK’s favourite meat and the UK raises over a billion meat chickens (known as broilers) a year. We’ve looked at how those chickens are raised and the supermarket packaging labels that…

www.which.co.uk

 

[Spymaster]

I just read that chicken burgers are having a bit of an uptick due to being perceived as healthier than beef burgers.

There's that. plus the fact that a lot of these new places rely heavily on home deliveries and chicken burgers 'travel' way better than beef ones. Home delivered beef burgers aren't much cop after 10-20 minutes on the back of a bike but chicken ones are still almost as good as when they left the shop.

 

[Funky_monks]

I just read that chicken burgers are having a bit of an uptick due to being perceived as healthier than beef burgers.

If you’d asked me a few years ago, I wouldn’t have guessed that this would have been the logical follow-up to a media/market driven boom in veganism.

Are these places trading through the shutdown, I wonder...

Chicken makes up 50% of all meat consumed in the UK.
IIRC pig and poultry are responsible for 80%

 

[8ball]

There's no mention I can see of their chickens being particularly well treated, so maybe that's why.

I also couldn't find any mention of this, which surprised me a little.
Although with the brioche buns you could argue that the continuity on the health front is also lacking.

 

[8ball]

Chicken makes up 50% of all meat consumed in the UK.
IIRC pig and poultry are responsible for 80%

Sure, but your basic 'chicken shops' you see everywhere in the 'grab and go' end of things (and have done for some time) are a different market proposition to these new places.

 

[8ball]

There's that. plus the fact that a lot of these new places rely heavily on home deliveries and chicken burgers 'travel' way better than beef ones. Home delivered beef burgers aren't much cop after 10-20 minutes on the back of a bike but chicken ones are still almost as good as when they left the shop.

Interesting point. Possibly also relevant to the shutdown too.

 

[Funky_monks]

Sure, but your basic 'chicken shops' you see everywhere in the 'grab and go' end of things (and have done for some time) are a different market proposition to these new places.

Well, if you want to look at emissions, chicken has some of the lowest,
But we (hopefully) all know that the issue is far more complex than that.

 

[8ball]

Well, if you want to look at emissions, chicken has some of the lowest,
But we (hopefully) all know that the issue is far more complex than that.

Yeah, I was more thinking about how transitions in food trends can carry over some of the perceived 'values' from previous ones. With veganism you had big-money drivers pushing a drive for substitutes, which was conflicting in some ways with an 'authenticity' driver that been imported from 'clean eating' and 'paleo', which to a smaller extent gelled with a 'Mom and Pop' signifier that came with the earlier BBQ boom.

The 'dirty food' element prevalent in the branding is a clear counterpoint to the 'clean' element of the plant-based aesthetic.