Should we eat meat

Should We Eat Meat?

The answer is Yes of course and here is why

As the debate, inevitably, ranges over the should we shouldn't we eat meat, the argument has merit on both sides, dependent on which side of the fence you are. 

For me this debate has a simple but not simplistic answer:

  "eat less and eat better". 

For this you need to be able to evaluate what is better? 
Better for me means free ranging animals, extensively reared and grass fed on traditional pastures, which will also look after the health of the soil. Native or primitive breeds will have less environmental impact in many ways.  We definitely need to grasp the thorny issue of food waste, as the figures bandied around are thirty percent of all food produced is wasted in the UK.

 'Pigidea'  

Pigs and, to some extent poultry, can be fed on our food waste. As nobody, least of all me, wants to risk another foot and mouth outbreak, as it happend back in 2001, this can be easily overcome by the political will to control the cooking and sterilizing of food waste in a centralized manner.
The evidence is, to some extent, irrefutable that consumption in the western economies needs to be massively reduced. Amongst many of the reasons for the increase of consumption is obviously price.
Here is some evidence of the fact that meat is too cheap.

copies from my Grandads butchers buying book, 26 Feb 1962

Here goes the statistical bit and there is the saying that "there are lies, dammed lies and statistics". Working out the price of five pigs at £52-12-3 in old money, this translates to app £10.45 per pig in today's money.

Average earnings in early 1962 were app £832.00 per annum. Average earnings in early 2014 were app £24,856.00 per annum, which is nearly a multiple of 30. So from this our pig should be £310.00 ish. And today the price for one pig is about £170.00.
It is also necessary to understand the different eating qualities, as it is not only about cost. The pig of 1962 would have had more fat and less meat to bone ratio. It would have had far better eating quality though, than today's commercially produced ones. This would be especially true, if it had been given a viaried diet, that might have included food waste (swill). This pig would have come from more traditional breed than today's hybrids.
The 1962 pig would have had a minimal carbon foot print compared to today's intensively reared cereal fed animals.
Why is the pig £140 cheaper? 
This has many reasons. Some are relating to intensification, change of diet, bigger litters, breed hybridization and much much more.
Even at a £170.00 there is a lot more expense now, in slaughtering and processing a pig, than there was in 1962. This is due to a massive increases in facility costs, inspection and audit, and the  regulatory requirements placed on farmers, abattoirs and cutting plants.

 'Meat is too cheap'

So the result, in my opinion, of all the debate is that yes we should eat meat. It is obviously better to have ruminants reared on non arable land, where no cereal can viably be grown.

One of the examples I would use are Herdwick sheep, which have a very low carbon foot print and are raised on land that most definitely wouldn't grow any cereals.

 

Terra Madre

Terra Madre is a network of food communities, which are groups of small-scale food producers committed to producing quality food in a responsible, sustainable way. There are more than 2,000 Terra Madre food communities around the world.

The First Terra Madre was in 2004 in a massive former production hall in the Fiat factory in Turin. For a Cumbrian meet food and farming insider and a straight forward country guy this was a massive thing. I didn't realise just how massive until I attended. In any other circles this would have been a confrence.

And oh, what a confrence! I had an opportunity to see and speak to some of the attendees as different and diverse as Eritrean goat farmers to Andean lama farmers to Polish mountain sheep farmers, all in their traditional costumes.

What struck me, amongst thousands of other things, was that these people (possibly for the first time) could feel that they were important producers; a collective of like minded people they had some thing in common with massively different but important strands of similarity.

All the way from the Andies

Attending the first ever Terra Madre was memorable for many things but mostly as there was a biggish British Pavillion of producers including me with air dried Herdwick mutton and Herdwick Mutton Salami, Peter Gott with his wild boar farmed in Cumbria, Denhay farm, scotch blackface to name but a few. On a personal level my wife gave birth to our first child ZOSIA, whilst I was away.

 Zosia

So moving forward to the next Terra Madre, in 2006. It was the turn of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. By this time I was deeply involved with Mutton. When I look at that written down, it looks a little odd (not in the New Zealand/Welsh way). When was I ever not involved with the mutton? Particulaly Herdwick mutton, it's sale and general promotion. His Royal Highness's opening speach at Terra Madre was, as I have since come to expect from His Royal Highness, an emotional, passionate and intelegent speach about the small familly unit producing food, which we in England know as a familly farm. Oh boy what a day!

His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Farmer Sharp and Peter Gott 

 

Whilst an exhibitor at Salone I was attempting to sell English charcuterie to the ultimate market, Italy home of the famous Culatello, Parma Ham and most interesting to me Violino di Capra.

violino di capra

consortium of producers of Parma Ham

My Stand at Salone del Gusto, British Pavillion

 And so I am proud to have been appointed a British representative at Terra madre 2014