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.