Meatless Mondays – a reader's critique

Dear editor,

I picked up your Aug-Sept issue in a cafe today and saw your feature on Meatless Monday. While I think that encouraging consumers to be thoughtful about their eating habits is one of the key ‘green’ issues in the world today, I have some strong reservations about the underlying tenants of Meatless Monday.

I am in complete agreement that our current practice of agriculture is unsustainable, wasteful, polluting and an abuse of animals. For our own health many of us could do by cutting down on the amount of meat, especially highly processed meat, that we consume.

However I am disappointed that Green Ideas is uncritically promoting this campaign. As a conscious consumer and omnivore who has just participated in the Live Below the Line challenge, I am offended by your quote, “Think about the amount of land used to grow feed to fatten animals that could be used for feeding people!” People are suffering from hunger and malnourishment because of our unjust systems (which are hugely complicated), not because there isn't  enough food in the world.

Simply converting pasture to crop land will not solve global inequality or the environmental nightmare that is modern day agriculture. So one of my main objections is that Meatless Monday is not getting to the root of the problem. Instead of saying ‘Let’s campaign for a better farming model’, it is content to paint a dark picture of meat consumption full stop. Meat and dairy don’t require large amounts of pesticides, chemical fertiliser, feed and fuel if carried out in a sustainable way. Would farming sustainably requires us to eat less meat? Yes, it probably would. But the monocropping of grains and vegetables is also hugely environmentally damaging, requiring inputs in exactly the same form: pesticides, chemical fertiliser, fuel and water.

Not differentiating the American model of factory farming from New Zealand’s is another big gripe. In the U.S. much of the beef is grain-fed which is an inefficient use of grains, and terrible for the cows (no wonder they get indigestion!). They are fed this because growing grass is more costly than the highly subsidised grains that flood the market due to government policy. As a side note, these grains are also directed into our food chain in the form of junk food. So no-one but the big corporates and lobbies are gaining from this equation.

Not that I am defending the way that animals are farmed in New Zealand. In the wake of the recent milk powder scare, Mike Joy, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Science/Ecology at Massey University, argued in an article in the Dominion Post that “the most economically viable farms have the smallest [environmental] impacts and the pressure the dairy industry puts on New Zealanders to accept degradation of the environment [due to intensive farming], particularly waterways, is simply a subtle form of blackmail.” American polyculture farmer Joel Salatin explains that on his farm, “The numbers [of stock] are kept low enough for the farm’s ecology to metabolize the manure and compost rather than it becoming a toxic problem due to over-abundance.” Salatin also critiques the alleged proportion of greenhouse gas emission emitted by cows.

Raising animals in a more sustainable way also benefits meat consumers at a nutritional level. Animals that are raised on factory farms are much less healthy and the resulting animal products much less nutritious. According to kiwi nutritionist Ben Warren, grain fed beef can have as high a ratio omega 3 to omega 6 as 1:25, whereas grass fed beef under low stress conditions have an omega ratio of 1:3. He cites a New Zealand farmer whose organic beef has more omega 3 than salmon. Animal foods are more nutritionally dense than grains are and from what I have read, the statistics that Meatless Monday employs are not representative of this fact.

I think it is important to separate fact from opinion, “If the whole world became vegan, there would be plenty [of] food to feed all of us.” (Meatless Monday NZ website). I really respect that people who have chosen not to eat meat have often done a lot more thinking about our food systems and world hunger than most, but rather than argue about this we need to understand that agriculture based on fossil fuels and with no regard for animals or the environment is the more important question. We also need to focus our efforts on tackling the inequalities that allow global hunger to continue to exist in today’s world.

If we really are to think about eating sustainably at a local level then we need to look at what food works in the context of each bio-region. We need to get back to basics: understanding how we care for the health of the soil. Animals have a key role to play here and it is worth noting that no ecosystem exists without animals – the question is how we integrate them into appropriate polycultures and encourage bio-diversity. As scientist Allan Savory has demonstrated in Africa, animals have an indispensable role in restoring land that can no longer support even weeds. In addition to helping restore land that has suffered desertification, much of world’s land is highly unsuited to growing crops but holistic herd management is very possible.

I think the challenge for all of us, vegan, vegetarian and omnivore alike, is to think about how we source our food. Nature is eager to teach us these lessons, and in New Zealand we have a wealth of experience and wisdom – environmentalists, farmers, permaculturists and others who have been wrestling with these issues for decades. I would love to see Green Ideas promoting a conversation about what sustainable food production would look like for us here in New Zealand, and continuing to support campaigns that shift consumer understanding of food from a commodity to something that embodies our relationship with food producers and the land.

Respectfully yours,
Sarah Teng

09/10/2013  1:23 pm by kiwijohn

Pastoral farming with a low number of animals per hectare is no longer viable because of world human population. Intensive meat or dairy production is destructive. Until we halve our population, meat for some is starvation for others.

13/10/2013  10:58 pm by Sarah Teng

Hi John. I agree it's a tricky one. Our population has overshot the natural carrying capacity of the planet, whether we continue to consume meat or not, and neither current nor historical models is going to be enough - our current agricultural systems depend heavily on fossil fuel. However, I would maintain that pastoral farming does have an important place in regenerating land that has become wasteland due to agricultural practice. 
I think what the Koanga Institute is doing on a small scale in New Zealand is a hopeful example of what is possible though. With enough resourcefulness, dedication, and knowledge, one can feed their family/community exceptionally nutrient-dense homegrown/raised foods in a sustainable way (ie. while remineralising the soil, building topsoil and sequestering carbon).