meat a threat to our planet on bbc1
- Thread starter hagar
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A good documentary in my opinion.
The general problem lies with the fact that there are and will be too many humans on the planet.
A few rich westerners can decide to stop/reduce their meat intake but it’ll make damn all difference as they probably flew to a sunshine holiday.
recycled
Well-Known Member
i do like the way there telling us we all need to cut back on ,eat but maybe if some of the lard arses across the pond were to half there portion sizes it would put a big dent in the problem , to me it seems more an american problem but were all been made to suffer . they talk about all the land ( rain forrest )in brazil thats going to support animal production and then how x amount is getting exported to th uk , but you look around the uk and see how much land is out of production because we dont want to go back to having food mountains etc
id did appear that in america they had to many pig sheds in such a small area there was no way that land could soak up all that slurry , then again theres no saying it was all going onto those fields for all we know there might have been a fleet of tankers hauling it away elsewhere .
i did like the pig farmer that had the biogas plant and the covered lagoon and how they made out how it was was such a simple idea and why wernt more farmers doing that .
however i suspect having covers over the lagoon like that would make mixing the slurry very difficult and those covers will likely need to come of from time to time to dig the sludge ou . and to anyone that didnt know any better you would think the slurry is going to turn completely to gas , where as in reality your still left with the same amount of liquid to get rid of , no mention of that .
i think the program would have been better presented by an american for an american audience
id did appear that in america they had to many pig sheds in such a small area there was no way that land could soak up all that slurry , then again theres no saying it was all going onto those fields for all we know there might have been a fleet of tankers hauling it away elsewhere .
i did like the pig farmer that had the biogas plant and the covered lagoon and how they made out how it was was such a simple idea and why wernt more farmers doing that .
however i suspect having covers over the lagoon like that would make mixing the slurry very difficult and those covers will likely need to come of from time to time to dig the sludge ou . and to anyone that didnt know any better you would think the slurry is going to turn completely to gas , where as in reality your still left with the same amount of liquid to get rid of , no mention of that .
i think the program would have been better presented by an american for an american audience
jcb411abuser
Well-Known Member
Didn't see it. It's all a farce imo. They are so desperate to calm the masses to keep confidence up that they are claiming to be able to change the weather!
It's something we cannot control and as tech progresses and people want to control more and more of their lives down to the minute detail the thought of how unpredictable something that can impact you as much as the weather is unnerves people(idiots).
So this is seen as a cure to the issue, "if we do X,Y and Z everything is going to be how we want it" how absurd is that? But the idiots imagine the can manipulate weather to their liking, and it keeps you distracted from the truth.
It's something we cannot control and as tech progresses and people want to control more and more of their lives down to the minute detail the thought of how unpredictable something that can impact you as much as the weather is unnerves people(idiots).
So this is seen as a cure to the issue, "if we do X,Y and Z everything is going to be how we want it" how absurd is that? But the idiots imagine the can manipulate weather to their liking, and it keeps you distracted from the truth.
Paw
Well-Known Member
An open letter from AHDB, QMS and HCC on airing of ‘Meat: A Threat to our Planet’ on BBC One.
This week’s BBC 1 programme, ‘Meat: A Threat to our Planet’ gave an unbalanced and inaccurate view of the environmental challenges facing livestock production, potentially misleading UK consumers about how their meat is produced. By concentrating on the issue at a global scale, it failed to show the positives which sustainable production in the UK offers over the systems featured.
It also failed to note that, in 2018, UK beef imports from Brazil made up just one per cent of our beef imports, so the majority of what consumers here purchase does not come from the farming systems featured which deplete the rainforests.
The programme focused heavily on intensive farming practices in the US and South America. Little or no time was given to the other side of the debate and the significant efforts of UK agriculture to reduce our environmental impact. The UK industry did not have a voice in the programme, despite being produced and aired on a terrestrial station to a UK audience.
This was an inexcusable missed opportunity to present a solution to those who want to continue to enjoy meat but have become concerned about environmental impact, often on the basis of unbalanced reporting such as this. The UK is completely different to the farming systems shown on the programme, using natural resources to produce meat as sustainably as possible, with a focus on animal welfare. The industry has taken huge strides to reduce its carbon footprint and further increase nutrient density in the soil.
In addition, we do not agree with the claim that meat production has a greater environmental impact than transport. The highest volume of CO2 is produced by the fossil fuel industries, with livestock farming contributing just 4% of the UK’s CO2 emissions. Given this statistic, cutting your individual meat consumption would in fact not reduce the UK’s overall CO2 emissions nearly as significantly as structural changes in the energy and transport sectors.
It is fair to say the red meat industry has been used as a scapegoat in discussions around carbon emissions, most likely because reducing red meat intake can be easily portrayed as a ‘simple’ lifestyle change. Suggesting that people should reduce the amount of red meat they consume is not the answer to improving the UK’s environmental impact and reducing carbon emissions.
Responsible and strategic livestock farming is a highly productive industry which produces a large amount of food for the population. When carried out effectively, carbon emissions can be minimised, with meat production playing an important role in global food security.
To redress the balance and to uphold its mission to provide impartial programming in the public interest, the BBC has an obligation both to remedy the misleading impression created by this programme and to give the UK livestock industry a voice in similar programming in the future. Highlighting that consumers should purchase meat which has been produced through a domestic assurance scheme ensures it adheres to higher welfare standards and traceable environmental credentials and gives them confidence they can continue to enjoy meat in their diet.
Yours faithfully,
Jane King, Chief Executive of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB)
Alan Clarke, Chief Executive of Quality Meat Scotland (QMS)
Gwyn Howells, Chief Executive of Hybu Cig Cymru / Meat Promotion Wales (HCC)
This week’s BBC 1 programme, ‘Meat: A Threat to our Planet’ gave an unbalanced and inaccurate view of the environmental challenges facing livestock production, potentially misleading UK consumers about how their meat is produced. By concentrating on the issue at a global scale, it failed to show the positives which sustainable production in the UK offers over the systems featured.
It also failed to note that, in 2018, UK beef imports from Brazil made up just one per cent of our beef imports, so the majority of what consumers here purchase does not come from the farming systems featured which deplete the rainforests.
The programme focused heavily on intensive farming practices in the US and South America. Little or no time was given to the other side of the debate and the significant efforts of UK agriculture to reduce our environmental impact. The UK industry did not have a voice in the programme, despite being produced and aired on a terrestrial station to a UK audience.
This was an inexcusable missed opportunity to present a solution to those who want to continue to enjoy meat but have become concerned about environmental impact, often on the basis of unbalanced reporting such as this. The UK is completely different to the farming systems shown on the programme, using natural resources to produce meat as sustainably as possible, with a focus on animal welfare. The industry has taken huge strides to reduce its carbon footprint and further increase nutrient density in the soil.
In addition, we do not agree with the claim that meat production has a greater environmental impact than transport. The highest volume of CO2 is produced by the fossil fuel industries, with livestock farming contributing just 4% of the UK’s CO2 emissions. Given this statistic, cutting your individual meat consumption would in fact not reduce the UK’s overall CO2 emissions nearly as significantly as structural changes in the energy and transport sectors.
It is fair to say the red meat industry has been used as a scapegoat in discussions around carbon emissions, most likely because reducing red meat intake can be easily portrayed as a ‘simple’ lifestyle change. Suggesting that people should reduce the amount of red meat they consume is not the answer to improving the UK’s environmental impact and reducing carbon emissions.
Responsible and strategic livestock farming is a highly productive industry which produces a large amount of food for the population. When carried out effectively, carbon emissions can be minimised, with meat production playing an important role in global food security.
To redress the balance and to uphold its mission to provide impartial programming in the public interest, the BBC has an obligation both to remedy the misleading impression created by this programme and to give the UK livestock industry a voice in similar programming in the future. Highlighting that consumers should purchase meat which has been produced through a domestic assurance scheme ensures it adheres to higher welfare standards and traceable environmental credentials and gives them confidence they can continue to enjoy meat in their diet.
Yours faithfully,
Jane King, Chief Executive of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB)
Alan Clarke, Chief Executive of Quality Meat Scotland (QMS)
Gwyn Howells, Chief Executive of Hybu Cig Cymru / Meat Promotion Wales (HCC)
BasilSeal
Well-Known Member
I'd urge anyone interested in this debate to read the following book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meat-Benig...856230554/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
it's quite a long an involved read but you don't have to read it from cover to cover, you can use it as a reference book to look at some for the specific issues the author (Simon fairlie) deals with such as climate change.
Here's a brief interview with the author that outlines his argument
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2024133,00.html
As you will see, he isn't arguing in support of the status quo. I tend to agree with him that there are problems with our current model of food production, as farmers we don't really produce food anymore, we produce agricultural commodities which are sometimes processed into food, often they are made into other things like bio fuel or animal feed.
what we need to do is change our model of food production to one that primarily produces food for humans, the most sustainable version of such a system would be one that included animals as part of the rotation. this week's costing the earth programme on radio 4 asked the question: what would a livestock free countryside look like, and one of the places they visited was an organic farm that grew veg on a stockless system. Obviously, the big draw back with such a system is that it's virtually impossible to replace fertility from harvested crops without animal manure. this farm claimed to do so by importing green waste and wood chip to make compost and having a two year green manure phase in a four year rotation. So they were growing crops for two years and the other two years they plant grass and legumes to mulch back into the ground and build fertility back up for the next cash crop. presumably the were using tractors and mowers to do this, when the more obvious answer would be to get some ruminants to eat it and convert it into fertiliser and meat for free.
Fairlie's argument is that animals used in this way within a 'food orientated' rotation produce protein without any environmental cost. The alternative where there are no stock, means that we would be wasting a usable resource that could be used to produce free protein, and instead would be importing our protein from far off countries where people go hungry.
Meat is an easy target here, the obvious answer if we were serious about climate change would be to leave the carbon in the ground. that would mean radical changes for everyone's lifestyle though, where as farming is a soft target, methane is a potent but short lived greenhouse gas and hence can be seen as a 'quick fix'. we tend to talk about climate change in terms of CO2 emissions but methane is different, and a lot depends on the arbitrary figure that we attribute to methane as a co2 equivalent. I also believe that some of the higher figures for CO2 attributed to meat production include the burning of the rain forests, which seems a little harsh when applied to welsh hill lamb for instance, and in some cases even the CO2 that the cows exhale as part of the carbon cycle. so whilst emissions from meat production are an issue, there is an element of the deck being stacked against us.
Why? well people stand to make money i guess, there's money to be made from selling highly processed 'plant based' foods, vegan pizzas, ready meals and expensive processed ersatz meat alternatives will be big money earners, and if people can buy their vegan ready meal in its black plastic tray with cling film cover and cardboard sleeve, they can carry on consuming all the other cheap tat that makes up the modern world safe in the knowledge that they're saving the planet.
There is no quick fix to climate change, if we want to stop it then we need to radically alter our lifestyles, which means consuming less, travelling less, having less stuff, living simpler lives and re connecting with how our food is produced and being prepared to pay a bit more to have it produced properly. The chances are that this isn't going to happen because it's just too hard, so vegan ready meals it is then.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Meat-Benig...856230554/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
it's quite a long an involved read but you don't have to read it from cover to cover, you can use it as a reference book to look at some for the specific issues the author (Simon fairlie) deals with such as climate change.
Here's a brief interview with the author that outlines his argument
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2024133,00.html
As you will see, he isn't arguing in support of the status quo. I tend to agree with him that there are problems with our current model of food production, as farmers we don't really produce food anymore, we produce agricultural commodities which are sometimes processed into food, often they are made into other things like bio fuel or animal feed.
what we need to do is change our model of food production to one that primarily produces food for humans, the most sustainable version of such a system would be one that included animals as part of the rotation. this week's costing the earth programme on radio 4 asked the question: what would a livestock free countryside look like, and one of the places they visited was an organic farm that grew veg on a stockless system. Obviously, the big draw back with such a system is that it's virtually impossible to replace fertility from harvested crops without animal manure. this farm claimed to do so by importing green waste and wood chip to make compost and having a two year green manure phase in a four year rotation. So they were growing crops for two years and the other two years they plant grass and legumes to mulch back into the ground and build fertility back up for the next cash crop. presumably the were using tractors and mowers to do this, when the more obvious answer would be to get some ruminants to eat it and convert it into fertiliser and meat for free.
Fairlie's argument is that animals used in this way within a 'food orientated' rotation produce protein without any environmental cost. The alternative where there are no stock, means that we would be wasting a usable resource that could be used to produce free protein, and instead would be importing our protein from far off countries where people go hungry.
Meat is an easy target here, the obvious answer if we were serious about climate change would be to leave the carbon in the ground. that would mean radical changes for everyone's lifestyle though, where as farming is a soft target, methane is a potent but short lived greenhouse gas and hence can be seen as a 'quick fix'. we tend to talk about climate change in terms of CO2 emissions but methane is different, and a lot depends on the arbitrary figure that we attribute to methane as a co2 equivalent. I also believe that some of the higher figures for CO2 attributed to meat production include the burning of the rain forests, which seems a little harsh when applied to welsh hill lamb for instance, and in some cases even the CO2 that the cows exhale as part of the carbon cycle. so whilst emissions from meat production are an issue, there is an element of the deck being stacked against us.
Why? well people stand to make money i guess, there's money to be made from selling highly processed 'plant based' foods, vegan pizzas, ready meals and expensive processed ersatz meat alternatives will be big money earners, and if people can buy their vegan ready meal in its black plastic tray with cling film cover and cardboard sleeve, they can carry on consuming all the other cheap tat that makes up the modern world safe in the knowledge that they're saving the planet.
There is no quick fix to climate change, if we want to stop it then we need to radically alter our lifestyles, which means consuming less, travelling less, having less stuff, living simpler lives and re connecting with how our food is produced and being prepared to pay a bit more to have it produced properly. The chances are that this isn't going to happen because it's just too hard, so vegan ready meals it is then.
TAFKAT
Well-Known Member
I think your last 2 paragraphs summarise the current situation perfectly. The disconnect from where food, and meat in particular comes from, is a major factor in the whole thing. If you give the ordinary Joe Soap on the street a straight choice between giving up meat or Sky Sports, but tell him if he chooses the former he can still have a kebab that tastes something like a kebab on his way home from watching Man Utd in the pub, there's only going to be one winner. After all, he doesn't really want to kill the cute cartoon character animal personalities that have invaded his living room whilst cunningly disguised as duvet covers for his toddlers.
BasilSeal
Well-Known Member
here's what george monbiot had to say about farilie's book in 2010
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep
/06/meat-production-veganism-deforestation
Monbiot has since retracted his support for fairlie and gone full on fundamentalist vegan, not because he had evidence to demonstrate fairlie was wrong, but more because he didn't like the way his argument for fairlie was often misrepresented to support meat eating per say.
Simplistic black and white arguments always beat complex nuanced ones every time, it seems.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep
/06/meat-production-veganism-deforestation
Monbiot has since retracted his support for fairlie and gone full on fundamentalist vegan, not because he had evidence to demonstrate fairlie was wrong, but more because he didn't like the way his argument for fairlie was often misrepresented to support meat eating per say.
Simplistic black and white arguments always beat complex nuanced ones every time, it seems.
TAFKAT
Well-Known Member
If you could condense that article into a meme, preferably one with Patrick Stewart, you might be on to something. That's the kind of attention span we're up against.
Username
Well-Known Member
Discussion is a thing of the past, partially due to social media. When you're arguing, you're losing.
Short catchy slogans 'make America great again', 'get Brexit done' seems to be the only way to communicate with a majority of people.
TAFKAT
Well-Known Member
"Eat Meat, a dead cow doesn't fart"
Brilliant
Think you should run for PM.
Personally it just made me:curse::curse::curse:
did think it was showing the worst set up's it could find just to prove a point.
But I didn't see a lot of focus on the UK style systems which was a shame, except for the "chicken murderer vet"
should've given the presenter a shot!!!!
fiatagri10090dt
Well-Known Member
farmerjack
Well-Known Member
Anyone that thinks there are too many people in the planet, what are you still doing here? Joking aside it’s more to do with over consumerism rather than too many people, the entire worlds population can fit into the state of Texas and have 10 sq m each, hardly over populated plus the fact that Europe’s population is aging and dropping and third world countries are increasing population.