Meat, we are told, is bad for the planet. It causes global warming, destroys forests, diverts substantial proportions of the world's grain for feed, all to produce meat which only wealthy Westerners can afford. The iniquity of the situation led George Monbiot to declare in 2002 that "Veganism is the only ethical response to what is arguably the world's most urgent social justice issue." Monbiot later recanted but, since then, we are told with increasing regularity that to save the planet we must radically reduce our consumption of meat. In the face of what seems to be universal agreement on the sins of meat eating, is there really a green argument for meat? I think there is, and I think we should be talking about it. Not only is the public discourse heavily one-sided, but the anti-meat message risks destroying the very environment it claims to be protecting.
Let's start with one of the most repeated statistics used to argue for reduced meat consumption: the claim that 100,000 litres of water are required to produce each kilo of beef - which is a staggering 1000 times more than what is needed to produce a single kilo of wheat. With magazines such as New Scientist uncritically quoting this figure, it is not surprising that it has circulated so widely. Taken at face value, this estimate is shocking and may on its own be responsible for switching tens of thousands of people away from eating meat.
Comment: The author's observations and conclusions have been confirmed by numerous developments: