The River Cottage Meat Book: For Carnivores with a Conscience
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 08.11.07
We’ve looked at the huge climate impact of meat, and cattle farming in particular, before. It’s even lead to some passionate debate over on our forums as to whether vegans in Hummers are greener than meat-eaters in hybrids. But what's a treehugger to do if they are not ready to give up meat completely? The first step might be to look at our thoughts for making meat go further (meat reductionism, as one commenter calls it). The second step might be to get hold of The River Cottage Meat Book by UK-based TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
The author is a long-time advocate of natural, sustainable farming, and has made a career our of TV shows charting his own experiences with wild foods, and with small holding. His efforts have spurned a cottage industry named, appropriately enough, River Cottage, providing courses and events focused on all aspects of traditional, sustainable food production. The book itself is perhaps the only meat-based recipe book that we have seen to open with a full page photographic study of how a cow is slaughtered (one of Hugh’s own herd), and a good 50 pages of discussion on the rights and wrongs of eating meat, as well as ways to choose good meat, should you decide to do so. This extract from the introduction gives some indication of the seriousness with which the author treats his subject:
“It seems obvious to me that the morality of meat eating lies in the factual details of our relationships with the animals that we kill for food. It is what we do to them that counts. There is the simple fact that we plan and carry out their slaughter. And, in the case of farmed animals, there are more complex interactions through which we manage and control almost every aspect of their lives from birth to death. From where do we draw the moral authority to bring about their deaths? And what is the moral status of the means and methods we use to run their lives?”
Aside from the lengthy treatise on animal rights and meat eating, and the authors viewpoint on ‘the limits of vegetarianism’, the book is also absolutely packed with serious advice on which cuts of meat to get, what environmental and animal rights issues are associated with what types of meat, and there are, of course, hundreds of delicious recipes. Importantly, Fearnley-Whittingstall includes sections on meat thrift, and generally making the best use of all parts of any animal that is slaughtered – surely a central part of sustainable meat eating. Unfortunately, there is one draw back. Considering the current hyper-awareness of climate change, there seems to be very little discussion of the link between livestock rearing and greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, for anyone who is unwilling to give up meat, but wanting to make more sustainable, humane choices in their consumption patterns, this book is an invaluable guide. Maybe just try not to eat the ‘Roast Beef – Full Monty’ on page 232 every week! ::River Cottage:: via site visit::
Excellent article, though I think the climate impact of livestock is overstated. Anytime one starts treading into indirect impacts, all of a sudden the total far exceeds 100%.
Pet causes abound, from animal welfare, to social justice, and these end up compelling people with those agendas to make an accoutning of everything that even remotely touches that which they're most concerned about. Animal welfare folks put the impact of livestock on the climate at 18% or more, and anti-aviation (read: social justice and nimby people) put aviation at 16 to 20% of the climate problem. All of a sudden two things which probably account for 7% of direct emissions balloons into 40%.
Next thing, the people who are nuclear advocates are going to overstate what coal does, bicycle and electic vehicle lovers will speak of all the myriad indirect climate impacts of cars, and so on, and at the end of the day each pet concern is portrayed as the biggest problem there is and it simply doesn't add up to 100%.
That's why it's important to first be mindful of what we know and what we can actually directly attribute to things. Otherwise, those out there who don't have endless amounts of time and energy to think about and study these issues are going to go away uttely confused about what the pecking order is for action priorities.
A small coda, please expect to have this comment section flooded by meat-haters who are going to shrilly tell you how utterly evil they think you are for being reasonable enough to even entertain the fact that people are going to keep eating meat and we need to be realistic about how to deal with that as best as possible.
I say just catch some Hummer drivers and fry them after putting some of that Chinese formaldehyde in them that goes in some current Chinese foods anyway. Good meat. Saves lots of CO2 from the environment. Ethical disposal for all that yet to be used formaldehyde in Chinese food. Of course, I didn't mean for us to be eating these fried Hummer drivers, just the cows that eat them. :-)
I get my cow from a local farmer. He grows the cow free range, on a healthy diet of what grows on the land. He uses no steroids or antibiotics or other junk.
When he has a cow to sell, he drives about 15-20 miles to the butcher. When the cow is ready I got meat. And I go in with the cow with 2 or sometimes 3 other people. I drive about 140 miles round trip to get the meat, which isn't a big deal cause I plan around it. For instance my fiance has to get some dental work done and her dentist is back home where the butcher is. She gets some teeth fixed, visits the folks, gets some meat, and comes back home.
The environmental impact of this process is much less. Which is why I contend it's not the meat that is non-environmentally friendly, but we as people and the methods we use. If more people went to local farmers for meat like I do, more farmers would raise cattle this way, and we could get away from mass production methods that are not environmentally sound.
It is about time that TH got around to recognizing Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall! He is not only the author of the Meat Book but also of several other seasonal cookbooks - especially The River Cottage Year.
I have owned this book since shortly after it came out in 2004 and regularly use his recipes - chapter 15 (on Meat Thift) is one of my favorites (it includes a nice Chilli Con Carne recipe that will use up any leftover minced beef -or- even better Brawn, made with a whole pig's head).
To further quote Hugh:
"Think about the meat that you eat. Is it good enough? Good enough to bring you pleasure every time you eat it? Could it, should it, be better? Are you among the millions of consumers putting pressure on farmers to produce mountains of cheap meat of dubious quality, by dubious means? Perhaps it would make sense to spend a little more on it, a little less often. Or to buy cheaper cuts of better meat."
While I hope this book helps people reduce the harm that meat eating can cause to their body, the environment, and animals... I also hope it doesn't leave folks believing that because they are now "less harmful" they are fully "ethical", "healthy", or "sustainable".
The first Anonymous post overlooks that indirect emissions *must* be part of an estimate for climate impacts from the meat industry. Anytime these estimates are done, the central question being asked is, "If I want to make [x] lbs of meat, what do I need?" It is from this question that one can identify all kinds of inputs, such as gallons of water, pounds of feed, acres of land, and so on down the line. In the case of meat, one has to consider the indirect impacts as well -- what materials do you need to grow that much feed? It is precisely on this point where the climate impacts of the meat industry balloon, because the amount of water, fertilizer, fuel for tillage, etc. that goes into one pound of meat is many times greater than what would be used to make one pound of bread.
Anonymous is correct, however, that people with pet causes do a great disservice if they misrepresent facts for their own interests (for instance I know that the aviation figure mentioned in Anon's post is way too high). So when in doubt, look at the facts presented by a more balanced source like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the US Department of Energy.
JoshA is clearly misguided. The environmental impact of vegetarianism or veganism en masse would be catastrophic to the UK. For starters, the hedgerows would have to go - farming arable crops requires huge machines, which need bigger fields to turn around in. Not to mention the CO2 they would pump out. So the thousands of species that rely on the hedgerows would be extinct overnight. Next to go would be the woodlands, which exist only for the benefit of pheasants. Essentially, outside of the towns the UK would be a vast potato prairie with no trees or hedgerows (and consequently no wildlife) to speak of.