From what I have seen Meat Free Mondays has caused more discussion in the vegetarian and vegan world rather than where it matters with us omnivores and unfortunately the message they are getting is more than likely putting them off.
So the concept of meat free Mondays - could we do with a little less meat in our diet? I would say yes, we could. With the obesity rate in this country on the up then we need to get smarter with our diet and reduce damaging intensive farming. This does not mean that Meat Free Monday leads to a meat free diet. The point about meat free Monday, in my mind as an omnivore is that it is exactly that. Its not a transition point from being a meat eater to a vegetarian, it’s a choice that on one or two days a week you chose not to eat meat.
However from the conversations on the guardian and on the facebook group about meat free Monday it seems that all the vegetarians and vegans involved in the discussion think that people should move to a meat free diet. The majority of comments, ranging from the tame to the abusive, are all about meat free diets. I have retorted with my own comment that they should create their own campaign and facebook group called meat free week/life and leave the argument for Meat Free Monday to continue on a discussion about eating less meat.
It would be interesting to see if meat free Monday really got anyone to change their diet. My thought is that hopefully it will just start a mind shift and people are starting their journey caring about what they eat and the impacts it has on the world around us. It is more realistic to get the whole world to alter their diet and reduce their consumption than get a minority convert to vegetarianism or veganism.
Currently I am campaigning with Birmingham Friends of the Earth about fixing the food chain, and it’s a far from perfect world out there. However, we do not want to attack the farmers, but help them to move to planet friendly farming.
The focus of the campaign is on soya being imported from South America that is being fed to our livestock in the country and in South America, guess what? They are ripping up the rainforest to plant soya. So how can we help? By getting the government to enable our farmers to grow their own feed for their animals. There is 700 million EU subsidies going into intensive farming and this could be invested with our farmers to help them grow and feed their own animals. This would be better for the farmers and better for our food security.
So going back to meat free Mondays, an example I have been given where this has been working is where a school changed to have one day a week meat free. Then for the other days of the weeks they were able to invest in organic meat or fish. Meat Free Monday is all about making smarter choices and its not about having a go at the UK farmers, which quite frankly have enough to worry about.
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One other good thing that you touched on, is that by having a day or two meat free in the week you'd save a bit of money. We all know that meat that is produced to higher environmental and welfare standards and pays the farmer a fair price tends to cost a little more, and so this money saved in turn could be used to buy higher quality more sustainable meat for the rest of the week. The school example you give shows this in practice, and also fits in with Jamie Oliver's better school dinners campaign rather well - feeding our children better quality meat, but a bit less would help balance out those school dinner budgets.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of animal welfare also comes into play with this, and I'll mention another celebrity chef, Hugh Fernley Whittingstall and his Chicken Run campaign, which is seeking all chicken to be free range. Much is made of the need for cheap meat for those on lower incomes (mostly by a few supermarkets), but again the principle of giving meat a miss for a day or two a week would balance the books and allow the purchase of better quality meat for the remainder of the week.
And as for the farmers, this would also have at least a balancing economic effect, as less meat may well be being purchased, but this would be of a higher welfare, higher environmental and higher quality standard, and thus attract a higher price. We move from the low quality pile it high and flog it cheap model, to the high quality added value model.
Also as stated, ultimately the goal is also to raise people's awareness of where their food comes from, how it's produced and what impacts it has. If we can get people interested in this through Meat Free Monday, then they will hopefully switch to meat that has been raised in a more ethical and sustainable manner, they'll know which farm it came, and they'll know that the farmer received a fair and sustainable price for the quality product they have produced.
So, eat less but better meat that you can be sure of would be my message for Meat Free Monday. Lets build a sustainable, viable, fair and quality model for our food production, and get out of the supermarket's race for the bottom.
Ben Mabbett