Fordyce Maxwell: Time to tackle those who butcher the facts

One lesson to learn when trying to interpret statistics is that a big percentage increase in a small number is still a small number.

Most of us rely on the professionals to supply our meat needs. Picture: Robert Perry

That means recent reports about a big increase in the number of vegetarians and vegans in Britain is not yet bad news for livestock farmers, because the vast majority of the population still like to eat meat and dairy products.

But it does not mean that meat and dairy producers can stop worrying about their future market. Some anti-meat and dairy campaigners who seem to believe that animals not only feel pain like humans but think like humans are well-funded and their attacks are virulent.

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Go Vegan World’s recent claim that milk production is inhumane, using emotive language about bloodied cows being separated from their calves at birth, equating that with babies being wrenched from human mothers, is an example.

Richard Dawkins, a scientist and best-selling author never knowingly separated from a chance of publicity, equating livestock being transported to slaughterhouses with Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust, is another example.

Unfortunately, there is always an audience for anecdote masquerading as data, for emotion against facts, for anthropomorphism against common sense. And it is the sort of emotional drama that vegan, vegetarian and nutritional campaigners pump out that farmers find hard to argue against by plaintively insisting that they care for their animals with compassion, indeed affection, and that humans are carnivores who need a balanced diet that includes meat.

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There are also the so-called flexitarians to contend with who are part-time vegetarian or vegan not from conviction but because it fits in better with their lifestyle, particularly during a busy working week. Eating meat, which usually needs more and longer preparation, is left for a weekend treat. The net effect is lower sales of meat.

There is yet another minor trend, although one that livestock farmers don’t need to worry about too much – those meat-eaters who insist that they will only eat animals they have either reared or killed themselves.

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Louise Gray, a freelance writer, managed to get a book out of her efforts to do that for at least a year, and I wrote an article about it a few months ago. She killed rather than reared and I found it interesting but questioned how many people were able to do the same. Gamekeepers, farmers and poachers have the opportunity, but how many more?

The rear-your-own meat potential, as advocated by Times journalist Alice Thomson, must be even smaller. Her winter’s supply of ham and sausages is at present trotting round woods above her house in Devon as a rare breed of pig trio she has named Oak, Elm and Ash. The children love them apparently. She also has chickens and goats that are practically members of the family.

Call me Mr Picky, but I can’t see the average flat, high-rise or even terraced house dweller being able to do the same even if they could afford to.

Instead most of us will continue to rely for our meat supply on the professionals – the farmers who breed and rear the animals, the slaughterhouses that kill and process and the butchers and supermarkets who retail it.

This is not a process without flaws. With millions of chickens, pigs, sheep and cattle slaughtered annually there are going to be welfare casualties at every stage while the animals are alive, and, as the horsemeat and burger adulteration scams showed, potential for criminality.

There are also many processed meat products I wouldn’t eat and hope that other moderately-discerning carnivores wouldn’t touch either. And we could soon have trade deals with, say, the US that will bring the possibility of chickens dipped through chlorine and beef from cattle treated with hormones.

As consumers, what we have to look for is quality assured meat that we can afford. The challenge for farmers and the meat trade is to provide that and also produce convincing arguments against the propaganda of over-enthusiastic vegans and vegetarians.

They are entitled to their wheat, potato and coconut oil burgers and expensive and environmentally-unfriendly almond milk; they are not entitled to distort the facts.

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