An Argument With A Vegetarian

“So, have you always been vegetarian?” Is a question that I am often asked. The answer is no. No, my parents were not vegetarian, no I wasn’t spoon fed Quorn from age 1, with ‘Meat Is Murder’ spinning on the record player. In short, people are often confounded when I explain that my Vegetarianism is a choice. This is tied in with a strongly held belief that meat-eaters and Vegetarians are entirely different breeds, set in early childhood and only diverted from in the case of an occasional fad or that one bacon sandwich (we’ve all been there).

So I have a few questions to go through here. Why do meat eaters take offence to my decision to stop eating meat as an adult? Why is meat eating so ingrained in our national psyche? And why do people believe that they just couldn’t give up meat.

When you reject meat eating, you reject the accepted ‘Alpha’ or mainstream choice. In the least hipster way possible of being ‘not mainstream’, of course. So, why do humans conform? As Breckler, Olson, & Wiggins wrote- “Conformity is the most general concept and refers to any change in behaviour caused by another person or group; the individual acted in some way because of influence from others.” However, this only applies to the social behaviour of eating meat, and not the personal beliefs which some people hold regarding meat- ”Note that conformity is limited to changes in behaviour caused by other people; it does not refer to effects of other people on internal concepts like attitudes or beliefs.” (Breckler, Olson, & Wiggins, Social Psychology Alive, 2006). So for this to work, Meat Eating has to be the Alpha behaviour (which, if you’ve ever seen men order competitively large steaks at a restaurant, you might agree it is).

“Is it ’cause of moral reasons, or do you just not like meat?” Is the typical follow up question. For me, it is for ‘moral’ reasons, whatever that means, at least I know I stopped eating meat around the time my conscience started speaking up. This is when the conversation teeters dangerously on the precipice of becoming a sermon, at least in the ears of the questioner. People seem incapable of listening to one persons ‘moral’ choice without hearing it as judgement on their own actions. This is despite the fact that they have asked 2 minutes previously “What about eating meat do you disagree with?” Or some variant of that. *Sigh*.

So, my sensitivity to animal slaughter aside, are there any logical reasons to be a Veggie? Well, there’s health. The American Dietetic Association reported that – “appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases” (Journal of the American Dietetic Association, July 2009). Meat eaters love to talk about the missing protein and other nutrients in a Vegetarian diet, as if all Vegetarians are pale waifs existing on a lettuce leaf a day. While meat is indeed packed with protein, this can be easily substituted for things such as Lentils, which are protein rich, and contain more iron, magnesium, and potassium than the same quantity of beef.

Other reasons might be the environment- it takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of beef protein- compared to just 1 calorie for each calorie of soy beans. Or, more selfishly, your pocket- being a Vegetarian is a whole load cheaper. Whenever I eat out with friends, their steaks or whatever meat dish will typically cost a tenner or more- something a restaurant wouldn’t dare charge for the butter nut squash burger or whatever it may be, which usually comes in around £7.50. Win Win!

So that’s the argument anyway, and without me mentioning any of the reasons I am actually Vegetarian (that would be my ‘airy-fairy’, moral reasons). Hopefully this will do something to shift the perceptions of those obstinate people who counter my arguments with simply- “I just couldn’t give up meat. I love it too much!” Well, bacon sandwiches used to be my precursor to a great day, Roast Chicken used to be my Sunday special, and bangers and mash was a delicious dinner. And I can confirm that it is entirely possible, if you have the inclination, to give up something in spite of your taste buds. So next time someone asks me “Why on earth would you give up meat?!”-Rather than repeating my tried and tested arguments, I might just tell them to read this article.

How Farming Became A Battery Operated Economy

Our Economy started with Factory Farming. It all began when a chicken farmer called Anthony Fisher went to New York and met right wing economist ‘Baldy’ Harper. Harper introduced Fisher to the idea of Factory farming his chickens, already an established method in the US. (So the story goes, a farmers wife was delivered an excess of around 200 chickens sometime in the 1920s. The chickens spent the winter in her house and all survived. It was the first evidence that chickens could be farmed indoors on a mass scale.) Fisher went on to create Britain’s first Battery Farm, and his company Buxted Chickens was a success. Fisher used the profits to found the Institute of Economic Affairs, a Free Market think tank which Margaret Thatcher said “created a climate of opinion which made our victory possible.” So there you have it, an economy founded on chicken farming. Who’d have thought it?

Research Factory Farms and you will drown in a barrel of pathos, force feeding, and pollution. So finding straight economic figures for this article has been tricky. Nevertheless, I will try to keep this free from a welfare angle and just focus on one question. What does the economy of Factory Farming really look like?

Origins

Factory Farming, we often forget, has only existed in the UK for around 60 years. After the Second World War a lot of impetus was put into the UK being self sufficient. Incentives lead to farmers creating bigger, consolidated farms, and higher output expectation lead to factory farming being adopted across the board to meet demand.

Effects On Local Farming Communities

Factory Farms tend to be owned by big companies and usually buy machinery and other supplies from conglomerates their own size. A University of Minnesota study compared the local expenditures of small and large farms. It found that farms with gross incomes of over $900,000 spent under 20 percent of total expenditure in their local community. In contrast, smaller farms with gross incomes of less than $100,000 made 95% of expenditures locally. It is worth considering this wider economic effect when calculating the cost of Factory Farms.

The True Price of Higher Living Standards

The go to rhetoric of the Intensive Farming Industry is that they are feeding the people, and at a low cost. How heroic. However, there are a lot of hidden costs equated with bigger farms that use more mechanised farming methods, despite their apparent efficiency. Monoculture Farms produce more food per worker, which shows efficiency in some respects. However sustainable farms produce more food per acre. This means that sustainable farms create more jobs and more food. But what’s the cost?

The answer is interesting. A major study by Jonasson & Andersson, (1997) showed that giving pigs more space led to more use-able food being created, and less cost on veterinary bills. More recent studies are suggesting the same thing, such as an Exeter University sustainable agriculture study of 9 million farms showed it increased productivity by an average of 93%. In fact, when assessing the most productive way to introduce farming to Africa, a UN report found that small, sustainable farms were best. So why do we still cling to factory farms in the UK?

The cost difference isn’t even as large as it portrayed by the shelf prices. To get down to numbers, a 2002 study found that a Free Range egg cost just 1.54p more than a battery egg. This equates to £2.51 per person per year. So long as the consumer, and not the farmer, is willing to pay the difference, perhaps a time has come when we no longer need Intensive Farms? It may be time to embrace other alternatives, improving the quality of the meat, the productivity of the land, and the deal for smaller farmers.