Back
to SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage
"Eat less meat" advocates Professor Northcott
in The TIMES:
"for the sake of the renewal of a local
ecological sustainable economy".
Why so?
James Irvine
Teviot Scientific, Cultybraggan Farm, Comrie,
Perthshire, Scotland
Filed 30 Sep 07
©www.land-care.org.uk
Sunday 30th Sept 07
Professor Michael Northcott,
Professor of Ethics,
Faculty of Divinity,
Edinburgh University
Dear Professor Northcott
"A harvest fit for a moral climate?"
by Michael Northcott.
The TImes, 29th Sept 07
I read your article in yesterday's
The TIMES with interest, but also with some puzzlement.
After rightly encouraging people
to buy food locally (within 50 miles of its production) you went
on, in the very next phrase, to encourage people "to eat less
meat". By so doing, you wrote:
"more and more citizens in
Britain are showing the way to a renewal of local - and therefore
ecologically sustainable - economy"
How may I ask does encouraging the citizens of
Britain to eat less meet show the way to a renewal of a local ecologically
sustainable economy?
Surely you must be aware that some 85% of the
land in Scotland is not suitable for the large scale cereal production
that you so despise, and is very unlikely ever to be so. And that
also goes for good chunks of England and Wales.
Surely you must be aware that livestock farming
in these areas adds enormously to the maintenance of the environment
in ecological, economic and social terms. Indeed, the threatened
demise of livestock farming in Scotland - largely due to the greed
of supermarkets - is recognised as a major hazard to the ecological
maintenance of much of Scotland's uplands. Covering the land with
trees is emphatically not the answer.
Surely your argument should have been to encourage
the eating of meat that is locally produced, rather than advocating
that British people should eat less meat. Surely your argument should
have been to encourage those who prefer to buy cheap meat from abroad
to make sure that livestock farming in these countries achieve the
welfare and health standards insisted upon by the authorities in
this country. You could have gone further and supported the imposition
of a ban on the import of meat products that do not come up to those
standards.
Surely your argument should have been to encourage
the British government authorities to invest in animal health and
welfare, rather than impose cutbacks that have lead to the poor
maintenance of the biosecurity facilities in their own establishment
at Pirbright, which in turn lead to the crippling effects of the
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak.
Just to advocate "eat less meat" seems
to be counterproductive in trying to cope with Scotland's escalating
problem of how to look after its environment, as the rural areas
become devoid of persons with the skills, honed over generations,
of caring for the countryside.
I would be grateful for your comments.
Yours sincerely
Dr James Irvine FRSE
Editor: www.land-care.org.uk
E: james.irvine@zen.co.uk
Teviot Scientific, Cultybraggan Farm, Comrie, Perthshire, Scotland
©www.land-care.org.uk
|
