The Fat of the Lambs

Half a million lambs will be slaughtered but not eaten as a consequence of the latest outbreak of foot and mouth (http://www.guardian.co.uk/animalrights/story/0,,2201110,00.html) Is this a moral, ecological or economic disaster?


In an attempt to increase the 'efficiency' of this process some of the animals' fat will apparently be rendered into biofuel. It is a wonder to me that anybody has the machinery standing idle to perform such a grisly task. Surely the recyclers of used chip fat cannot turn their skills to rapidly towards the unwanted carcases of animals formerly destined for dinner tables?


The anguish over the 'cull' (aka kill) of animals during the first round of foot-and-mouth was always a mystery to me. Why such an outcry over the deaths of animals bred to be killed and eaten? Where did this mawkish sentimentality come from when those who displayed it were not concerned about tucking into to roast lamb and all the trimmings of a Sunday lunchtime?



Aside from this parade of phoney morality there are some genuine ethical issues raised by this whole debate. First, whether it is ever acceptable to eat the flesh of an animal. I am happy to do that when I know the animals have enjoyed respected during their lives; in the case of my own meat I have known the animals by name and been able to interact with them. Counter-intuitively this makes it easier to eat them rather than harder.


Other difficult questions--as yet unresolved to my satisfaction--revolve around the question of whether a wholly vegetarian lifestyle is more ecologically sustainable. I have not yet seen convincing evidence that the UK could be self-sufficient in food grown without animal or oil-based fertiliser. Too many vegans in the UK today are forced to eat a large range of imported foods, especially beans and pulses.


Then there are the double standards of those who are vegetarian and continue to eat dairy, when the dairy industry is closely tied to the meat industry, since male calves can only be put into the food chain or destroyed (http://www.vegaresearch.org/foodnut_vegani_going.asp).


It seems to me that the central economic problem we face here is the setting of all these questions within an intellectual framework dominated by market and profit. The 'wasteful' slaughter of cattle and sheep during a foot-and-mouth outbreak is entirely market-driven. Vaccinated animals are not acceptable for the export trade, while animals that have survived foot-and-mouth (as most do) will weigh less and therefore generate less profit for the cost of raising them. Since they offer no threat to human health, they could otherwise pass into the food chain as they do in other countries.


In a similar way the Welsh and Scottish hill-farmers are involved in production on an industrial scale that cannot allow for flexibility in terms of the quality of product (slightly older sheep) or when it reaches the market. No doubt the lamb that will be produced over the next few weeks would be welcome to many hungry mouths in this country and abroad. But this would be to 'distort the market'. Similar arguments were made during the Irish potato famine when oats were being exported to feed horses in the UK while Irish people starved.


The story offers yet more reasons why we should explore the ethical underpinnings of the market within which food is produced, which was always a social construct and therefore open to a different system of values and to a radical reconstruction in line with the general welfare, rather than the profit margins of the large-scale businesses who have created the dubious and far-from-free market we operate within today. Tweet

Shit: We're All in it Together!

Amongst many excellent regular events that take place in Stroud are the coffee-house discussions, where, over biodynamic refreshments, we put the world to rights. The quality of the presentations is excellent and for people who think they know it all already (or is that just me?), it is amazing how much you learn every month.

This month's theme was water. The presentations were wide-ranging: water as a cause of war, a source of disease, a fascinating part of our local landscape. The most important message was that 'Water is an energy issue'. Some 5% of world energy is used in pumping our water . . . and sewage.

You can't talk water, it seems, without also talking dirty. We learned how it is fairly recently that we have used water as profligately as we do now, largely as a channel for taking our wastes out of sight and out of smelling distance, thus effectively removing them from our minds. But not from the environment, of course. For they remain just a short distance from us, in rivers and seas, decomposing and providing a friendly home to bacteria and viruses.

Yet just as I have had to learn on the farm that dung is our friend, so can we form a much closer relationship with our wastes. It emerged that many who were at the discussion already proudly fill piss-pots which they use as compost activators. Human 'solid waste' still seems hedged around with taboos, as I have felt impelled to head it round with quotation marks. It can provide excellent fertiliser when treated suitably.

The solutions to the problem of water and waste are very local indeed. The model appears to be to turn your home into a water recycling unit. By taking the rainwater from the roof and the barely soiled water pumped to your home and circulating them you can minimise the need to bring water in and send sewage out.

Why aren't more people doing this? The pressure of the market and of making profits appears to be the culprit again. It is at the points that water enters and leaves the home that profits can be made, hence the political pressure to keep us all tied into a vast, bureaucratic water system rather than playing our role as part of Nature's water cycle.

So, a lot was learned, although the content of the learning was perhaps something we already knew. The economic system Marx called capitalism is just not a very good way of organising things, and taking more responsibility and doing things on a smaller scale can usually work better. A simple, but important message that is being relearned through various more or less savoury media.

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