Veggie Carpetbagging

I have no problem with people choosing to be vegetarian. Indeed, one I know does so because he takes the view that he is not prepared to kill his own food. Not eating meat is, to him, the ethical solution. Which is fine. I do choose to eat meat even though I have not killed it. Which is also fine. We get along just dandy. He doesn’t judge me and I don’t judge him.

Unfortunately, the wider veggies do and once again we are regaled with the usual doom, gloom and scare stories.

People in Britain should eat meat less often, in order to help ease the food crises in the developing world, an influential committee of MPs has urged.

I’d like to do some urging of my own, but it would be less than polite if I did. MPs are notorious at poking about in other peoples’ lives and it is becoming increasingly tedious. One solution to food crises in the developing world would be to line up the kleptomaniac despots that run them (and arse rape the populations’ wealth) and shoot them all. Remember Zimbabwe? A country that farmed very efficiently –  until Mugabe, that is. Zimbawe’s problem is of Zimbabwe’s making. It is nothing to do with how much meat westerners eat.

Another solution would be to stop trying to farm land that is useless for farming and move somewhere where it is more conducive. Another would be to stop pouring aid into these countries and allow them to trade effectively on the open market –  that, of course, would mean removing regressive trade barriers.

All of which are options we should be exploring before we start lecturing whitey on his diet.

It could also help to mitigate the rampant food price inflation that has seen the cost of staple foods in the UK rise by close to one-third in the last five years.

As opposed to those very same MPs fucking up the economy, that is…

The massive increase in meat consumption in rich countries in recent decades has led to spikes in the price of grain, used for animal feed, as well as leading to widespread deforestation and pressure on agricultural land, and has contributed to the obesity epidemic. By avoiding meat even for a day or two each week, people could help to ease some of these pressures.

This bullshit almost fisks itself. There is no obesity epidemic. Some people are fat. Most are not. And don’t forget about the deforestation that took place to plant bio-fuels… Ahem…

Also bear in mind that efficient use of land will depend upon its location. If you have a hill farm in the highlands of Scotland or on a Welsh hill, for example, raising cattle or sheep will be more efficient than trying to grow grain.

The international development select committee said that the increase in meat eating was only one of many factors underlying the global food crises that have afflicted the developing world twice in the last five years, in 2008 and 2011, but going vegetarian even for just a few meals a week is something that most people could manage easily, and with positive health impacts. They called on the government to start a public health campaign to encourage people to change their behaviour.

And that is their solution. It is always their solution –  spend more of our money. This time, haranguing us to eat less meat. I don’t need a public information film. I will eat precisely what I choose to eat precisely when I feel like it and the committee of MPs can stuff their humus where the sun don’t shine.

I had the misfortune to try eating humus in a sandwich recently as a consequence of a catering error. Jeebus what godawful muck. I got a few bites into it and threw the rest of the foul concoction in the bin. How’s that for food waste?