A
Ah, barbecue season. When warm
weather and clear skies beckon us
outdoors, there are few things we
love more than firing up the barbie.
Burgers, steaks and snags are the
main event. Serve them within a
fresh bread roll with some grilled
onions and a bit of salad, and the
average Aussie is in a place of
great contentment.
“No one stands around a zucchini
on a spit saying how delicious it is,
but if you put a big chunk of meat
over an open fire, people are pretty
keen to get a taste of it,” says chef
and ‘gourmet farmer’ Matthew
Evans, owner of Fat Pig Farm. “We
do have a culture that sort of puts
meat on a pedestal. We do certainly
have a strong barbecue culture, and
at the centre of that is often big cuts
of meat, often red meat. But I think
that’s in the process of change.”
Australians currently consume
the largest amount of meat (beef,
veal, pork, chicken and lamb) per
capita in the world – to the tune of
90 kilograms per person per year
according to 2015 stats from the
United Nations. However, as Evans
says, meat-moderating diet trends
are on the rise. According to Roy
Morgan research, the number of
Australians who consider themselves
completely or almost vegetarian
has risen by a small but significant
1.5 per cent since 2012. And a
research study on vegetariasim by the
Buchanan Group found that around
3.9 million Australians are looking to
cut back on their meat intake, with
around 22 per cent of this number
considering themselves ‘f lexitarians’,
a kind of f lexible vegetarian diet
that makes room for meat as a
‘sometimes food’.
“We are big meat eaters, and we
don’t need to eat that much meat,”
Evans says. “As a nation and globally
we have to recognise that meat
production and consumption has
impacts, and we have to moderatethose. It doesn’t
mean you don’t get
to eat well, it doesn’t
mean you have to
give up meat, but
it might mean that
you need to moderate
it somewhat.”The impacts of
meat-eating
“The UN Food and
Agriculture Organization
estimates that livestock production
is responsible for 18 per cent
of greenhouse gas emissions,
which accounts for more than
the global transport sector,” says
Cassie Duncan, the co-founder of
Sustainable Table, a not-for-profit
organisation providing education
on ethical eating. “As a conscious
consumer and someone who cares
about the environment, it is a
natural step to question the ethics
and environmental impact of eating
meat.” According to Duncan,
methane (a natural by-product of
cattle and sheep farming) has 25
times the global warming effect of
CO2 emissions, and it is estimated
that beef and sheep account for
around 80 per cent of Australia’s
agricultural emissions.
The extent of meat’s
environmental impact is, of course,
inherently tied back to the demand
for meat. And demand has increased
significantly over the past decade.
“The only reason someone has 60 or
70 thousand chickens in their shed
is not for their own consumption,
but for everyone else’s consumption,”
says Evans. “So the people that eat
that meat should be involved in the
conversation about how that meat
is raised.”
According to Duncan, the
demand for meat has led to the
factory farming of over 500 million
animals annually. “Sometimes in
awful conditions, just to meet ourdemand for cheap meat,” Duncan
says. “At present, you can purchase
a whole chook, a once living animal,
for under 10 dollars. This scale of
consumption obviously leads to
animal rights abuses at every turn.”
Excessive meat consumption has
also been linked to chronic illness,
such as obesity, heart disease and
type 2 diabetes. Seed & Kilter
dietitian Sanchia Parker says, “There
are studies showing that those
following a vegetarian diet have a
lower prevalence of a number of
diseases such as obesity, coronary
heart disease, hypertension and diet-
related cancers, and generally live
longer than omnivores.”Is it enough to be ‘flexible’?
Long story short: yes.
Meat is a complete protein,
meaning that it contains all the
amino acids that our body can’t
make on it’s own (i.e. if we don’t
eat these amino acids, we become
malnourished). There are plant-based
complete proteins too (such as soy,
quinoa and chia seeds), and ways to
create complete protein meals from
plant-based foods (known as foodAS A CONSCIOUS CONSUMER
AND SOMEONE WHO CARES
ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT,
IT IS A NATURAL STEP TO
QUESTION THE ETHICS AND
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
OF EATING MEAT.