The greens are sadly right: we need to eat less meat to save the planet

The Butcher's Shop by Ravilious, Eric
The Butcher's Shop by Ravilious, Eric

One of the many true things that no politician can say to the electorate is: “You need to eat less meat.” Interfering in what people eat is always politically dangerous; but the British – once proudly nicknamed Les Rosbifs – are particularly irascible defenders of our right to animal flesh.

Which is why, at COP29 this week, Keir Starmer didn’t mention meat at all. The PM pledged to further significantly cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions – a feat the Climate Change Committee has said will only be possible if we reduce our meat consumption. But Starmer insisted it could be done without “telling people how to live their lives”. And perhaps it can.

The reason meat is so environmentally damaging is that it is a hopelessly inefficient source of nutrition. It means funnelling one kind of food (plants) into an animal to produce another kind of food (meat, dairy or eggs). Overall, for every 100 calories you put into a livestock animal, you get 17 calories out.

This means that – as well as producing around 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, largely in the form of methane burps – livestock farming takes up a wildly disproportionate share of the Earth’s resources. It uses 80 per cent of the world’s farmland, and 30 per cent of all the fresh water on Earth. It pollutes rivers, denudes wild habitats and is driving many of our most beloved wild species to extinction.

It goes without saying that the less meat and dairy you eat, the lighter your environmental footprint. Personal responsibility is a wonderful thing. But the consumer is not the only agent of change; more often, in fact, the consumer responds to technological changes that happen behind the scenes. For example, fifty years ago the British ate four times more beef than chicken. But the invention of factory farming made chickens much cheaper to rear than cows. So now the British eat twice as much chicken as beef.

The global food system is like a giant vending machine: we only see what’s on the illuminated shelves, and none of the complex machinery whirring in the back. When you hear the word “dairy”, for example, you probably visualise a bottle of fresh milk, ready for your cereal. But 50 per cent of the global dairy trade consists of powdered milk. Most of that is used in manufacturing processed foods, such as confectionery, ready meals, sausages and even crisps.

Likewise, approximately 20 per cent of global egg production goes into making processed food. And while the world gets through around 350 million tonnes of animal carcasses every year, only 40-50 per cent of that is consumed as fresh meat for home cooking: the Sunday roast of our nostalgic imaginings. The other half is used for packaged snacks, ready meals, hospitality, and pet food.

In other words, a large proportion of the animals we rear for food (often in unspeakably cruel conditions) end up as cheap snacks. But here’s the good news: technology may soon be able to fix this. It is now possible to genetically engineer yeast to grow into any form of protein cell. Companies in Israel, the US and Canada are using precision fermentation to conjure, literally from thin air, powdered milk and egg that is indistinguishable from the real thing, and perfect for manufacturing.

The consumer won’t care, as long as the final product is cheap and tasty. And real meat can be saved for special occasions – just as it was for every previous generation.