Leading the witness

The concerns around good (human) nutrition, climate change and sustainability are starting to come together, creating what Prof John Beddington – the Government’s chief scientific adviser – calls the ‘perfect storm’, where the need to produce more food for the increasing global population coincides with the time when readily available fossil fuel is running out and climate change is an even bigger challenge for agriculture. The UK government has published a paper on food strategy which highlights the same basic concerns but from a UK perspective.

This concern and analysis is very sensible and needs to be done. The danger, however, is that overly simplistic conclusions can be drawn. The assertion that not eating meat will solve all of these problems is an example of this. This is patently not true when you consider the land resource used for ruminant meat production is, in the main, not really fit for much else in the food producing stakes!

Unfortunately, the CBBC programme Gastronuts has fallen into this trap, and is an example of how easy it is to draw half a conclusion from half a story, leading them to present a skewed view to a suggestible audience. Part of a (recently repeated) episode of this programme set about demonising beef by pointing out how much methane cows make and how much water is used to produce a burger, without taking anything else into consideration, such as the land resource needed for instance. (On the water use question there was no differentiation between rain water and piped water which is quite crucial to the argument. EBLEX is running a project on that which will report in November 2010).

After being urged to taste vegetarian versions of dishes like spaghetti Bolognese alongside their more traditional meat counterparts, with the clear aim of demonstrating how good meat substitutes can be, a group of children was then taken to a top London vegetarian restaurant to show them how tasty dishes with no meat content are. At this point it was difficult not to feel that a slant was being put on proceedings.

Later on, a nutritionist did explain that humans are designed to eat meat and the children examined a pig digestive system to help their understanding – as well as considering the diet of an omnivorous monkey. There was, however, little about what a fantastic nutritional package meat offers, and the fact that the Government advocates it as part of the balanced plate approach to a healthy diet was completely missed out. It was therefore somewhat inevitable that the children, when questioned at the end of the programme, had become pretty negative towards meat.

The overall feel of the episode was rather off-kilter and EBLEX has contacted the BBC about the programme balance, seeking information on sources for the figures and statements made. We have also offered expert advice for any future programmes on the topic in a bid to ensure a factually correct picture is presented of the beef and lamb industry.

We most definitely need young people to be thinking about how food is produced and how that affects greenhouse gas production and hence the climate. They should also free to make their own choices about what they eat. But we need a balanced presentation of the issues so that people, young and old, can make an informed choice. Too many media sources are simply not delivering this.