Recent Anti-Meat Activities

We know that members are heartily sick of reading and hearing the recent spate of anti-meat propaganda including the over-the-top calls for a meat tax.

We also share your frustration and annoyance at the inaccurate, unbalanced and poor journalistic standards behind many of these reports. We are also aware that some of you have experienced protests and online attacks not reported in the press.

We have been commenting and responding to the media along the following lines:

Concentrating on pointing out the positives of buying meat from a local craft butcher where the much shorter supply chains lead to fewer food miles and enhanced animal welfare.

Although overall meat sales are declining there is an identified trend that consumers are seeking out better quality meat from butchers.

Butcher's sausages, burgers, ready to heat and ready to eat products are higher quality, contain less additives and are healthier than many mass -produced products.

Advances in animal husbandry and modern butchery techniques mean that meat and meat products are produced environmentally more efficiently and are much healthier.

Meat is a popular and valuable source of protein and nutrients in a balanced healthy diet.

A meat tax will impact disproportionately on less well-off families.

Repeating the statement from Dr Carrie Ruxton BSc, PhD of the Meat Advisory Panel, and circulated by AHDB, who said: “There is no high-quality evidence linking red and processed meat with heart disease, strokes or diabetes, and a risk of bowl cancer only applies when weekly intakes exceed 700g. A general meat tax would be like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”.

Unfortunately, there was an element of newsworthiness in the original news stories ranging from the Editor of Waitrose Magazine getting the sack for joking about shooting vegans, to the turkey farm in Devon that got vandalised and received death-threats because they invited customers to identify and name their own birds. Consequently, most journalists were not interested in including any positive pro-meat messages.

John Mettrick said: “As President I am keen that National Craft Butchers counter the anti-meat lobby by providing members with factual advice which they can then provide to customers for them to make informed choices. We will continue to provide more information and pressure AHDB to put more resource into this area to support butchers.”

Meanwhile you may be interested to read some of the articles in response to the negative press including an article in The Grocer by leading independent food writer Joanna Blythman. Extract:
” Much media reporting of food and health is fatuous and lazy, but coverage of the proposed 'meat tax' hit a new low of ignorance, or if you're less charitable, intellectual dishonesty.

Another recent article worth reading published in The Times last week by distinguished chef Richard Corrigan concluded: “Veganism is a lifestyle choice, and one I certainly don't condemn, but vegans have no right to preach to people who want to eat meat”¦..”