News

Meat consumption is “out of control” and we should eat meat only on special occasions, according to a London academic who advises the government.

Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, says both climate change and the obesity epidemic could be tackled if we ate meat only on traditional “feast” days, such as Christmas.

“Let’s go back to where culture has been for thousands of years, which is meat is an exception,” says Professor Lang. “If you were growing meat yourself, it is an incredibly slow process and killing and eating an animal is a special day.”

Rather than advocate a Meat Free Monday, Lang – an advisor not only to the Department for Environment but also the World Health Organization – went further, suggesting that the environmental and health impacts of too much meat meant it should be a once-a-week treat at most.

“I am saying instead of having one day where you do not eat meat, eat meat once a week and have really good, grass-fed meat.”

Comments

An investigation has revealed the impact livestock farming is having on fish populations and the marine environment off the coast of Peru and elsewhere in the southern Pacific.

As demand for meat and fish grows across the world, the trade in fishmeal – a commercial product made from processed fish meat, bones and offal – is booming. It is a major component in feed used for livestock and farmed fish.

Now the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has uncovered widespread fraud and overfishing in the waters off Peru, with companies cheating on their quotas.

With its “seine” boats, Peru has the largest commercial fishing fleet in the world geared towards the exploitation of a single species – Peruvian anchovy – which is processed to produced oil and fishmeal for bird- and fish-farming.

A 2008 investigation by the Ecologist found that Peruvian fishmeal was being used in Scottish salmon farms, highlighting the global impact of the industry.

Peru’s annual export of more than a million tonnes of fish to Asia is worth more than $1.6 billion, with most of that catch converted into feed for pigs and fish.

The ICIJ says overfishing off Peru and Chile is partly the fault of European and Asian fleets, which have exhausted their own territorial waters and are pushing south.

Read the ICIJ report

Watch the 2008 Ecologist Film Unit report into how Scottish salmon is linked to overfishing in Peru.

Comments