Veganuary

I was listening to LBC yesterday evening and Clive Bull was revisiting the arguments and claimed benefits for going vegan during January. Being LBC, it was a phone-in conversation with all sides of the debate invited to say their piece. I find these conversations very useful to listen to, as often the views are very well expressed and clarify my own thinking. And even if I think the person phoning in is wrong or mistaken, I get to hear their point of view and assess whatever merit it has. Usually I 'get it' and see why they feel as they do. And I admire the way Clive Bull stays neutral and yet raises absolutely proper counter-arguments, if those are apparently being ignored by the caller. Iain Dale, another presenter, is also very good at doing this.

The purpose of the presenter chipping in is to keep the conversation balanced, and not allow any caller an unchallenged platform for ranting, and yet still give them a fair go at saying what they want to. And of course, anybody who is tinged with bigotry or blind faith soon gives themselves away. I'm sure listeners take note, and decide for themselves not to slide into an entrenched position like that. I certainly do.

Back to Veganuary. 'Why just January?' was one of the things Clive interjected. Good point. If the intention is to try out veganism and see whether it suits you, then a month's trial would be wise: then, if it does suit, continue lifelong. I imagine many (if not most) people who do Veganuary already have strong reasons for not eating any kind of food derived from animals, and in no way is it merely following a trend, or the fad of the moment.

One contributing vegan expert thought that a love of animals, a recognition that they have an equal right to a natural and dignified life as our equals on the planet, and a hatred of cruelty towards them, were the main reasons for becoming vegan. It's easy to see that the inescapable trauma farm animals experience when slaughtered, however 'kind' the husbandry up to that point, amounts to cruelty - just any human would feel cruelly treated, if one sunny day there were a knock on the door and within the hour they were a bloody corpse beneath a bullet-spattered wall, or a twisted body on the floor of a gas chamber. There would always be that moment of dread when one's fate was clear, then searing pain. That's cruel by any standard.

With an avoidance of animal-based food goes an aversion to animal products - leather, fur, tusks, fat, oils, and so on. And again, if no animal is to suffer, then the vegan will look for alternatives.

I'd definitely agree that being a vegan is a principled position.

And yet it's not quite so simple. A subsidiary, but still important, reason for going vegan is to be healthier - in the sense that plant-based or lab-cultured nutrition might be healthier and less toxic (as well as far more ethical) than an omnivorous diet.

Here the argument is not so clear. Listening to the people phoning in, I heard how many people do follow veganism and thrive on it without problems. They are well-informed about nutritional requirements, and have regular medical check-ups. But trendies who dip into it without understanding what they really need to eat, and how their restricted diet might be less than optimal for their particular physical make-up, are courting malnutrition and reducing their resistance to disease. Veganism is not a mere weight-loss regime. There will be health consequences, and it may not be right for everyone.

Another thing, which I never hear talked about. If nobody ate farmed meat, there would be no market for any of our familiar farm animals, and they would all go into extinction. Cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, chickens - the lot. Zillions of animals would cease to exist. If they can't be sold for food, what is the point of keeping them? They are not pets. They couldn't be 'retired' and put out to pasture until they died naturally - that costs, and the farmers wouldn't pay. No, they'd all be slaughtered and just buried.

I'm very uncomfortable with the notion of running-down our world stock of farm animals until they have all gone, even if it were done gradually in order to avoid a sudden mass-slaughter. The whole idea seems very much like 'playing God' with their lives. Or a kind of 'ethnic cleansing', in which selected types of animal are abolished, rather than types of human being. A mass extinction: isn't that cruel in itself, if it's not the outcome of an entirely natural disaster? Yet the logical end of universal veganism would be just that.

In any case I'm not convinced about the health benefits of veganism. Human beings have taken an omnivorous route in their evolution. That could of course change in the hundreds of thousands of years to come, but at the moment a broad diet of fresh, unprocessed foods that include meat and fish is the very best solution. It's not only to get the full range of nutrients; our digestive system is used to a range of food types, and I feel sure that it's risking trouble not to give the gut all the foodstuffs it was designed to process.

If I have a definite standpoint here it is that scientific knowledge should determine what kinds of food people ought to eat to stay healthy. It can't be a matter of sentiment, custom, religious belief or principle. There will be a clear prime selection of essential foodstuffs that one must have, if one wants maximum health and a long active life. So I make sure I eat plenty of the most nutritious things, which happens to include a ton of fresh vegetables and fruit, as well as adequate helpings of fresh meat and fish. And if ever one of these things runs short, then I will study what will fill the gap, even if it has to be something considered unusual just now. Protein is protein, wherever it comes from.

Two other things.

What about all the digestive gas emitted worldwide by bovines? If you maintain meat production, that will still be warming the atmosphere. Well, clearly meat production shouldn't be expanded further. I understand that a possible answer to the existing emissions of cows is better-formulated animal feed, and new breeds of grass. Perhaps it will become a sad fact of life - as it was throughout most of the past - that eating traditional meat cuts will be a luxury, only for those who can afford it. A nice steak - or weekend break (by train, of course) in sunny Bournemouth? You'll just have to choose; you won't be able to have both unless loaded.

Getting back to cruelty to farm animals, what are the large-scale consequences of giving them their 'freedom'?

It would be utterly heartless to turf redundant beasts off farms to fend for themselves. So many clogging up lanes and highways would instantly become a dangerous nuisance. They'd have to be culled, severely, so that ordinary deliveries could be made and pedestrians could get around in safety. Some animals would successfully go feral - I'm particularly thinking of the Forest of Dean pigs here - and periodically invade villages and towns looking for food. But the first major floods and winter storms would see animal carcasses turning up everywhere.

And never forget that nature itself is red in tooth and claw. There would be a resurgence of predatory animals and birds, who would grow ever more numerous, and ever bolder, eventually making the countryside a dangerous place for solitary human beings and their children after the easy prey runs out.

In other words, a slow death out in the cold is no better for purposeless farm animals than a quick mass slaughter. Most farm animals are not well-equipped to fend for themselves - although I do think that chickens would be perfectly happy, clucking away in full contentment, until located by the local foxes.