_Meat: A Benign Extravagance_, by Simon Fairlie

Food miles may not be over-extravagant in their energy use, but they are thickly implicated in a centralized distribution system which multiplies our energy expenditure at every opportunity and whose impacts include excessive packaging and refrigeration, waste, traffic congestion, road-building, noise, accidents, loss of local distinctiveness, exploitation and displacement of peasants, excessive immigration, urban slums, deforestation and habitat destruction, removal of biomass from third world countries, the undermining of local communities in the UK, the collapse of UK farming and the blood which is split over oil fields. 

—from Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie

This is Simon Fairlie on the subject of "food miles". I believe that with this one paragraph, he renders irrelevant most of James McWilliams' writings on the subject of food miles.

I've just been reading Meat: A Benign Extravagance. It's a very, very thoughtfully-written book. It's not mostly about food miles, and it's not mostly about meat being an extravagance.

Reducing it to one main idea is doing it a disservice, but if I might: It is mostly about dispelling the idea that livestock are intrinsically "unsustainable". The argument is so convincing that upon reading it, George Monbiot, previously a noted promoter of veganism, changed his mind, and decided that veganism was not the answer.

I plan to do a full write-up on the book when I finish reading it. In the meantime, if you're wondering what to read next, this book would be a great choice.

(submitted as part of the Hearth And Soul blog carnival at A Moderate Life)

Voracious Vegan Starts Eating Meat

Tasha, author of the top-ten vegan blog The Voracious Vegan, has started eating meat, and has renamed her blog VoraciousEats.com.

This has stirred up quite a controversy.

She posted here, ten days ago, about the medical and spiritual journey that led her back to eating meat, after years as a vegan. (Her story is similar to the story told by Lierre Keith in the excellent book, The Vegetarian Myth.)

Tasha received so many views and comments on her blog that her web server crashed. She also received death threats and other harassment from putative vegans and animal rights activists. She posted here, a few days later, about this fallout.

Many of the constructive comments on the blog post are worth reading. And lots of other folks have blogged insightfully about the situation; you can find trackback links at the bottom of Tasha's posts.

Some of the perspectives represented in the comments include vegans who are having similar health problems; vegans who are doing just fine; pseudo-vegans who secretly eat meat; omnivores who eat only Meat Of Known Origin; and a good number of people who are concerned most of all for Tasha's well-being, and are happy to hear that her health has improved dramatically.

My observation:

Many vegans are motivated by concern for animal welfare. They are horrified by factory animal farming.

Many thoughtful omnivores are also motivated by concern for animal welfare, and are also horrified by factory animal farming.

We all want to see a food system that is healthier and more just for everyone. We all have different ideas about exactly what that looks like, and how to get there. And each of us has ideas that evolve over time.

Fundamentally, our goals and motivations are similar.

I would ask us all to focus on our common ground, where possible, rather than focussing on our differences.