I've been an active environmentalist for over 40 years, vegetarian since 1980 and vegan since 2005. In 2004 my wife and I decided to make a huge lifestyle change and leave our 'proper' jobs to set up The Barn Vegan Guest House in the New Forest. The ecological importance of what we eat and moving to sustainable methods of production cannot be overstressed. Reducing demand, especially of meat and dairy products is vital to combating climate change. In this blog I hope to inspire change and set out positive ideas. I hope you find it interesting.
I've tried various methods for making vegan soft cheese but recently tried this one and it really work well.....so I thought I'd pass it on. It's easy but you need to start the preparation 36 hours before you want it!
Line a mixing bowl with a thin tea towel and pour in a tub of soya yoghurt. Add a pinch of salt and mix in. Gather the tea towel together and tie it loosely to form a bag then hang this up to allow the liquid to fall into the bowl. Leave it for 24-36 hours.
Open up the tea towel and spoon the yoghurt cheese into a shallow serving dish to give a depth of around 2cm. Put the dish in the fridge until required. I topped the lebneh (Turkish yog cheese) with a mix of parsley, olive oil, zest of a lemon, a crushed garlic clove and some pine nuts and pistachio. Delicious served with crusty bread and a simple tomato salad.
I reckon there are loads of ways to use this cheese - it handles just like Philadelphia so could replace this in any recipe. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who tries something creative with it......
I sneaked away for a few days’ r&r last week. It’s been a good (and tiring) season here at The Barn and Sandra and I thought we’d get away before the glorious weather faded.
We decided to travel by our trusty tandem ‘Daisy’ to La Maison du Vert in Normandy. And what a good choice that was. Apart from the rather rude awakening on the ferry to Caen at 4.45am the ride was fantastic. Normandy is beautiful and on a bike you really get a chance to savour the sights, sounds and smells of an area. It was also pretty flat!
We arrived at Debbie and Daniel’s place mid afternoon to be greeted with a glass of organic local cider and a (we thought) well earned slump in a garden swing seat. Bliss…..
It just got better and better from there on in. La Maison du Vert is a haven for veggies and vegans in France – wonderful food and a beautiful garden to laze in. Daniel labours away in the veg area and they are almost self sufficient in vegetables. With my interest in local food this was an unexpected delight. We were also able to do lots of really interesting walks around and about the Hotel.
We reluctantly said goodbye after three nights but found our way back to Caen was even better than the outward journey – 20km along a disused railway track and through villages and lanes that we had all to ourselves. We sat on the beach at Ouistreham and watched the sun set before whiling away a couple of hours before the ferry got in.
It was a truly enjoyable experience.
Did you watch the new BBC2 series 'The Future of Food' on Monday? It's fronted by George Alagiah and the first episode (two more to come) covered a lot of ground that will be familiar to those with a concern about our global food supply system.
George looked at issues of oil dependency, climate change, water scarcity, health/obesity and UK food security. All pretty worrying! When George A visited Cuba he was surprised to find that the modern Cuban diet was a) largely vegetarian and b) fairly limited in terms of variety (he had the same beans/rice combo for lunch and dinner). He commented that he couldn't see consumers in the UK accepting that but it that it was an obvious, and in the case of Cuba, necessary response to oil supply shortages.
The question it raised in my mind was 'what do we, in the UK regard as a "proper" meal?' Most people I know would consider anything without meat to be a bit of a 'make do' snack. What's your view? We really have to consider the reality of how we respond to food supply issues in the future and it is patently obvious that a high meat and dairy based diet is going to have to change.
How will the UK react to this do you think? And how should we start to change attitudes from now on? Do let me have your thoughts.....
If you missed it you can watch the first programme on the BBC iPlayer
I was elected Chair of New Forest Transition around a year ago. Although the whole ethos of Transition is very much non-hierarchical I thought I might be able to bring to bear a little influence when it came to discussions about diet. The intimate connections we, as vegans, know about between the meat/dairy industry and environmental destruction are not so well known to mainstream omnivores. Alas, in common with many other veggies/vegans in the Transition movement I was sadly mistaken!
I drafted a set of suggested guidelines for how we should run meetings which included that where food was provided (we often meet at either the local authority or the National Park offices) it should be veggie or, preferably, vegan. The guidelines were accepted without murmur but then, as far as that bit was concerned, pretty much ignored. My choice of not eating animal products was largely seen as a bit of a joke. Ho hum.
So I was wonderfully surprised the other day, when I went to a meeting organised by one of the New Forest villages, to hear the speaker talking about the need to cut down our meat and dairy consumption. My surprise became even greater when one or two comments from the audience echoed this thought. Surprise turned to borderline incredulity when the audience members identified themselves as Beef Farmers!! The speaker was none other that Patrick Holden, Director of the Soil Association. We had all gathered to watch Rebecca Hosking's magnificent film 'A Farm For The Future'. This film makes the dire position of British farming abundantly clear and I would commend everyone to watch it if they can. I have it still my DVD hard drive and can dub off copies for anyone if they send me a blank DVD and an SAE.
Maybe, just maybe things are moving on and those of us who have seen the light already might be joined by many more in the months and years to come.
--
Richard Barnett
The Barn
112 Lyndhurst Road
Ashurst
Hampshire
SO40 7AU
023 8029 2531
07791 990351
"If you want to travel fast go alone, if you want to travel far go together" - African Proverb
This week is the International Week of Vegetarianism and I was trying to think of what to write when I cam across a jaw dropping piece about the impact on the environment of the meat and dairy industry. I cannot do any better than to bring it to your attention and ask you to spread it far and wide amongst so-called greens who scoff at those of us who are principled enough to stop eating animal products.
Thank you Kathy........
Original post here
13 Breathtaking Effects of Cutting Back on Meat
*By Kathy Freston www.alternet.org/authors/8188, AlterNet
Posted April 22, 2009
The meat industry contributes to land degradation, climate change, air pollution, water shortage and pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
My first post on the effect of eating meat on the environment provoked quite a bit of discussion, so in honor of Earth Day, I thought I should follow up with more information about how our natural resources (e.g., air, water, and soil) are depleted and devastated by animal agriculture.
Of course, Earth Day is also a good time to remember that animal agriculture only exists at astronomical levels because people are purchasing vast quantities of chicken, beef, pork, and fish. The market for meat (i.e., we, the consumers) drives the depletion and destruction.
1. Excrement produced by chickens, pigs, and other farm animals: 16.6 billion tons per year -- more than a million pounds per second (that's 60 times as much as is produced by the world's human population -- farmed animals produce more waste in one day than the U.S. human population produces in 3 years). This excrement is a major cause of air and water pollution. According to the United Nations: "The livestock sector is... the largest sectoral source of water pollution, contributing to eutrophication, 'dead' zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reefs, human health problems, emergence of antibiotic resistance and many others."
2. Water used for farmed animals and irrigating feed crops: 240 trillion gallons per year -- 7.5 million gallons per second (that's enough for every human to take 8 showers a day, or as much as is used by Europe, Africa, and South America combined). According to the UN: "[t]he water used by the sector exceeds 8 percent of the global human water use." As just one example, "[O]n average 990 litres of water are required to produce one litre of milk." So drinking milk instead of tap water requires almost 1,000 times as much water.
3. Emissions of greenhouse gases from raising animals for food: The equivalent of 7.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the UN report. Concludes the UN: "The livestock sector is... responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions." That's about 40 percent more than all the cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships in the world combined (transport is 13%). And "The sector emits 37% of anthropogenic methane (with 23 times the global warming potential-or GWP-of CO2)... It emits 65% of anthropogenic nitrous oxide (with 296 times the GWP of CO2). These figures are based on the power of these gases over 100 years; in fact, over 20 years-a more important timeframe for dealing with global warming-methane and nitrous oxide are 72 times and 289 times more warming than CO2. And Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC (which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore) has been saying that the 18% figure is probably an underestimate.
4. It takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make one calorie of animal protein as it does to make one calorie of plant protein.
5. Soil erosion due to growing livestock feed: 40 billion tons per year (or 6 tons/year for every human being on the planet-of course if you don't eat meat, none of this is attributed to you; if you're in the U.S. where we eat lots more meat than most of the world, your contribution is many times greater than 6 tons/year). About 60% of soil that is washed away ends up in rivers, streams and lakes, making waterways more prone to flooding and to contamination from soil's fertilizers and pesticides. Erosion increases the amount of dust carried by wind, polluting the air and carrying infection and disease.
6. Land used to raise animals for food: 10 billion acres. According to the UN: "In all, livestock production accounts for 70 percent of all agricultural land and 30 percent of the land surface of the planet." And "70 percent of previous forested land in the Amazon is occupied by pastures, and feedcrops cover a large part of the remainder." And "About 20 percent of the world's pastures and rangelands, with 73 percent of rangelands in dry areas, have been degraded to some extent, mostly through overgrazing, compaction and erosion created by livestock action."
7. According to the UN, animal agriculture is a leading case of water pollution. The main water pollutants in the US are sediments and nutrients. Animal agriculture is responsible for 55 percent of the erosion that causes sedimentation, and for a third of the main nutrient pollutants, nitrogen and phosphorous. On top of that, animal agriculture is the source of more than a third of the United States' water pollution from pesticides, and half of its water pollution from antibiotics.
8. Livestock are also responsible for almost two-thirds of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems.
9. Grain and corn raised for livestock feed that could otherwise feed people, according to the UN: 836 million tons per year (note that the more commonly used figure, 758 million tons, is metric). That's more than 7 times the amount used for biofuels and is much more than enough to adequately feed the 1.4 billion humans who are living in dire poverty, and the number doesn't even include the fact that almost all of the global soy crop (about 240 million tons of soy) is also fed to chickens, pigs, and other farmed animals.
10. An American saves more global warming pollution by going vegan than by switching their car to a hybrid Prius.
11. Razing the Amazon rainforest for pasture and feed crops: 5 million acres of Amazon per year. Former Amazon rainforest converted to raising animals for food since 1970 is more than 90% of all Amazon deforestation since 1970.
12. According to the UN: "Indeed, the livestock sector may well be the leading player in the reduction of biodiversity..." And "livestock now account for about 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal biomass, and the 30 percent of the earth's land surface that they now pre-empt was once habitat for wildlife." And "Conservation International has identified 35 global hotspots for biodiversity, characterized by exceptional levels of plant endemism and serious levels of habitat loss. Of these, 23 are reported to be affected by livestock production. An analysis of the authoritative World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species shows that most of the world's threatened species are suffering habitat loss where livestock are a factor."
13. United Nations scientists, in their 408-page indictment of the meat industry, sum up these statistics, pointing out that the meat industry is "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global," including "problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity."
Perhaps it's time to explore vegetarianism. Click here for tips. Happy Eating!
I regularly receive campaigning literature from the likes of Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth. Mostly the information and the ideas for action are spot on. Without such organisations we would be in a worse position than we are today and I wholeheartedly support them. But I have a real issue with the latest Friends of the Earth (FoE) campaign – The Food Chain.
FoE have finally woken up to the enormous damage that the meat and dairy industry is doing to the planet. I say ‘finally’ because for some years now they have refused to really enter into the issue. I can only guess that up till now they have not wanted to upset their membership by suggesting that as well as cutting down on car use etc they really also ought to be cutting down on their meat and dairy intake. Anyway, they have had a change of heart and now they present the ‘shock news’ that the meat and dairy industry produces more CO2 than global transport. Oh well, better late than never – the UN report ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’, from where this figure is derived was published in November 2006. And I posted a piece in this very blog in August 2007 berating FoE for not picking up on it
www.vegetarian.co.uk/blogs/2007/08/campaigning_with_the_brakes_on.html
The issue I have with the Food Chain campaign is that even with all the information now out in the open there is no mention of suggesting a reduction in people’s meat and dairy intake. They do want to get schools to change their menus and provide ‘less but better quality meat and dairy’ but what they want me as a supporter to do is send them money to campaign for a shift in subsidies away from factory farms and to support small-scale farming in the UK to develop home grown feeds. To me this is only half the solution. If meat and dairy is to be produced on a less than industrial scale the output will not feed the insatiable appetite of carnivorous diners. The same UN report called for radical action to reduce consumption so why does the FoE continue to fail to grasp the nettle. It only strengthens my view that the ‘right’ to eat as much meat as you want is the greatest barrier of all as we look urgently for ways to reduce carbon emissions. FoE – you still have the brakes on as far as I am concerned.
Apparently the Queen recently asked a group of financial experts why none of them had seen fit to warn her and her subjects about the financial catastrophe “didn’t any of you see it coming?” she queried. There was, after all, plenty of evidence that what we were up to in this country and elsewhere was not going to last long and that when it when wrong it was all going to be very painful. The same scenario seems to be playing out with the issue of food. We all take for granted the fact that we can stroll into a supermarket any time of the year and pick up whatever we need. But if you scratch the surface of the food system it doesn’t take long before worrying facts start to appear.
I don’t know if you caught the film by Rebecca (Modbury Plastic Bag Campaign) Hosking last Friday (BBC2 Natural World: A Farm for the Future). If you didn’t you missed a really interesting piece about what appears to be yet another crisis we are sleepwalking into.
For example, with the world’s energy experts now fairly unanimously agreed that we reached the peak of oil production in July 2008 it’s very alarming to learn that 96% of the food we grow in the UK is totally reliant on oil. That includes pretty much all the organic provision, of course, where the farmers may not spray petrochemical fertilisers but they do rely on oil driven machinery every step of the way in the growing process.
It’s also shameful to learn that we only produce 5% of all the fruit we consume in this country. And that 40% of the prime arable land we have is given over to raising crops to be fed to……yes you’ve guessed it…..animals.
Rebecca Hosking visited some places where they do things rather differently from the norm. One dairy farm in Wales has worked out a permaculture system so that they look after their animals with only one piece of petrol driven equipment – a quad bike. And another ‘Forest Farm’ grows a huge amount of produce in a carefully managed wood spending only around a day a week looking after it with no reliance on oil. Rebecca H nearly fell over at the thought of this. Her father and uncle spend seven days a week looking after their farm. Both these examples show that there are ways of overturning and improving traditional farming and growing methods. And there was more. I was more than a little surprised to learn that ploughing up the land, a practise that’s been going on for hundreds of years, actually kills the soil and necessitates the addition of all the nasty fertilisers that we now get so worried about. The answer is, it seems, not to plough! Let the fantastic ecosystem that exists in the soil thrive and treat it like the thing is really is, a living organism that doesn’t want to be carved up every year and denuded of much of its animal and chemical life.
There are many drastic changes that need to be made. It is to be hoped that those who have presided over the UK’s agricultural policy don’t repeat the same mistake as the bankers. There is a huge amount of such solid evidence on the fragile nature of our food supply. Let’s not wait till we have a crisis before wading in to try to rectify things. Because it might just be too late…….
So let’s get digging!
According to a survey from 2007 by the Energy Saving Trust there’s still only 4% of us who have actually made any significant changes to the way we live to attempt to counteract climate change and energy issues. And I’ve been becoming increasingly frustrated and angry recently by what I can only describe as a green veneer that many of my friends and acquaintances seem to be putting on their lives. You know the sort of thing I mean – people who scrupulously wash out their tin cans for recycling before packing their suitcases to fly off for their winter breaks in the Alps or sunny Egypt. Things reached a crescendo when I attended a Go Green Fair locally last Saturday and two representatives from the Green Party turned up. One arrived in a monstrous Ford Mustang (which he insensitively parked next to a car that ran on vegetable oil!). The other confessed that, although she’d arrived by bike, it was only the second time she’d ridden it in 35 years (“I thought I had better not turn up in the 4x4 – that wouldn’t look very good would it?” she said). They both then proceeded to regale the audience with some hair brained idea for a local cycle path……as if they knew what one was.
Everywhere you turn at the moment there seems to be gloom. Whether it’s economic, social or environmental news, it’s all pointing in the wrong direction. And I can understand that a lot of people are really overwhelmed by it all to the extent that they feel like rabbits caught in the headlights. Of course, this is adding to the problems because what we fundamentally need now is concerted action to start building things afresh. To create a new way of living and working from the ruins of the old order.
Most people are ignoring the problems as best they can hoping that somehow they will go away. Hoping that some magic techno-fix will appear or that ‘they’ (whoever they are) will discover that we have less to worry about than has been made out. And I’m increasingly of the belief that it is that very thing ‘hope’ which is a contributor towards apathy. ‘Hoping’ for something is a very passive activity…..just waiting with fingers crossed won’t do now. We have to confront the issues and ‘act’ rather than ‘hope’. We all need to start agitating and creating the sort of demand on our political leaders that will make them sit up and take notice. There’s masses that individuals can do to affect the overall position such as participating in the Transition movement, being active in things like Friends of the Earth or Plane Stupid, or Greenpeace etc etc. The point is that we can’t sit back any longer.
So I have given up hope. I’m determined to act rather than react in 2009. How about you?
I came across this idea recently after chatting with someone over a glass of mulled wine at a party. It’s by no means new although it was to me and I thought I’d share it with you. It seems to me to be a concept that’s wonderfully in keeping with the idea of Transition and generally building a new style of social economy out of the wreckage of our current model.
For those who haven’t encountered it before, it’s very simple. You give someone something or do something for them but instead of asking for anything in return you just ask that they ‘pay it forward’ by helping someone else. It’s an easy way of spreading positive change.
When I say it’s not new I really mean that – looking it up on Wikipedia I found that the original concept appears to have been described by Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to Benjamin Webb dated April 22, 1784 where he wrote:
“I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro' many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money.”
The term "pay it forward" (PIF) was coined, or at least popularized, by Robert A. Heinlein in his book Between Planets, published in 1951 and there is now a Pay it Forward Foundation whose central tenet is to pay forward education to children and their parents.
PIF seems to have lots of pros and, as far as I can see, no cons. Bartering systems require an agreement over the relative worth of the goods or services to be exchanged and ‘swap clubs’ similarly get into difficulties when people try to abuse the system to get more than they are due. And, of course, such two way systems can only function if you have something that you can offer each other. PIF avoids all these problems.
It can, of course, require a degree of trust that ‘what goes around comes around’ and that you might be able to get help when you need it. But it seems to me that we could do a lot worse than give this a go and try to seed a new sense of community by very simple acts of altruism.
How about passing this idea forward?
I’ve mentioned the Transition movement in a couple of posts and I thought I’d pass on what I’ve been involved with in the local group. A while ago the New Forest Transition Hub was created and, in a somewhat foolhardy move they made me Chair….
The basic notion behind Transition is that we desperately need to start taking action now to begin preparing ourselves for a low energy future. If you care to look there’s increasing evidence that the (oil dependent) party we’ve all been enjoying over the last thirty years is about to come to an end. The oil companies know it. You’ve only got to read the adverts from Shell and BP recently to see that they believe in the urgent need to diversify energy sources. And there was a very sobering report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) the other day. The IEA was set up during the 1970’s oil crisis as a policy advisor to some 28 countries, including the UK. Their reports have always been very conservative and have shunned the idea that we might run out cheap oil. But the 2008 World Energy Outlook is very different. One fact alone stands out. If you take the output from the world’s 400 ‘best’ oil fields, their production is set to decline by over 9% next year and continue to decline by at least that year on year. At that rate, by 2030 the world will have to find and bring on stream another six Saudi Arabias just to keep pace with demand. I leave you to decide if that’s very likely!
So what can we do? Well, plenty! We’ve got used to having all the energy we need whenever we want it and there’s no denying that it’s been great. But like anyone who sees a change up ahead we should start thinking about how to adapt our lifestyles. And that’s what we started to do at an event we called The Heat Exchange. It took place in Brockenhurst on 15 November. We called it that because we wanted to transfer the existing energy in people to each other and radiate the effects around.
We were all rather pessimistic about how many people would show up. We sent invitations to over 120 people who were already involved in activities related to sustainability and thought maybe 20-30 might come along. In the end we had over 100 people there ranging in age from 2 months to over 80. The atmosphere was fantastically positive and the overwhelming sentiment was ‘thank goodness someone has started to do something!’ From the event we now have small groups all over the New Forest starting to get to work on both themes (like food, energy and education) and in localities (based round villages and communities). In themselves they are small actions but they add up to a lot of positive momentum.
I’ll keep you posted with what we are up to but you can get a flavour by visiting the New Forest Transition web site. And if you are interested in joining the 100,000 other people actively working on Transition ideas in the UK go to the Transition Network site to find out what’s happening in your town or community.
Back in the second world war it was impossible for people to get oranges and the government was worried about everyone getting enough vitamin C. So advice was issued to suggest the making of Rosehip syrup. The recipe was promoted recently on Gardeners World and we’ve tried it out on guests here at The Barn. It goes really well on oatmeal porridge and with our breakfast pancakes.
If you are trying to cut down on your food miles and, at the same time, make more use of local food then it’s a great idea. Rosehips are now in plentiful supply so why not give it a go. With British bees declining in numbers it makes a good alternative sweetener. And those of a certain age will, I’m sure, find the taste very reminiscent of childhood…..
Rosehip syrup
The directions given by the Ministry of Food during the war for 2 pounds (900gm) of hips
Method
Boil 3 pints (1.7 litres) of boiling water.
Mince hips in a course mincer (food processor) and put immediately into the boiling water.
Bring to boil and then place aside for 15 minutes.
Pour into a flannel or linen crash jelly bag and allow to drip until the bulk of the liquid has come through.
Return the residue to the saucepan, add 11/2 pints (852ml) of boiling water, stir and allow to stand for 10 minutes.
Pour back into the jelly bag and allow to drip.
To make sure all the sharp hairs are removed put back the first half cupful of liquid and allow to drip through again.
Put the mixed juice into a clean saucepan and boil down until the juice measures about 11/2 pints (852ml), then add 11/4 (560gm) of sugar and boil for a further 5 minutes.
Pour into hot sterile bottles and seal at once.
Hints:
If corks are used these should have been boiled for hour just previously and after insertion coated with melted wax.
It is advisable to use small bottles as the syrup will not keep for more than a week or two once the bottle is opened.
Store in a dark cupboard.
Here's an idea. Have you ever thought about the amount of fruit, especially apples, that are wasted each year. In towns and cities all over the UK there are thousands of fruit trees whose fruit simply drops to the ground and rots.
In Birmingham there is a project called Abundance that has mapped where all the trees are and an army of volunteer pickers goes round collecting the fruit. They have discovered a wide range of varieties, some quite rare, far more than you get in your average supermarket.
The apples are taken to schools and given away.
Food for thought?
Something struck me today when out shopping in Southampton and I thought I’d just pen a quick post about it. I’ve been a vegetarian for over thirty years and a vegan for some four or five. And I’ve noticed that the time I spend on food shopping has lessened as I have put more ‘filters’ over what I will and will not eat. Whole aisles in supermarkets can be passed by without so much as a glance and choices between products have become fewer so that there’s much less time spent on deliberation.
What hit me today was that I can now see the same effect on other shopping trips. I’m no saint but I do try to go for goods and products that are ‘green’ or ‘eco’ etc and that includes, wherever my budget can stretch, buying organic cotton and other similar materials for clothing and household items etc. And the impact of this is that a) there are lots of shops that you don’t need to go into because they don’t stock such items and b) when you do find these products you often don’t have much of a choice. Obviously this doesn’t suit your average shopaholic but I like it. For example, today we needed to buy a new booking diary for The Barn’s 2009 guests. Went into Staples to check out the range and found only one printed on recycled paper – choice made!
I often hear people bemoaning the fact that there’s too much choice around. Our shops and food stores are just crammed with loads of different varieties of similar products. Do we need that? My involvement in the Transition movement has made me look at all sorts of ways that we can simplify our lives for the better and maybe this is one example. It probably seems a backwards step for many people but we can’t keep on churning out so much stuff especially when you think about the enormous waste that it produces. So here’s to less choice! I’ll leave you with a current favourite quote of mine that is in this spirit….
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction." Albert Einstein
A couple of weeks back I gave a talk at the London Vegan Festival (LVF). It was rather grandly titled ‘Peak Oil, Transition Towns and the Inevitable Rise of Veganism’….. If you think of it in terms of the way they classify Tom Daley style Olympic high diving then I think I gave myself quite a large degree of difficulty there! But I wanted to just touch on several really big issues.
The first is that fundamental one of oil. Like it or not we are undoubtedly either at or very close to the end of the era of cheap oil. Yes I know that the price has come down a long way from the record levels of a couple of months ago but if you think that’s permanent you are deluding yourself. Only yesterday (22 Sept 2008) there was a huge hike in the price in amongst the turmoil of the current financial debacle. Previous price rises and falls have been accounted for by supply problems but we are now in new territory. 64 of the 98 oil producers across the world have peaked in their production and we are now hearing, amongst other things, about a greater use of the Tar Sands as a source of future supply. The problem here is the incredible inefficiency of draining the oil from the sands. Unlike the cheap oil we’ve got used to the Tar Sands take almost as much energy to get at the stuff as the resulting oil gives us back.
One of the chief problems with oil is that it is so powerful and convenient. A teaspoon of oil can shift a car 30 metres (try pushing one that far and then think about moving it at 30 mph and you’ll begin to get the picture). This power has led to some unbelievable situations. For example it’s estimated that each one of us uses each day, in just living our 21st century lives, the equivalent energy that would be produced by 50 cyclists powering generators 24/7! And our agricultural system is so far out of whack that it now requires an input of 9 calories of energy to get 1 calorie of energy out.
Food production is obviously essential but there are vital facts about the way we go about it these days that really should be given a higher profile. During my talk at the LVF I highlighted the gross inefficiency and huge environmental damage associated with the meat and dairy industry. My talk coincided with a piece in the papers that day covering the latest output from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They are urging everyone to cut down their meat intake by 20%. This relatively small drop in demand would result in the equivalent savings in C02 emissions as if you downsized from driving a saloon car to an ultra efficient Prius.
Subsequently there was also a fascinating article in the New Scientist (13 September 2008) going much deeper into the whole problem. It’s very difficult to take every factor into account but researchers in the USA have tried to calculate the carbon footprint of some key staples of our western diet and the findings are striking. For example a bowl of cereal accounts for the same C02 emissions as you get from driving 7km in a 4x4. Here, it’s not the cereal that’s the problem, it’s the milk. Dairy products, together with red meat are the most emissions-intensive foods. As a vegan I know how ubiquitous milk is. It seems to be in everything from biscuits to savoury crisps and sausages. I bet if it wasn’t there no one would notice! And most of it is introduced to these products in the form of milk powder which itself is a colossal waster of resources. According to the recent International Food Policy Research Institute report on world water demand it takes 1000 litres of water to produce a litre of milk and five times that amount to produce milk powder.
My experience of raising such issues with both omnivores and vegetarians alike is that they don’t want to engage with it. It’s like it’s a step too far. Most people will happily try to cut down on their driving but for various reasons changing their diet is not something they are prepared to do to ‘save the planet’. But sooner or later we are going to have to come to terms with the consequences of our lifestyles in all sorts of ways and in my opinion this issue needs to be confronted now. What do you think?
Among the many and various consequences of the current economic difficulties (don’t you just hate the term ‘credit crunch’?) is the impact on sales of organic food. Various indicators are now showing that in these straightened times consumers are choosing to save money by moving away from organics and back towards traditional, chemical produced, food products.
It’s seems to me that this is a bit like the reaction of many organisations when they need to rein in their budgets. The ‘soft targets’ are hit first. Usually this is the training and development area. There appear to be no real consequences in the short term but a few months or years down the line the failure to invest to meet the needs of the future become evident.
There are many reasons to choose organic and prime among these is the need to support an aspect of agriculture that doesn’t directly damage the environment. And whatever the research says I cannot believe that ingesting all the pesticide residues on mass produced foodstuffs is good for one’s general health! The Ecologist magazine recently carried a very comprehensive article looking at the whole issue.
In reacting to the downturn of sales, Monty Don (now President of the Soil Association) is suggesting that a change in terminology from ‘organic’ to ‘sustainable’ might be a positive step. He feels ‘organic’ has a lot of baggage that puts people off and that ‘sustainable’ would be more easily understood. I’m not sure myself. Sustainable is in overworked term that is rapidly becoming meaningless and would allow all sorts of products to creep in under a covering of greenwash. Whereas the organic standard set by the Soil Association is clear and demanding.
The case for buying organic food needs to be made stronger top persuade consumers of its value not just to them but to the environment. It’s Organic Fortnight 6-21 September 2008 – why not use this opportunity to strengthen your own resolve to continue to buy organic food? And what do you think of Monty’s suggestion – I’d like to hear from you.
One of the reasons for taking meat out of your diet has always been to gain improved health. There is a vast array of scientific data around that supports the view that a heavily meat based diet is simply not good for you. But of course if you mention that to many meat eaters they will simply ignore it on the grounds that they don’t feel unwell and they’ll carry on as normal (albeit often with the caveat that they ‘don’t eat that much meat anyway’.
I don’t know if you saw it but Dr Alice Roberts has got a really interesting little series on BBC2 on Thursdays – ‘Don’t Die Young’. Last week Alice was looking into her digestive system (quite literally as it happens – she swallowed a micro camera and watched with fascination as it descended to parts that up to that point only Carlsberg had managed to reach!). She got talking to someone who existed on a white flour, high fat, meat based diet. This person had all sorts of skin condition problems and a general lack of energy etc. The redoubtable Dr Roberts was alarmed and talked about the importance of bowel transit times. The kind of diet that her ‘patient’ was on led to a rather sluggish gut and the problem with this is that all the internal bacteria tend to get heavily to work on substances hanging around in the lower intestine leading to many medical problems – not the least of which is bowel cancer.
Alice came up with a great way of illustrating the problem. She challenged her patient to a sweet corn race. Sweet corn has the ability to, how shall I put it, get through our digestive systems reasonably unscathed and so can be easily recognised again! They both duly ate a bowl of sweet corn for breakfast one day and started the stopwatches. Whereas Dr Roberts with her high fibre, largely veggie diet came up with a time of just over 24 hours, her patient didn’t see any results (as it were) for over three days. Case closed – diet changed – many of her problems solved…..
I haven’t tried this yet but I’m going to and I am challenging all you blog readers to do the same and post your results (Beijing eat your heart out – oh that’s actually not a v nice image is it? Sorry!). Try it on your meaty friends and let me know what results they achieve.
Can’t wait for the results to come in…….
A few weeks ago we had a request for a booking here at The Barn from a Belgian couple who wanted to stay in a vegan guest house. No problem….we had vacancies. Then they asked if we could do raw food for them as they were just starting to convert to an uncooked diet. “Well”, I said, “I suppose we can do the odd salad”. But what that started was the beginning of a really fascinating adventure for both Sandra and me.
I began to explore some of the sites devoted to raw food and quickly discovered what a huge and interesting aspect of eating this is. There was, coincidentally, an article in the Vegetarian about the Raw Food School and in it there was mention of things like raw spaghetti! So I investigated further and found this amazing little kitchen tool called a Spiral Slicer that can ‘spaghettify’ almost and raw vegetable. You won’t believe the taste until you’ve tried it.
A little later I was sent a review of SAF – a new, very chic restaurant in Shoreditch (London) that describes itself as providing ‘Fine Botanical Dining’. And most of what is served is raw. Well I just had to go! And I wasn’t disappointed. I had probably the tastiest (and healthiest) restaurant meal I’ve ever eaten…. Boursin ‘cheese’ followed by raw lasagne (yes I know what you’re thinking but forget it – just try it) and finished off with an apple cheesecake.
Wanting to know more I booked myself on a Raw Food for Beginners course run by the wonderful Jenny Bourne. Imagine a whole day watching new creations appear before your eyes then gorging yourself on the results – heaven! You just must taste the Chocolate Pudding made with raw chocolate powder and avocados…..
I’m too much of a caffeine, bread and alcohol fiend to go the whole way and eat 100% raw but I can honestly say that after a day of eating Jenny’s food I felt energised and inspired. So I’ll definitely be adding more raw food into my diet and into the menus at The Barn from now on. I thoroughly recommend it.
Every now and then something comes along that blows me away with its inventiveness, passion and purpose. Guerrilla Gardening is one of those things. I first came across it a few weeks ago when I was reviewing a copy of ‘Be The Change’ – a collection of interviews with inspiring and inspired individuals. Then I read Mark Carwardine’s column in the latest BBC Wildlife magazine and was reminded about the movement.
For the uninitiated Guerrilla Gardening is the practice of adopting run down and neglected areas of vegetation in (largely) urban areas and giving it some TLC (tender loving care). You wouldn’t have thought this was too controversial would you? Well it can be! If you go to www.guerrillagardening.org you’ll see some wonderful examples of what the undercover trowel wielders have been up to in London. You’ll also see an amazing account of the response by ‘the authorities’ to some action that most people would describe as ‘positive and helpful’ but that the Police deemed to be ‘criminal damage’.
I love what the GGs are up to and I’m sure you will too. Let’s swell their ranks and show that, as one GG said ‘resistance is fertile!’
I feel sorry for our Prime Minister. No really! He’s the unlucky guy who has taken over running the country just at the time when the proverbial is hitting the fan. What has been predicted for many years is seemingly happening. Climate change is literally all around us and the doomsters who have been muttering about peak oil are now quite rightly saying ‘I told you so’.
We have a coming together of economic, environmental and humanitarian catastrophes across the globe. Millions of poor people are starving due to the high price of food staples and oil is rocketing in price creating a wave of price increases in almost all areas of life. And in the US where the ‘strongest economy in the world’ is seemingly collapsing, I understand the authorities in several areas have set up ‘hostels’ in car parks where people dispossessed from their homes on account of the sub-prime debacle are allowed to live on their cars with police protection to stop them being attacked.
Now in some ways Gordon Brown should be feeling like he’s achieving something. His government have consistently said they want to lower CO2 emissions, get people driving and flying less. And the global economy has come to his aid. There are now reports that people are cutting back on travel and using less fuel.
But what he has to contend with is a massive outcry from motorists and freight drivers who want things to go back to how they were. The pressure to do another u-turn on the car tax policy must be enormous. However, we can’t ignore what is around the corner. Oil industry analysts, including the Chief Executive of Shell are quite clear that the world has begun to run out of easy to get at petroleum. It will never be cheap again. And sometime over the course of the next 50-60 years we are going to have to move to an economy that is based on another energy source.
Since there has been no technological miracle as yet it makes sense to gear ourselves up for a transition that’s as smooth as possible. And that means not going back on what has been put in place so far. We are going to have to stop driving and flying everywhere without a second thought. We are going to have to stop demanding so much meat and move to a more vegetarian, or even better, vegan diet. We are going to have to make things last and stop buying the latest gadgets from China just because they have a new feature that the old model didn’t have etc etc etc
So as to the title of this blog, as I say, I feel sorry for Gordon (Brown), but I would implore him to stick to his principles (Red), stick to his stated aims (Green) and not cave in to unreasonable demands (Yellow). We’ve just got to accept the changes that are on the way and use the opportunity to make positive improvements to our lives. The Transition Network has a vision that makes this possible. Let’s all get on board!
My last two posts have focused on some major issues namely declining oil production, rising energy prices and the soaring cost of food staples like wheat and soya. All pretty heavy stuff but, it has to be said, they are things that have been predicted for a long time. Generally speaking, very little has been done in response to these predictions and the really big question is what are we going to do about it all now that there is a reality to the warnings of troubled times ahead?
An article I received a couple of days ago covered the interesting topic of how people react to threats and perceived risks. The key, it seems, is that we need to feel we have some sense of control over the perceived threat. Without being given this we exhibit symptoms of what psychologists call ‘learned helplessness’ - convincing ourselves that we have no control over a situation even when we do.
An interesting learned helplessness experiment is this one: People were asked to perform a task in the presence of a loud radio. For some, the radio included a volume knob, while for others no volume knob was available. Researchers discovered that the group that could control the volume performed the task measurably better, even if they didn’t turn the volume down. That is, just the idea that they controlled the volume made them less distracted, less helpless and, in turn, more productive.
I was musing on all this when I read a piece in today’s Guardian (22 March 2008) about the big rise in vegetable growing in the UK and it really made me feel good. Apparently seed suppliers have seen a big shift in the ratio of sales of seeds for flowers as opposed to vegetables. Five years ago the split was 60:40 in favour of flowers but this year it’s likely to be 70:30 in favour of veggies. And the key reasons are concerns about food miles, rising costs and people wanting to take control back over what they eat.
This is great news. All over the country UK gardeners are reacting to big environmental issues. We are now growing as much veg at home as we did during the second world war and the National Lottery has been overwhelmed by applications for grants to develop local food groups wanting to grow their own produce (the Lottery has now earmarked £50m over the next five years to promote gardening in communities and schools).
It would appear we are overcoming our feeling of learned helplessness and beginning to assert some control here. When I heard Rob Hopkins talking a week or so back about the ideas behind Transition Towns he encouraged the development of the ‘food inch’ concept. Locally grown fruit and vegetables transported only a short distance from the back garden or allotment and eaten in season.
Sounds to me like this may be the start of a really positive gentle revolution. So when the Easter snow has melted why not dust off your spade and start digging!
I don’t know how many readers heard Professor Tim Laing on the Today programme this morning. He was talking about the growing world food crisis and it made sobering listening.
The item followed on from a piece about the protests by Pig Farmers about the rise in feed costs and the drop in the price they could get for pork. There’s a perfect storm brewing. With worries about oil running out coupled with concerns about carbon emissions there is a rush to produce large quantities of bio-fuel. Such is the scale of this that over 30% of the US corn crop is now grown just for ethanol (bio-fuel). This is replicated in many other countries and, as a result, staples such as wheat and soya have massively increased in price.
So the age of cheap food is coming to an end and it is the poorest who will be hit hardest – as ever! Meanwhile the developed world is getting richer per capita is demanding more and more meat and dairy products to eat because they can afford it and large quantities of meat and dairy consumption continues to be a symbol of wealth.
Meat and dairy, as we now know, is a very bad thing for the planet. Globally its production creates more emissions than transport. It’s also very inefficient in terms of land use requiring huge acreage and massive amounts of water in comparison to growing arable crops.
Tim Laing was quite candid in saying that we all need to eat less meat and dairy products – preferably none at all. And the UK needs to use its agricultural land more effectively. We only produce 60% of the food we consume at the moment. If now is not a good time to persuade people to go veggie and preferably vegan I don’t know when would be!
This piece for my blog is a shameless book plug. But it’s not mine and I’m not on commission! I just want to bring it to the attention of as many people as I can….
The newly published ‘Transition Handbook’ is so important that I am tempted just to confine this review to five simple words ‘You must read this book!’ But to do so would, of course, completely fail to communicate its message which is, I believe, so profound and inspiring that I want to do my very best to encourage its spread far and wide.
Rob Hopkins is described on the book cover as ‘The Founder of the Transition Movement’. I would add to that that he is a superb communicator, visionary and one of the most important thinkers in our chaotic 21st century world.
Like many people I have been hearing snippets about Transition Towns for quite a while now. It seemed an interesting, if faintly ‘New Agey’, thing adopted by the usual suspects and really rather marginal at best. But now I know what it’s all about and for the first time in years I can feel genuine hope for the future.
The subtitle for the book is ‘From oil dependency to local resilience’ and that’s exactly the journey you are taken on when you read it. It’s divided into three sections – The Head, The Heart and The Hands - in other words get your mind round the need, become impassioned and then get working. It will engender very different reactions in readers depending on their current point of view and understanding. But I guarantee that everyone will feel a sense of change once they have read it.
The first section, The Head, starts with some familiar territory – climate change. Hopkins succinctly presents the key facts and issues that have gained so much attention in the last few years. He then moves on to what might be regarded as more esoteric ground – Peak Oil. Reactions to reading that term will have already occurred when you read it. For some it will be a reasonably well understood concept, for others something that has vaguely entered their consciousness, still others may not have come across it.
Wherever you stand at the moment I guarantee that you will learn more by reading this book. For the uninitiated, Peak Oil describes the point at which production of the world’s finite store of ‘liquid gold’ starts to decline in real terms. There is much debate about when this will happen, or indeed whether it has already happened. But one thing is certain – it will occur, and it will require fundamental shifts in the way we live. The price alone, of what will be increasingly scarce commodity, will dictate a radical new approach to energy and global economics
Hopkins’ feels that oil has brought with it so many wonderful things that we have become addicted to it. And he invokes the language of addiction to consider how we wean ourselves of it. The ‘cost’ of our addiction in one sense is that the nature of communities and local networks that existed pre ‘The Age of Cheap Oil’ has vanished and our current world is shakily reliant on global infrastructures powered by cheap energy.
The twin threats of climate change and peak oil, which have to be viewed together, require drastic action to prepare for a way of life that can be sustainable. This is a scary prospect but Hopkins presents a positive framework within which to undertake the changes. The Transition Town model begins with the notion of building ‘resilience’ back into our villages, towns and cities so that they can continue to function without the underpinning cheap energy we currently take for granted.
Resilience is a truly positive and dynamic concept. It urges us to rediscover the potential for local production of food, services and goods that was commonplace only a few decades ago. To rebuild the kind of networks and close links that enabled people to actually know who lives next door and talk face to face with craftsmen and food producers. To rediscover how best to make use of local resources for building.
This is no rose tinted pipe dream. There are Transition Town initiatives in place across the UK. It is a fast growing movement that makes so much sense. Importantly it is about change coming from the community upwards rather than being imposed from above. And the book is packed with ideas, examples and suggestions that will help us all to move in this direction.
I could write pages about what I have just read but the best way I can conclude is to return to my original idea and say ‘You must read this book!’
To Order your copy of ‘The Transition Handbook' ring 0845 4589910. All major credit cards accepted.
A few years ago Sandra, my partner, and I stayed at a great vegan guest house near Limerick in Eire. It was there that I was introduced to the gentle art of making soya milk. At the time, and in that part of the world, it was practically impossible to buy commercial soya milk so home production was the only option.
There are many positive reasons for doing this. For example, you know exactly what goes into the milk. Whilst commercial products are pretty good if you make it yourself you can dispense with preservatives, additives etc but you can also sweeten it or fortify it in a way that suits your taste. You also do away with the need for cartons. And you get bonuses like the Okara that’s left over from the process.
Okara is the Japanese term for the soya pulp remaining after the liquid is strained off the milk. It’s a nutritional powerhouse and there are many things that you can do with it.
For a while I made my own soya milk by hand. Soaking, then boiling the beans. But after a while I discovered soya milk makers. It’s great to get stuck in with the raw ingredients but it’s also a fairly labour intensive process (and messy too!). You can buy quite sophisticated soya milk makers now that allow you to make milk from all sorts of other foods like rice, almonds and coconut. And if you need soya milk in a hurry they can make it without having to soak the beans. See the Ethical Juicers site for products and info.
If you want to go for the traditional method I’ve included details below.
But back to the Okara. As I say it is rich in protein and such a waste if it is just put into the bin. Composting it is better but using it in a variety of dishes is best. The problem with Okara is that it is completely tasteless – rather like Tofu. So you need to flavour it to make the most of it. Now that I run The Barn Vegetarian Guest House I’ve been experimenting with ways to use the Okara to good effect for our guests. Added to many recipes it can lighten the texture (soups, gratins etc). And it can be preserved by keeping it in the fridge in an airtight container (up to a week) or freezing (three months or so).
I’ve included three recipes below but there’s a big range of options so after you have tried these let me know what you come up with…..
Oh – and if you just want to use Okara you can buy it from Oriental grocery stores in dried form. You have to reconstitute it by simmering in water.
Soya Milk
200g soya beans – fresh as possible, preferably organic and gm free
Method:
Soak the beans overnight in a bowl of water.
Drain and rinse then liquidize to a creamy consistency (1 cup beans to 1 cup water).
Bring 6 cups water to the boil in a large saucepan and then add the liquidized beans.
Bring to the boil 3 times.
Line a colander with muslin, place over a clean bowl and strain mixture through it.
Okara Croquettes
Ingredients:
60g Okara (left over from making one batch of soya milk above)
60g self raising flour
Half a small red onion peeled and finely chopped
1tsp vegan bouillon powder
1tsp mustard powder
1tbsp tamari sauce
Wholemeal breadcrumbs
Method:
Mix all ingredients except the breadcrumbs together then divide into walnut sized portions.
Coat in breadcrumbs and fry gently in groundnut oil until golden brown.
Serve with sprouted seeds and a sweet relish.
Okara Patties (Gluten Free)
Ingredients:
60g Okara (as above)
60g gram flour
3 spring onions peeled and chopped
1 chilli pepper deseeded and chopped
1tsp vegan bouillon powder
Method:
Mix all ingredients together
Divide into walnut sized pieces and fry gently in groundnut oil until golden yellow.
Serve with sweet chilli dipping sauce
Okara Crackers
Ingredients:
180g Okara
140g wholemeal flour
70g wheat germ
1tsp salt
8tbsp vegetable oil
3tbsp mashed tofu
Method:
Mix and knead all ingredients for 5 minutes
Roll out between two sheets of wax paper until 3mm thick
Place on a baking sheet and cook at 160deg C for 10 mins
Serve in place of any savoury crackers
In my last post I said I felt like 2008 was going to be a pivotal year and it certainly seems to be going that way. So far we’ve had a major announcement about increased European activity for renewable energy and China banning plastic bags. Nearer to home I was successful in getting a £3000 grant from the New Forest National Park Authority’s Sustainable Development Fund. This will allow me and other residents of the village where I live (Ashurst, New Forest) to really make inroads into plastic bag use. More about that as the Bags for the Future project progresses but if anyone wants to have some details of what we’re doing now just email me at bagsforthefuture@veggiebarn.net
This is only a short post but I wanted to end by pointing you in the direction of a couple of really interesting things from the Web. First is a great little review of vegan activity throughout 2007. Second is a site that an American visitor to The Barn told me about. The Vegan Culinary Experience is a terrific resource for those who want to extend their range of dishes and techniques. Enjoy!
Hope you all had a great Christmas and that you saw the new year in in style! Here at The Barn we had family and friends over for a New Year party with veggie (mostly vegan) food. Although most guests were omnivores there was very little food left by the end of the night and we got loads of comments about how tasty everything was despite the lack of meat. I took the opportunity to gently educate them as to the horrors of intensive livestock farming and, on the spot, at least one person decided to make a new year’s resolution to eat less meat….
Why am I telling you this? Well, I’ve had the feeling for some time now that 2008 is going to be a pivotal year. The awareness about environmental issues that has been building seems set to continue and increasingly when I talk to people they express the view that we really have got to start doing something positive.
I must admit that the news this morning (3rd Jan) was not a good start. Medway Council have voted to build a new coal fired power station and the NFU say the government is rumoured to be considering abandoning British agriculture in favour of imported food. However, despite this my personal resolution is to make change happen wherever I can.
A little while ago I wrote a piece about doing away with plastic bags. Well, locally the idea has really caught on and the New Forest National Park Authority and the Parish Council are very excited. Looks like we could be mounting a big campaign together and lots of people in the village have already said they have begun to change their habits because of what I have told them. I’ll keep you posted…..
We’ve also decided to make The Barn fully vegan to reflect the environmental benefits (amongst other things) of a plant based diet.
So that’s it – let’s make this year the year we all actually spread change by setting the example. And let’s tell people clearly about things they’d rather not hear; about meat production and the impact on the environment, about the rapidly diminishing time we’ve got to change things around etc etc
Do let me know your thoughts and what your revolutionary resolutions are. 2008 is going to be great!
Last week I went to hear David Bellamy speak at the Beaulieu Estate’s Countryside Education Trust. The title of his talk was ‘Stitching the World Back Together’ and it was a whistle stop tour of various of his activities over the years where he has used botany to repair environmental problems across the globe. There was some interesting stuff such as how to bring land back into use that had been made barren through the felling of trees which had allowed the salt in the ground to rise to the surface (this was on a low lying Atoll in the Indian Ocean).
But after his talk Prof Bellamy provided a question and answer session. This was where things got very ‘interesting’. I had known that he was somewhat outspoken on the subject of climate change but I was amazed at what he came up with. He started by asserting that there was not really a problem at all. The world has actually been cooling down since 1998 according to ‘The Jolly Green Giant’ (the title of his autobiography). In addition, he said, CO2 was not to blame for climate change. CO2 was actually a really good thing. If anything it was water vapour that caused high temperatures. On top of that Polar Bears were not having a hard time – their numbers were increasing rapidly.
Prof Bellamy laid much of the blame for misinformation at the foot of the BBC and while acknowledging that oil would eventually ran out he said that we really shouldn’t take much notice of the merchants of doom who talk of an impending man-made catastrophe.
Although there were some in the audience who were concerned by his approach (one person, a science teacher, asked what message he had for young people as the current curriculum differed somewhat from the world according to Bellamy) most seemed amused and even heartened by what he said. He got quite a laugh when saying that it was cold outside and so whatever happened to the idea of global warming! (Bear in mind this was November in the middle of the New Forest and the air temperature was hovering around zero degrees C).
Now, I’ve always been a supporter of free speech and believe that we should look into all sides of a problem before coming to a conclusion. But the fact is that 99% of the world’s scientific community is agreed on what’s happening and why. There has not been one peer reviewed serious paper that disputes the majority conclusion. The real problem continues to be that we don’t want to believe it and we’ll cling on to any shred of ‘evidence’ that we can use to justify carrying on as before. There’s little enough being done already without the likes of Prof Bellamy bolstering inaction. It’s really not what the planet needs right now is it?
If you take a walk around any road where you live I’d be amazed if you didn’t pass several plastic bags lying in the ditch, on the pavement or stuck in the hedge. Not surprising really. In the UK, between us all, we use around 17 billion plastic bags each year. Just counting those freely handed out by the supermarkets we each get through around 290.
When I say ‘get through’ what I really mean is mostly we take them home then throw them away. The average use time of a supermarket plastic bag is about 12 minutes. And then what? UK citizens recycle approximately 1 in 200 of the bags they use. And the rest? Well, scientists estimate that it will take over 400 years for a plastic bag to degrade. It’s a sobering thought that since the dawning of the age of plastic in the 1950’s almost everything that’s been produced is still here on the planet (we recycle only around 3.5% of plastic packaging).
Disposed of plastic bags and other plastic packaging is everywhere. It chokes landfill sites and litters the environment affecting and killing around 100,000 land and marine animals each year. It is estimated that almost every seabird now has some plastic in its stomach. One Fulmar found in Belgium recently had 1603 pieces inside it.
The resources used making plastic are enormous. 8% of the world’s oil production goes into plastic manufacturing. Plastic production is increasing by 3.5% a year. So it will have doubled by 2027 unless something is done.
And many things can be done. Paying careful attention to our individual plastic habits is one – always using re-usable bags for shopping etc. But I’ve also been struck by the action taken by Modbury in Devon. Modbury became the first town in Europe to become a plastic bag free community. Now 50 other UK towns, villages and cities (Bristol included) are taking steps to follow suit. You can get lots more information by going to www.plasticbagfree.com
If there was enough community based interest it would be relatively easy for many others to join this process. Maybe together we can make a small but significant difference to our communities and their environment.
According to a report in yesterday’s Guardian (29 Oct 2007) 500,000 lambs are about to be slaughtered. Most of them will simply be incinerated but some will be ‘rendered’ (lovely term) into biodiesel. The reason? Well apparently due to movement restrictions imposed as a result of the Foot and Mouth outbreak (whatever happened to that by the way?) the lambs cannot be moved off the hillsides in Wales and Scotland. The grass there is getting thin and the adult sheep need what’s left to build up their strength to have more offspring.
There is a market for ‘light lamb’ as they call it – this is whole roast young lamb in less euphemistic terminology. People in many European countries like it but there’s not a market in the UK. Because of the movement restrictions the animals cannot be taken to the places where they could be eaten.
The result is mass culling with some being used to provide bio-diesel. It’s an appalling prospect and yet another example of the consequences of industrial farming. It also raises some interesting issues over the future market for biodiesel. How many meat eaters, never mind vegetarians and vegans would be happy knowing that innocent creatures such as these are powering their vehicles?
Bet you didn’t know that did you? Well this is just one of the ‘fascinating’ items to be found on a site that was brought to my attention last week. If you want to find out what some people think about vegetarians then look no further than www.vegetariansareevil.com
For me the site shows just how misunderstood the concept of not eating meat is by many. I’m not saying for a minute that what’s there is representative of the majority view but it’s easy to forget that a lot of people find it hard to get their head round what it’s all about. And as for veganism, well I daren’t think what goes on in the minds of those who find the Vegetarians are Evil site of interest! The other day I was asked by a friend, in all sincerity, what we, at The Barn feed vegans for breakfast. He’s an intelligent guy who has worked in higher education for many years but the principles behind vegansim were so far off his mental map that he really couldn’t think what ‘ordinary’ food there could be. Have you had any recent examples of this? I’d love to hear about them……
I know there’s a regular award for the most imperfect product – so here’s my nomination for the 2007 competition.
A while ago saw an ad on the TV for a soya milk tropical fruit drink (‘Adez’ is its name). Looked very appealing so when I saw it in the supermarket I checked it out. ‘Dairy free fruit drink’ it said…..
I was on the point of dropping a carton of it into the trolley when I spotted in the small print ‘not suitable for vegetarians’. What? Yes really!
The carton revealed that some additive or whatever was derived from animal bi-products. But there was also a jolly bit of text urging me to contact their Customer Careline if I had any queries because they wanted to respond to any questions I may have about the product.
So I found the website – a sub-division of Unilever http://www.unilever.co.uk/ourbrands/foods/adez.asp. It even goes on about soya being a great alternative to animal protein. I completed an email form to ask why they didn’t make the product vegetarian and was told by the automated response that they ‘were glad I’d got my complaint off my chest and now I could relax and wait for their reply’.
I’m glad I didn’t hold my breath. That was three months ago and not a peep out of them. Honestly – how daft can you get!
Do you have any similar examples of the totally unnecessary inclusion of animal products in foods and/or poor explanations of why?
Time was when you knew where you stood in about what the major political parties stood for. Generally speaking they were on different sides of the fence and you could more or less predict what they would say about the big issues.
Not now.
Last week saw Gordon Brown entertaining Baroness Thatcher at number 10 and highlighting the similarities between them both. And the Tories published their ‘blueprint for a green world’ which calls, amongst other things, for higher taxes on polluters, changes to electrical goods to remove the standby option.
So what’s happening, is it a good thing and who are we to support? I found myself, somewhat incredulously, nodding in agreement as I read a piece by John Gummer (yes - he of the force-feeding beef burgers to his children in public to ‘prove’ they were safe!). He wrote in The Observer last Sunday “If we are to create a way of living that one planet can sustain then water, waste, transport and energy, as well as farming, food, fishing and the built environment – have to be thought of as a whole”. He’s right of course. We can’t go on treating things as if they are in separate silos if we are to really reduce the damage we are doing to the environment.
It’s what I was trying to say in my last piece about the way some campaign groups are mounting blinkered campaigns. Constitutionally the Vegetarian Society can’t really campaign on environmental issues and Friends of the Earth can’t endorse vegetarianism (with its attendant benefits for the planet) because that’s not what they are there for.
It seems to me that there’s got to be a greater convergence of thought about climate change and the environment. It’s time to dismantle the barriers between different groups and promote a single message. Precious time is being wasted on political point scoring and inter-organisational battles. Let’s act holistically.
I sense a groundswell of opinion that wants action but it’s being squashed by political and organisational inertia.
What do you think? Is this pie in the sky stuff?
I’ll finish with another quote from an unlikely source - “We do not have this world freehold, but on a full repairing lease” (M Thatcher).
I’ve come across several examples recently of large campaigning groups who seem to me to be tailoring their messages to suit their membership and ignoring what they consider to be inconvenient truths.
It is becoming apparent to anyone who is interested that there is a deep link between what we eat (particularly in the west) and the rapid degradation of the planet we all live on. The UN report ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’ tells us that the worldwide meat and dairy industry is responsible for a lot more carbon emissions than global transport (18% as opposed to 13%). The press picked up on this and there have been various informative items across the media. Coupled with CO2 emissions is the gross inefficiency of meat and dairy production. For example it takes roughly 100 times as much water to produce a kg of beef compared to a kilo of grain and the space required to raise cattle etc is hugely out of proportion to what is needed for food crops. In short meat and dairy farming in its present form is simply unsustainable. Even the government, in the form of DEFRA is saying that the biggest single action an individual can take to help combat climate change is change to a plant based (vegan) diet.
Various groups have launched campaigns to raise awareness of the issue. Naturally The Vegan Society and Viva! are fully endorsing the message. But not all ‘the usual suspects’ are really pushing the message home. The Vegetarian Society, whilst encouraging more people to go veggie, don’t even suggest a re-think about how much dairy they eat. And Friends of the Earth, despite its membership voting at its AGM to ‘promote a plant based diet’ say nothing at all about this in their latest magazine ‘Earthmatters’.
Why is this? Are those in charge for some reason frightened that such ‘radical’ ideas might upset their membership? Or are they just not prepared to campaign outside of their ‘comfort zones’? Maybe someone could explain……
A small item appeared in the press a week or so ago about some curious research carried out by a New Zealand university. The research looked at attitudes on relationships amongst the vegan community. It found that many vegans were so turned off by the thought of consuming animals and animal products that they wouldn’t dream of having a physical or intimate relationship with an omnivore of the opposite sex. They coined the term vegansexual to describe such people.
Having been happily married for many years to someone who shares my own views on eating meat it hasn’t been an issue that’s cropped up with me. But I did start to think how, if I was single, I’d feel.
At The Barn we often have guests to stay where one partner in a couple is vegan/veggie and the other is not. Booking in with us is often described as ‘a treat’ for the veggie because most of the time they stay in non-exclusively veggie places where the catering for them is usually indifferent. So ‘mixed’ relationships clearly work and often there’s give and take – but it must be a strain if for no other reason than having to cook separate meals all the time.
I wondered whether the NZ research findings extended to vegetarians and I’d be interested in your thoughts and experiences……are you a vegan or veggiesexual
Environmental campaigners such as the great George Monbiot regularly tell us there are three things we should do to save the planet – “Don’t’ shop in supermarkets, don’t shop in supermarkets and don’t shop in supermarkets.” They’re right, of course. But in today’s western countries it’s a pretty tall order. Why? Because they are so convenient, have loads of choice and above all they are cheap (and getting cheaper).
We all love a bargain and so seeing attractive products in such abundance is hard to resist. But behind the cheery (now eco-friendly) façade supermarket companies are savagely capitalist and they are damaging predators. They exterminate competition and they squeeze their suppliers so hard that they can easily put small businesses out of action. I was talking to the wonderful people who run Beanies Health Foods the other day. They supply us at The Barn with Frys vegetarian products and B’Nice Ice Cream. They told me that the conditions they would have to meet to get their products into any major supermarket would simply bankrupt them. To get stocked in a national Health Food Shop chain (no names to protect the guilty) they had to send out £44,000 worth of goods to them for every one of their store managers to try. And even then it was a case of only ordering at the individual manager’s discretion.
Elsewhere to satisfy our desire for perfect vegetables the supermarkets pay the growers next to nothing then spend a lot of money making them look good. There was the case recently of Prince Charles’ organic carrots being rejected because they were too irregularly shaped. He blew the whistle on what they were doing. Before they stopped buying from him the supermarket in question would buy the carrots in Gloucester, then ship them to Peterborough for ‘polishing’(!!) then truck them back to a distribution centre in Bristol where they would be sent to shops in the area labelled ‘local produce’.
This entry could turn into a major thesis/rant so I must stop now. Maybe I’ll writer another piece about the environmental cost of supermarkets another time. But I’ll finish with a plea. I wouldn’t expect anyone to boycott supermarkets completely (I don’t) but do please try to reduce your reliance on them. If there’s a local greengrocer or independent health food shop then support them all you can otherwise they might not be there long. Do let me know your thoughts on this issue please…..thanks.
"I'm so glad we can start taking the animals straight to the slaughterhouse again."
So said a beef farmer on the news this evening as the government announced a relaxation on the movement of livestock in the wake of the latest Foot and Mouth outbreak.
I can’t sort out what I think about all this. On the one hand there are people whose livelihoods are threatened. People who stand to see businesses that they’ve spent years building up destroyed in an instant. On the other we have a situation where innocent animals are being slaughtered as a precaution against the spread of Foot and Mouth. A disease which, as far as I can understand, is no worse for them than a case of mild flu and which seemingly causes no threat to humans if they eat the meat afterwards.
Journalists seem to get even more melodramatic than usual at times like this and the hypocrisy of the general populous gets even stronger than usual. “Their fate was sealed as soon as the test results came back” said one. As if their fates hadn’t been sealed the day they were born to be bred for human consumption!
Apparently TV viewers were so shocked at seeing pictures of pyres of burning bodies in 2001 that the rules on disposing of dead animals had to be changed. If they could only see what goes on in the abattoirs up and down the UK then maybe the rules on eating dead animals might be changed too. Foot and Mouth brings the whole meat industry closer to people and they don’t like what they see. Maybe some good might come of the latest outbreak – or have the carnivores got short memories and once out of sight it’s out of mind again………..
A question that crops up quite often at The Barn is “why don’t vegans eat eggs?”. At first sight it does seem a little difficult. After all chickens lay eggs naturally don’t they and if they’re well looked after, given plenty of space, maybe organic feed, then surely there’s no problem…..it’s humane isn’t it?
Well actually the reality of the egg production business is quite different.
To put this in context, egg laying hens are having their female reproductive systems exploited for our selfish culinary enjoyment. All male chicks born for egg-laying facilities are useless to the industry and they are typically killed, legally, by suffocation or being thrown alive into rendering machines for feed. As a hen’s fertility wanes, industry replaces her years before her natural lifespan would end. We had a couple of Black Rock hens in our garden a few years ago and they lived happily for several years after they had stopped laying. In fact when we asked people how long a chicken would naturally live for no one actually knew because they are always killed when they have served their purpose.
Commercially, “spent hens” are frequently transported many miles away, in all kinds of extreme weather, and suffer a horrific death – destined for meat-eaters.
If the tables were turned and we were the subjugated species we would never label any part of this kind of life “humane.” To live a truly compassionate life (not to mention far more sustainable), then learn to cook delicious vegan cuisine. It’s easy and very rewarding in many ways
Like many people I have been concerned with the damage the human race is inflicting on our planet for a long time now. Now, the daily bombardment in the media is such that no one can really say they don’t know about the issue. But there are several things that bother me about the impact of the current message being pumped out.
First, although the case for the climate change deniers seems increasingly flimsy there is still a significant number of people who think that the prognosis for disaster has been exaggerated. A recent poll saw that some 60%+ felt this way. So these people are presumably less likely to take any personal action to limit their environmental impact.
Second, there seems to be a view that even if one is responsible for churning out huge amounts of carbon emissions you can make it all better by just paying into a carbon offset scheme – the environmental equivalent of a confessional with a priest! Such schemes have been recently under scrutiny and most of them are seriously flawed – even to the extent that they seem fraudulent to me.
What none of this appears to address is the undeniable fact that we’re living on a planet with finite resources. Unless we slow down our consumption the oil will run out pretty soon and other precious resources will become exhausted. We need to move from a message that simply bangs on about how we can limit the worst effects of climate change to one that talks about sustainability. The two are inextricably linked but no one’s really talking about the second issue. We have to buy less crap and wean ourselves off this stupid notion of retail therapy. One of the reasons that China is opening so many new power stations is because we, in the west, are hooked on all the electronic gizmos and gadgets that the Chinese produce.
So next time you’re browsing around the shops or surfing the Net for more things to buy just ask yourself ‘Do I really need this?’ and ‘Will I really feel better if I have it?’
I think we have to scale down our obsession with material goods or we’ll be facing up to living in a pre-industrial society sooner than any of us want.
Am I going over the top on this?
Modern industrial scale farming has produced some incredibly inhumane methods to satisfy the public's demand for cheaper and cheaper meat/animal products. Some of the worst are, thankfully, on the way out. Examples of this include the veal crate and the exceptionally cruel methods of pig production involving farrowing crates.
Battery hens tend to get the sympathy of most people. Even ardent carnivores prefer the idea of eggs from free range birds and indeed the Vegetarian Society insists on their use in any products they endorse. But very little is heard about one of the most chilling 'farming' methods for extracting maximum yields from dairy cows. 'Zero Grazing' refers to the way in which these unfortunate beasts are reared and worked. They live in vast concrete sheds without access to the open air and natural grass. As if living in an artificial environment under cover all the time isn’t bad enough constantly walking on concrete leads to widespread hoof problems including frequent abscesses. I read that at least one in three animals treated this way is lame at any one time. I also read that around two thirds of milk produced in the UK comes from zero grazed cows. It's just one of the reasons for my adoption of a vegan diet.
If you don't want to take that step, one way of being sure that you don't support this unpleasant system is to buy organic milk, cheese, butter etc. This guarantees that at least the animals have lived outdoors in something approaching humane conditions and you might have thought this would become a standard that the Vegetarian Society would have endorsed. But when we applied to add The Barn Vegetarian Guest House to the Vegetarian Society's Food and Drink Guild I was surprised to see nothing about it in the list of approved ingredients.
I asked why there were such strict rules over even which brand of free range eggs we could use but nothing (even by way of gentle encouragement) about organic milk products. I realise that there has to be a limit to the specification but the effective support of zero grazing seemed to be out of line with what the Society stands for.
The answer I got was that it would simply be too difficult for the Society and too costly for producers to require a switch to organic dairy goods. So much for principles!
Where do you stand on all this? I'd love to hear from you.......
For many years now we’ve used a variety of environmentally friendly products. We now take the opportunity of running The Barn Vegetarian Guest House as a way of testing out new ones and passing on information about them to our guests.
It’s a sad fact that so often many of the products just don’t live up to their toxic counterparts. Planet friendly Bleach, for example, is a poor relation to the traditional heavy duty stuff we all generally use. And distilled white vinegar really doesn’t shift limescale in the same way that the chemical version does.
So it’s wonderful when you find new eco products that are not only as good but sometimes better than their damaging cousins. Let me share with you a couple of examples. We’ve recently converted to the Enjo cleaning range. Enjo use sophisticated fibre technology to make a wide range of cloths and cleaners that work brilliantly. To be honest I don’t know how they work so well – it’s a bit of eco magik like the lump of stainless steel we have in our dishwasher that stops it smelling. But Enjo saves huge amounts of chemicals, water and packaging and the results are really impressive. True, the initial outlay is a lot but the cloths (a very superior version of the e-cloth) last for years and can be washed over and over. So overall Enjo probably saves money in the long run.
Another great little gadget we’ve found is Interflush. This was invented by a wonderful man from Yorkshire as a way of dramatically cutting down on water usage. It allows you to control pretty precisely the amount of water you use each time you flush the loo. It only works with siphon cisterns (those with a front handle rather than a push button). We’re on a water meter and our bill has reduced by around 20% since installing these devices. So hundreds of litres of water have been saved and the Interflushes have more than paid for themselves.
Do you have any gadgets, products or ideas to share?
A couple of weeks ago my partner and I attended an awards event for the Hampshire and IOW Sustainable Business Partnership. The Barn Vegetarian Guest House had been shortlisted as a finalist in the Small Business Category. As is customary we were asked if we had any dietary requirements and I told them that we were both vegan. A week or so before the event I double checked that we were going to be catered for and was assured that the hotel (a four star 'posh' country hotel) said they were fine about doing a vegan dinner.
The event was disappointing. It seemed to revolve around the sponsors who were largely big businesses trying to clothe themselves in a green mantle by supporting the awards. The programme for the evening had acres of print about the sponsors (12 pages in all) while the shortlisted businesses (around 15 or so) got two pages. We were also given the most astonishingly poor meal. We had a starter of melon with some very sweet berries followed by a small white wrap with some red peppers inside and a dry 'salad' of lettuce and tomatoes. Dessert was fruit salad in sugar water. No protein to speak of and no real thought or imagination. And hardly sustaining!
I suppose it's what we might have expected but it's just typical of the mainstream catering industry. Vegetarians are often tolerated but usually fobbed off with a vegetable lasagne or mushroom stroganoff. Vegans are generally a step too far and, if they're lucky, get offered the kind of meal your average rabbit would enjoy. You then get charged a similar amount to people who have tucked into several ounces of steak!
I'd love to hear about the worst meal you've been subjected to in a restaurant or hotel.....
Oh - and no, we didn't win. But just as well really the sponsors of the Small Business Award were the international space and civil defence firm that own the company making the European Airbus - how appropriate......
I never cease to be amazed by how easily people can ignore facts that stare them in the face. You know, like cooing over the baby lambs and calves then tucking into a plateful of one or the other without a qualm. I don't know what it is, selfishness, lack of thought or just lack of any real principles. But I hear it all the time and when you point out the inconsistencies in what they are saying and try to educate them about the real story behind what they are eating they tend to get angry and say 'I don't want to know'. And I think that's probably it - as Al Gore has it it's an inconvenient truth.
Another big example of an inconvenient truth is the link between our environment and how we feed oursleves. In all the information (and let's face it there's been a lot lately) being pumped out on climate change I've seen loads of concern about flying and driving but precious little about the contribution of the meat industry to the sorry mess we're in. According to the UN the meat and dairy industry contributes a whopping 18% of the world's carbon emissions compared to transport's 13%). But are we advised to cut down or cut out our meat intake to save the planet like we're advised to change our lightlbulbs and dig out our bicycles? Well - we might be soon. Go to http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=42256 to see a heartening story indicating that that advice may well be on its way.
Is this the start of a breakthrough? Will people take notice? What do you think?
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