Misteaks of eating meat

Season 3, Episode 4

Let's get into this...

Summary:

Meat in itself isn’t bad for the environment but it’s how we eat it. The industry is full of overconsumption and is over industrialised.

For instance, making space for cows to graze and feed causes deforestation and often the trees are burnt emitting greenhouse gases rather than the trees absorbing them.

Reducing meat intake has a huge environmental impact.

You can eat meat well by going to the butchers, less packaging, no plastic, it’s been sourced locally and is not over industrialised from a local farm, where as in Tesco the meat is coming from big industrialised farms with plastic packaging and emitting co2 in its transport from across the world to get to Tesco.

You can often get tied up in knots as you can choose organic bananas but then that are imported or you can get plastic free ones which aren’t organic, always seems to be a catch, but Bryony says her solution has been to eat seasonally. Eg. She doesn’t eat strawberries in December.

Eating seasonally means that you can eat food that is home grown at the time avoiding importing and in the UK, we have better work regulations, so you are supporting better businesses.

Reducing consumption is the best way forward

3 things we learnt:

Whilst beef it is the worst meat on a world scale, in the UK because our environment is so conducive to beef eg. we don’t import grain, we have the land to feed cattle and they are grass fed, it's actually better than eating beef from abroad.

Red tractor labelling - certifies food comes from Britain so adheres to Britain’s work regulations but they rarely go above minimal legislation

RSPCA labelling - they go into farms and push to regulate welfare for animals

Soil association labelling - will only certify things that are free range, and check animals have shade and shelter outside.

The best eggs to buy are free range and organic, that means the chickens aren’t kept in small cages, and don’t have the beaks cut off, and have space outside!!

Challenge:

Eat seasonally for a week!

Or check out a local green grocer or butcher