Letter to the Grocer

In getting to “the meat of the issue” Tim Lang asks how we can consume less meat and dairy (Second Opinion 28th November 2009). He ignores efforts of many years by NGOs to answer this question. VEGA Research, for example, publishes weekly recipes and menus online that are meat- and dairy-free, with nutritional analysis that exceeds present labelling requirements.

There is huge potential for the food industry to offer kinder, fairer and more sustainable choices to the consumer. The enormous (subsidized at the moment) wastage and distress due to feeding crops to animals, epidemic disease and culling are enough to instigate better choices based on sound science .

Prevarication on this issue allows further delays to authoritative guidance to individual action by the public.  We already have the opportunity in Copenhagen demonstrations to stage a meatless and dairy-free day that budges the food industry, food writers, and politicians so that they can mount a stimulating boycott leading to healthier and kinder choices in outputs and fiscal adjustments that are urgently needed.

         
Good wishes, Alan Long