FOOTLOOSE FOOD - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 143

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F OOTLOOSE F OOD
The bearded goats,
The toosie stots
An' a' the braxy carcases;
It's a' the Markiss's
The land is a' the Markiss's.
James Mactavish 1901, as adapted by Dougie Maclean.
' T he developing world's undernourished millions are now in direct competition with
the developed world's livestock,' says the Vegan Society's website. Indeed they are, at least
with the developed world's grain-fed livestock; but this is a question of economic equity,
rather than an inherent problem with livestock. The world's undernourished are also in com-
petition for land with the developed world's chocolate guzzlers, soap users, cotton wearers,
motorists and holiday makers.
To make their case more effectively, proponents of veganism need to be tackling a differ-
ent question: are the world's undernourished in competition with their own livestock? Would
people in poor countries do better if they got rid of their animals, and consumed the grain
which they fed to them?
We are encouraged to think of meat as food for the rich, and of meat consump tion as an
indicator of wealth. Much of the literature on the environmental impact of meat homes in on
the fact that meat is a means of directing nutrients towards the stockyards and paunches of
the well-to-do. Words like 'pecuniary' (from the Latin pecus meaning cattle), 'chattel' and
'capital' (same origin as cattle, from caput , the Latin for head) 'fee' (from the same root as
vieh , German for cattle) and 'stock' remind us of the close association between the keeping
of animals and the accumulation of property.
But these words only reflect one kind of property: liquid, mobile, transferable assets. 1
Another set of words, such as 'stake', 'domain' and 'territory', whose origin had nothing
to do with animals, evokes an altogether different kind of property: landed property, what
North Americans call 'real estate'.