THE GREAT DIVIDE - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 257

15
T HE G REAT D IVIDE
The symbolism of meat-eating is never neutral.
To himself, the meat-eater seems to be eating life.
To the vegetarian, he seems to be eating death.
Mary Midgely
W hen I have asked vegans what they think Britain would look like if it went vegan,
I have several times received the reply: 'Oh! I've never really thought about that. What an
interesting question.' If I give them a bit of time to think, they come up with: 'More trees;
and more wildlife.'
If some vegans have never really thought about this matter, it is probably because they
live in a city, and have never had to think about land use at all. Yet the strongest environ-
mental argument for veganism is that grazing land could be better used for something else.
A comparison of the vegan and livestock scenarios in Chapter 9 shows that the difference in
arable land use is not enormous, but the vegan options release huge areas of grassland for
other uses. While the inefficiency of meat is a good reason for eating less animal food, it
is not a reason for stopping eating it altogether, and in one sense efficiency dictates that we
should eat animals grazed on land which cannot be more productively used. Vegans are on
safer ground when they argue not that grazing is inefficient, but that there are better things
we could do with less fertile and accessible land, of which the two most obvious are wildlife
conservation and forestry.
This was what tipped Edward Goldsmith towards the vegetarians (though it didn't per-
suade him to stop eating meat) when, as chairman, he summed up The Ecologist debate of
1976:
Abandonment of meat-eating would undoubtedly free vast areas of marginal land,
at present used for rough grazing, for forestry and wildlife conservation. This is indeed
a very alluring prospect, especially in view of the terrible shortage of trees in this coun-
try and the equally unacceptable shortage of nature reserves … Our meat eaters ten-