Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
who have opted for a vegan diet have, to some degree, transcended this dilemma. But a
vegan diet, laudable though it may be for the individual, is neither sensible nor attainable
for society as a whole.
To address this dilemma, I propose, as an alternative, the 'default livestock diet', not be-
cause it is necessarily the most sensible or the most admirable, but because it is comparat-
ively easily defined. A vegan diet is one without animal products; the industrial meat diet
advanced by the FAO is one that allows for anything that the consumer can afford and the
producer can supply. In the muddy spectrum between, there are not many secure footholds,
but the default livestock diet can be reasonably clearly defined as one that provides meat,
dairy and other animal products which arise as the integral co-product of an agricultural
system dedicated to the provision of sustainable vegetable nourishment. It is the section
AB, the lower end of the hockey stick. As such it provides, not an orthodoxy to which we
should aspire, but a benchmark by which we can assess the sustainability and the environ-
mental justice of what we eat.
However, the term 'default livestock' is an unprepossessing one. As one livestock farmer
Bill Grayson told me, it has 'a pejorative feel about it', which is perhaps what the FAO
intended. The original meaning of the term is 'failure of something, want, defect' and one
adds 'I think we do need something more inspiring if we are to debate the issue success-
fully within the wider social context'.
Its true that advertising a pack of sausages as 'made from 100 per cent default pork' is
hardy likely to be a selling point. Despite toying with terms such as 'intrinsic', 'convivial'
and 'low impact', I struggled to find any word which succinctly conveys the meaning of
animal foods and services whose extent and nature is determined by the agricultural system
as a whole. While I was mulling this over, Tara Garnett, of the Food Climate Research Net-
work developed the very similar concept of livestock raised on 'ecological leftovers'. Gar-
nett's definition is tighter than mine, since she restricts it solely to 'pigs and poultry fed on
byproducts' and livestock reared on 'land unsuited for other agricultural purposes', where-
as I would opt for 'grassland not required for other agricultural purposes' (which allows for
livestock raised on rotated grassland). 'Ecological Leftovers' is a more explicit and easily
understood term than default; but on the other hand, a pack of sausages advertised as 'made
from 100 per cent leftover pork' is likely to be even harder to sell.
In the absence of any inspiration, I have settled for the word default, because I believe it
is now commonly understood in the meaning which it holds in the phrase 'default font' -
ie what happens automatically when we don't specify anything different - and that is how
the FAO intended it to be understood. A default is the natural outcome of a system when it
is not being overridden for any specific purpose.
