A rush back to the Middle Ages

A group of Animal Rebellion activists scaled a government building in London last month, demanding “a plant-based transition”. According to the activists, the UK government must end all subsidies for the dairy and meat industries and instead subsidise a shift to what appears to be an overwhelmingly vegan diet for all.

Then, the menu of the COP26 delegates became the target of attacks from climate activists saying there was too much meat and dairy on it with the same group from above, Animal Rebellion, saying “It’s like serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference.” This has become my new favourite simile, by the way.

As an incorrigible but tolerant meat eater I respect people’s dietary choices regardless of their motivations. I know vegans who are vegan to reduce their carbon footprint. I know vegans who are vegans because they feel better with this diet. And I also know that vegan was what most people were during the Middle Ages by force of circumstances. In fact, up until less than 200 years ago, a lot of people in the southeastern part of Europe were mostly vegan, still by force of circumstances. What these people weren’t, under those circumstances, was healthy, happy or longevous.

Meat-eating and milk-drinking does not ensure happiness, of course, far from it. But according to scientific studies galore—which I’m sure dedicated vegans would happily tear apart—it was meat eating (and meat’s easily absorbed proteins) that significantly contributed to the fast and explosive development of the human brain, leading us to where we are now. I would personally argue that where we are now is not really a happy place but it is quite far from where we started, which deserves objective appreciation whether we like it or not.

Yet meat-eating and milk-drinking, not to mention cheese-nibbling, all generate greenhouse gas emissions. As such, the logic behind the October protest action in London goes, it has no place in the brave new world of clean energy and harmony with nature. I am not being ironic, by the way. I’m sure a lot of these activists truly believe they are being brave — which they are — and that the future they envision will be much better than the present. As usual, however, this vision rests on limited information, so I’ll try to sketch a picture of how this plant-based, low-carbon world might actually look without googling any facts and figures because I’m saving those for later.

Today, billions of acres of arable land are being used to grow grains and plants. A lot of those are being grown for animal feed. The rest is for human consumption and biofuels. With the growing demand for biofuels amid the energy transition, millions more acres will need to be sown with corn and soybeans. If tens of millions of people turn vegan under pressure from activists and governments, we might need more millions of acres to grow food for them.

Sure, we could convert land used for growing animal feed to grow food for vegans but whether it would be enough is doubtful — vegans are, as humans, pickier about the variety of their meals than cows or chickens. If the activists’ vision spreads and more people are turned vegan, more land will be needed to grow food for them.

Now, with all my respect for back-to-nature enthusiasm, more land for food would mean higher fertiliser use to secure the sufficient supply of this food. Much as many would like to eat only organically grown produce, even today not every vegan can afford organic produce and with their numbers growing substantially per the AR vision, organic food will become even more expensive. In other words, if we all go vegan, we would become even more reliant on industrial farming and fertilisers than we are now, to the chagrin of those same activists, no doubt.

Now, emissions from animal farming will be gone but judging by the fast-growing popularity of plant-based meat substitutes, many vegans are not that opposed to the taste of meat as long as it doesn’t come from an actual animal. This, I expect, would mean a surge in meat substitute production. I’m not closely familiar with the process but I see it is an industrial process requiring heat. Now, this heat could probably come from wind and solar farms but with all the other things renewables will need to power in the brave new world, plant-based meat won’t be for everyone.

This brings me to the subject of nutrition and malnutrition. When an anemic vegan friend of mine was pregnant with each of her two boys, her doctors strongly advised her to add some animal-based protein to her diet to avoid trouble both for her and for the babies. As a rational human being, she followed the advice, adding eggs and some dairy products to her diet. Yet if we take chickens out of the food equation there will be no more eggs so we would need to rely on more substitutes for people like my friend.

When I myself was a new mother and still read child nutrition advice, I couldn’t help but notice experts are insistent on children not being raised vegan because of those easy-to-process proteins in meat and dairy products, not to mention eggs. Somewhat ironically, my daughter spent the first six or seven years of her life almost entirely on a vegan diet with a particular preference for rice and bread. As she grew, however, she started asking for meat and eggs. She still won’t have chicken in her soup but she would gladly munch on frankfurters, which I admit is not ideal but it’s better than rice and plain bread.

Back in the Middle Ages, most people didn’t have the luxury of choice when it came to their food. They ate what they grew and what they caught. Animal farming was nowhere near today’s scale, so meat, I imagine, was a rarity if you were poor, which was what most people were. I would not go as far as to make a connection between the availability of animal protein and health but I do know famine was common in those days and life expectancy was a lot shorter than it is today. Of course, there is a myriad of factors that have led to today’s longevity in developed economies but I would dare say availability of animal protein was among them.

Today, we have the means and the technology to make substitutes for pretty much all of that animal protein though I’m not sure about eggs. So if we’re going back to Middle Ages-style diets, we will be doing it a few rungs up. And this is where I see the catch. Making all these substitutes requires chemicals and energy. Making chemicals and energy requires, well, more energy. Even if we assume it will be all low-carbon, manufacturing the equipment for the generation of that energy will involve emissions. An absolute-zero scenario is implausible.

It would be interesting to have mathematicians develop a simulation of what vegan mainstreaming would look like in terms of arable land demand, fertiliser use, and nutrition levels. It would be interesting, if probably depressing, to see how many people would be forced to live on rice and plain bread not because they want it but because that’s all they can afford since there will be no more cheap industrially farmed chicken and equally cheap milk from industrially farmed cows. Judging by the difference in prices for the products in the vegan section of my local supermarket and the non-vegan sections, there would be many of those.

Author’s note: Pictured above the post — pork knuckles stewed with green cherry tomatoes and served with mashed potatoes.