Popular BBC children’s show Blue Peter has managed to enrage farmers by suggesting that kids can be ‘climate heroes’ by giving up meat for two weeks. Children could earn a green badge by taking a two-week pledge to become climate heroes by doing things like switching off appliances to save power, avoiding disposable plastics, planting pollinator-friendly plants and, heaven forbid, not eating meat.

Sheep farmer and BBC presenter Gareth Wyn Jones weighed in with a video posted to Facebook lambasting Blue Peter for not giving a “balanced” view of British farming. Meat industry organisations the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), Quality Meat Scotland, and Meat Promotion Wales wrote an open letter condemning Blue Peter for encouraging kids to eat less meat. Blue Peter has since watered down its wording on its website to suggest, according to the Independent, that kids choose “a couple of vegetarian options” during the two-week challenge. The page referring to food choices seems to have been taken down altogether, but a version from May 2020 is available to view on Archive.org - from ‘Tip 3: eat less meat’, attributed to environmentalist Matthew Shribman:

With nearly eight billion people in the world, and many of them eating meat every single day, Matthew believes that meat production is another of the biggest issues causing climate change. Perhaps you could make a few meat-free meals each week?

Was Blue Peter wrong to encourage children to try an animal-free diet? Or was it wrong to bow to pressure from the meat industry?

Meat’s climate impact

It is true that producing food from animal body parts has a significant greenhouse gas footprint and that a global shift to diets consisting mainly of plants is necessary to cut emissions. The response from animal farmers is that local grass-fed flesh is a better option than cutting it out altogether, since farming animals this way can help to store carbon in the soil.

But this ignores the fact that for everyone in Britain to keep eating as much meat as they like, particularly from cows or sheep, and for those animals to be grass-fed, would require far too much land. Agriculture takes up 71 per cent of our land, with only 20 per cent of that producing crops; the rest is used for farming animals. Globally, agriculture is already the primary driver of habitat destruction and biodiversity loss, so we need to use much less land to produce our food. 

Moreover, allowing land to rewild can be a much more powerful way of sequestering carbon in soil and vegetation than grazing it with animals that are then killed for food. Even if animals are grazed in the ‘holistic’ way popularised by Allan Savory, the amount of carbon stored in the soil wouldn’t be enough to offset the volume of greenhouse gases produced by raising the animals in the first place. You can watch Surge’s video on holistic grazing for a more in-depth analysis of why it won’t save the climate.

False narratives

Blue Peter’s critics resorted to some tired old myths to make their point. In his video, Wyn Jones perpetuates the false narrative that land can either produce crops or, if it can’t, it must be used to produce meat. But, as mentioned earlier, if less land were needed to produce food, more of it could be returned to nature. Reducing the number of animals being farmed for food could also create opportunities to reintroduce predators such as wolves to the UK. As long as most land is used to farm animals, conflict between farmers and such predators is inevitable, and it is the predators who will lose out.

Wyn Jones and the CEO of the National Beef Association both trotted out the old ‘vegetarian and vegan diets are worse because of air miles’ argument. But the climate impact of importing food from abroad is often overstated; transport accounts for a small portion of emissions from different types of food, especially compared to the emissions from meat and dairy production. A study looking at diets across the European Union found that food transport was responsible for only six per cent of emissions, but dairy, meat and eggs accounted for 83 per cent. This doesn’t mean a locally produced vegetable isn’t lower in emissions than one flown in from South America, but even that imported one still has a lower climate impact than a cut of locally produced flesh. It is also odd that animal farmers and the meat industry assume that all vegans and vegetarians survive only on imported avocados and quinoa. There is no evidence that this is the case, and such foods are not consumed exclusively by vegans and vegetarians. 

Won’t someone please think of the children!

A column in the Herald accused Blue Peter of “targeting young impressionable minds to push an anti-meat agenda”. This is pretty rich considering how children have animal products pushed on them from a young age. Milk has been subsidised in schools with the explicit aim of encouraging “children to consume milk and milk products and develop a lasting habit of doing so,” while advice from governments that milk is essential for our health is more marketing ploy than fact. The AHDB manages a ‘food education programme’ which produces resources for schools so children can be taught about cuts of meat and how animals are raised for food. These resources certainly don’t include information on any of the negative impacts of the industry.

If Blue Peter’s critics want to see the show give a balanced view of British farming, then it would also have to include the fact that an increasing amount of British meat, particularly chicken, is produced in factory farms, which are a nightmare for animals and a disaster for the environment. It would have to acknowledge that feeding everyone on grass-fed animals would require taking away what little land remains for nature. Balance would also be interrogating why some animals are deemed fine to kill while others are not. 

When Blue Peter suggested children give up meat for a mere few meals over a fortnight, it had climate science on its side. It had compassion on its side. It didn’t even try to defend its position. It’s a shame it lost its nerve.

Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.

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