Emma really hasn’t discovered the truth behind Red Tractor
Emma really hasn’t discovered the truth behind Red Tractor | Credit: Animal Equality
Red Tractor’s latest friendly face of YouTube, the ultra-relatable “busy mum” ‘Emma’, is on a mission to discover all the wonders of UK farming. it is excellent marketing, but yet another attempt to improve the rapidly sinking public image of animal farming.
Red Tractor has an active YouTube channel and it is quite a treat gathering a whopping 1,700 subscribers in the decade they’ve been putting out videos. UK farming’s flagship welfare labeller is on a mission to reverse the negative image of ‘red meat’ farming, in particular, an industry that has had its fair share of negative publicity in recent years - and with good reason too.
The disproportionate impact of animal agriculture on the environment, public health and the emergence of pandemic-causing zoonotic diseases is well-reported and we believe the message is getting through. What is proving a more difficult pill to swallow is the ethics of raising animals, only to kill them needlessly and against their will regardless of how they are treated.
Step in Red Tractor, one of the foremost recognisable welfare labels along with RSPCA Assured. It is their job to reassure consumers that the choices they’re making are sound, whenever they see that friendly little red tractor in the supermarket flesh aisles. But countless undercover or covertly filmed exposes over recent years, not just from Surge but Viva, Animal Equality and Animal Justice Project to name but a few, have tarnished the caring image of animal farming in the UK and Red Tractor, whose standards were apparently in place at many of the farms investigated.
The most recent series of Red Tractor YouTube videos centres around ‘Emma’, the marketing team’s friendly face and poster child of consumer relatability. Red Tractor wants to speak to people just like ‘Emma’. Busy parents with lots of kids, who want to make informed food choices. The parent angle is a good one as it focuses the narrative on nutrition ahead of anything else, though the environment and sustainability would seem to be deemed somewhat important. Welfare standards always get a mention, if they weren’t important Red Tractor would be redundant after all, but it is certainly not the foremost topic discussed.
Whenever welfare is mentioned, it is always the relativistic argument. As professor Michael Lee, deputy vice-chancellor of Harper Adams University, which specialises in the agricultural and rural sector, said in the latest video entitled Emma Discovers The Truth Behind Red Meat:
“If we think about how the UK has set up in terms of its livestock sector, they are predominately grass-based, there's an embedded value in terms of welfare and natural behaviour, and we're really focusing on environmental parameters.
“So, for example, the NFU’s view is on moving towards net-zero for agriculture by 2040. And it is very hard to say that other countries are not moving in a similar direction - they are, of course they are - but embedded within those values is what's been driven by UK agriculture, and I think we just really need to support that.”
There’s a lot there to unpack in and of itself, not including the rest of the video, but we’ll get there shortly. For starters, according to the Humane Slaughter Association - a pro-animal farming charity - we slaughter around one billion land animals every year and of those fewer than 20 million are sheep and cows, meaning that approximately 980 million are intensive, factory-farmed animals and not grass-fed or outdoor reared. Add to this the fact that the UK had around 800 US-style mega farms just three years ago, with permits to build new ones frequently being submitted, according to the Guardian - this very much contradicts the claim that the UK values and prioritises animal welfare and natural behaviours.
Further, drilling down into the point Lee raises about supporting UK animal farming because we have ‘leading standards’, it is the same welfare argument recited ad nauseam, and really all it means is that UK farming is the lesser of many evils. That would be somewhat valid if eating animals was essential for most people in the UK and developed world, but it isn’t, despite Red Tractor speaking to us via the mouths of ‘Emma’ and the professor to convince us otherwise.
“...the UK had around 800 US-style mega farms just three years ago, with permits to build new ones frequently being submitted - this very much contradicts the claim that the UK values and prioritises animal welfare and natural behaviours.”
Earlier in the video, Lee admits that a healthy plate of food would be mostly plant-based and by quite a proportion, though of course, he says there has to be a bit of animal-based food or the video would be pointless. Lee goes on to quote the WHO’s recommendation of a certain amount of animal product per day, though laughs off that it is in fact a restrictive limit of 70g rather than a recommended minimum amount, like say fruits and vegetables for which there is no upper limit. We can eat as much plant-based food as we want, but when it comes to flesh, eggs and dairy, “too much of a good thing is not a good thing” according to Lee… cue the nervous laughter.
Lee’s claims that animal products provide the correct balance of nutrients such as iodine, zinc and various amino acids aka protein can be roundly debunked with leading health experts maintaining that a vegan or plant-based diet is appropriate at all stages of life. His next claim that animal products increase the bioavailability of the nutrients present in the plants eaten together with flesh and so on has some basis in fact, but is hugely oversimplified and ignores that vegans simply have to plan diets properly, as with any diet, and that the nutrients in animal products can actually be too bioavailable.
Take for example heme iron from animal flesh, as opposed to non-heme iron from leafy green vegetables and legumes. The body cannot limit how much heme iron it absorbs, which may be linked to cancer, stroke, heart disease, and metabolic syndrome, whereas we have a mechanism for limiting non-heme iron. There’s also phosphorus which is thought to always be bad for us to ingest and is present in both plant and animal-based food, but is less bioavailable from plants by a long way - plus phosphate is added to many processed meat-based products like sausages:
Whether it is ‘Emma Asks’ or ‘Emma Discovers’, ‘Emma’ never quite gets to the actual truth. With sadness, we note that her young son Jackson is leveraged by Red Tractor marketing HQ to help perpetuate their myths. But we wonder if ‘Emma’ would ever show Jackson the real truth behind Red Tractor, and what it is they’re trying to distract us from. Would Emma take Jackson to a slaughterhouse and tell him it is ok because after Peppa Pig’s throat is cut, her body will be sliced up and packaged with a Red Tractor label on it? We very much doubt we’ll ever see that video on the Red Tractor YouTube channel.
Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.
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