MEAT ON THE BBC (Part 2): An American Perspective
Wow. It really kicked off didn’t it?
BBC One’s ‘Meat: A Threat to Our Planet?‘ made the front page of the Farmers’ Guardian, seemed to be trending on Twitter for days and was a hot topic of conversation at last week’s Nuffield Farming Conference. I almost missed the lunch buffet because so many people stopped to ask my opinion on it and share theirs.
I sensed a great fear among farmers that they might get tarred with the same dirty brush as those filthy American ranchers. With their feedlots and rainforest destruction. It caused an almighty ruckus. Collective outrage. How very dare you BBC!
But the whole time I couldn’t help but think to myself: “Why are you all so annoyed? Imagine being an American farmer right now.”
I watched ‘Meat: A Threat to Our Planet?’ just days after interviewing a US meat trade analyst and a Midwestern rancher about hormone beef and free trade deals for Radio 4’s Farming Today.
British farmers get very upset at the idea of people rejecting meat and were outraged at the BBC before they’d even seen Liz Bonnin dig around in a live cow’s stomach. But American beef trade people appear ‘unruffable’ in the face of intense criticism. Cheerily relaxed, they have unwavering self-belief. The question in their minds is not: “Why would the UK want our intensive feedlot-finished, hormone beef?”
But: “Why wouldn’t they want it?”
The Americans have reached a ‘beef plateau’ at home. The point at which per capita beef consumption has levelled out at 26kg (for each of the 327 million people who live in the States).
They can’t expect loyal American consumers to physically shove any more beef into their mouths, so they’re looking out from their lofty plateau towards the horizon for new markets. For people in need of beef.
There, on the other side of the Atlantic, lies a tiny island whose people consume a piddly 18kg of beef a year. Perfect. Sure, the Brits have a few concerns about hormone implants, but the Americans don’t sweat it: “Hey, if you don’t like it – we’ll just sell you some hormone free beef! Grass-fed too if you want it?”
You see, whinging is not the American way. They’ll beat you down with positivity instead – bucket loads of positivity.
In 2017, I attended the South Dakota Cattlemen’s Convention and it was an education in this mentality of unruffable pride and patriotism (with subtle undertones of “we don’t care what you think”).
There were free stickers emblazoned with ‘EAT BEEF: THE WEST WASN’T WON ON SALAD’. A politically minded friend of mine later pointed out that, no, The West was won on war, genocide and the mass displacement of a native people. Awks.
But there were some touching sentiments too like: “The landscape of any farm is the owner’s portrait of himself.”
After dinner, a country and western band sang songs about prairie life, lyrics that brought a tear to my eye:
“Every time I see an eagle wild and free, I pray this way of life will never change.
And I thank the Lord above I’m on the land I love,
South Dakota, you’ve been good to me.”
And I admire them for that. Because it’s not easy being an American rancher.
Far from the image of “beef barons” and “industrialised global agriculture”, these are ordinary people living on the land in ways we would struggle to in the UK. Isolated ranches in depopulated and deprived rural communities. Hours away from a hospital; even a grocery store. Local government don’t even maintain the roads, let alone collect the garbage. I stayed on a ranch where they had drilled their own borehole and engineered their own water filtration system, and built a road into town (yes, a road).
British farmers complain about being misrepresented. Try being a Midwestern cattle rancher! You live on the Great Plains – under the darkest night sky I’ve ever experienced – raising cattle on native prairie grasses. Many ranchers still round up their herds on horseback. They live modestly, go to church, hardly drink alcohol, grow their own vegetables and eat their own animals. It’s self-sufficiency beyond anything the majority of us – including farmers – know in the UK.
Yes, they castrate and brand their calves without anaesthetic, give them hormone implants and send them away – often many miles – to be finished intensively in feedlots and fed enormous (and unsustainable) quantities of grain. That’s also true. And I’m not comfortable with it.
But it’s not a simple picture. It’s not black and white. You can’t just say, “we’re good and they’re bad”.
I’ve eaten certified Angus steak (with hormones), grilled medium rare on a barbecue overlooking the South Dakota prairie at sunset. Pink, juicy and delicious. It was like a cartoon steak. You know, the sort of big juicy T Bone that dogs dream about in thought bubbles. And each steak is as delicious as the last. Scarily reliable uniformity.
As a beef farmer’s daughter, I worry. Because it will sell itself on the British supermarket shelf – hormones or no hormones.
And maybe that’s why the Americans are still smiling. They let their beef do the talking.
Can we do the same?
ANNA JONES 