Why farmers need to 'pre-bunk' myths about meat production

The topic was discussed by sustainable livestock farming expert Dr Jude Capper at an online meeting organised by Yield (Young, Innovative, Enterprising, Learning and Developing) – a rural business network for younger members of the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association.

The meeting also invited livestock exhibitors from the Royal Norfolk Show to discuss an industry often criticised for its environmental impact, or targeted by animal rights campaigners.

Dr Capper said for every negative story in the media, farmers needed to tell five positive stories, generating "a tidal wave of factual information" about their animal welfare and environmental credentials to counteract "bad news bias".

"We all buy bad news," she said. "Bad news sells. So every time there is a bad animal welfare story, every time people are filmed on farm doing something they shouldn't, we need five pieces of positive information out there to stop that taking off with the media and consumers.

"We don't just need to debunk, we need to 'pre-bunk', we need to be ahead of the curve talking about the positive things that agriculture does to get ahead of the bad stories."

Dr Jude Capper spoke to farmers at a virtual meeting of the Norfolk YIELD network (Image: Chris Hill)

Dr Capper said a good example came earlier this month when students at Oxford University voted to ban beef and lamb from their canteens in a bid to reduce their carbon footprint.

She said while livestock is often a focus for climate discussions, the point needed to be made that 65pc of UK land is only suitable for grazing animals, and their carbon emissions were far lower than, for example, long-haul flights.

She calculated that a return flight to New York was the carbon equivalent of eating 50.8kg of beef per passenger - more than double the annual average UK consumption of 18.2kg per person.

"And if you flew to Sydney it would be equal to eating about 172.1kg of beef - that is about 9.5 years of beef consumption for the average UK person," said Dr Capper.

"We hear a lot about how beef is the enemy and beef is bad, but we really do need to look at our fossil fuel consumption far more closely," she said.

Dr Capper said her Twitter photo - showing her bottle-feeding an orphaned calf - was another good example of the polarised public perceptions of agriculture.

Dr Jude Capper bottle-feeding an orphaned calf (Image: Dr Jude Capper)

"How people see this image really varies," she said. "Most consumers see a cute little calf being bottle fed, it is so caring, so nice. Almost all the activists who comment on it say she has torn the calf away from its mother, she has deprived it of its natural behaviours, it is so cruel.

"But this was an orphaned calf and we were trying to save its life by bottle feeding it. So what we might think of being a nice cute caring picture, other people see it in a different way and we have to think about how our opponents will look at the things we post."

Dr Capper also highlighted huge variance in the efficiency of world agriculture, with the carbon footprint of beef production estimated as being four times higher in Latin America than in Western Europe, and the milk yield of dairy cows ranging from 2,000kg per year in India to 11,000kg per year in the USA.

She said if every cow in the world had the same 8,140kg yield as the average UK cow the world could maintain its total dairy supply using 181 million fewer dairy cows, that's 69pc fewer cows.

"Having said that, I'm not pushing for US-type dairying," she said. "It isn't just about pushing and pushing for higher yields. It is about improving everything on our farms.

"But we really face this challenge. We can have the most productive system ever, with really healthy and efficient cows with good yields, a low environmental impact and a good economic viability. But if the next generation don't want to consume milk, meat and eggs in 10 or 20 years' time, we won't have an industry. So we absolutely need social acceptance."