Sound the culture war klaxon, those Canberra clowns are coming for our steak according to the national broadsheet!
The federal government’s official advice on diets will now incorporate the impact of certain foods on climate change, sparking outrage from farmers who fear it is driven by an “ideological agenda” against red meat.
The piece in The Australian continues with the approach to science we’ve come to know and love in the News Corp stable: “It could lead to consumers being told to reduce steak and lamb chop intakes in favour of alternatives like chicken, which some scientists say has a lower carbon footprint.” Which is true, in the same way it was true that the Oz used to report that some scientists believe human activity is having an impact on the climate — “some” is doing a level of heavy lifting that would have Sisyphus take a sick day.
This is accompanied by an editorial today directing “nanny” to keep her “nose out of the fridge”, a piece that appears to have been constructed by selecting the food references and working backwards:
Healthy it may be, and tasty, but sitting down to a steak or a lamb roast with vegetables and a glass of wine, or milk for the children, followed by a punnet of strawberries or blackberries may not be good enough for the green food police. Think of the greenhouse gas emissions, the waste water, the habitat loss. Add a dollop of guilt to the sauce … Aside from nutrition, the National Health and Medical Research Council is making “sustainable diets” a “very high priority” in revising its 2013 Australian dietary guidelines. But such ideologically driven interference is likely to make many health practitioners, patients and those interested in healthy eating take the guidelines with a big pinch of pink salt.
“Get out the steak knives to set the table” comes the ominous closing line. What, nothing about the rules being a load of bull or leaving a bad taste?
Any indication that it might be advisable to cut down on red meat has long been, well, red meat for the base. In the early days of the Anthony Albanese government, Nationals leader David Littleproud said Labor’s commitment to modest cuts to methane emissions put “the Aussie BBQ under threat”. It follows several years of agitating around fake meat from the Tasmanian Liberals and LNP Senators like Susan McDonald and Matt Canavan, and One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts.
Further back, then Liberal senator Cory Bernardi (ably supported by One Nation) pushed for and got a 2015 Senate inquiry into Halal-certified meat, attempting to establish connections to Islamist terrorism — it failed in that aim but succeeded in cooking up some piping hot Islamophobia. And while no evidence of Halal certification funding suicide bombers was ever found, we did get the shocking revelation that, under Halal conditions, animals are alive at the point they are slaughtered.
Of course, for all the persistent conservative ire aimed at what former UK conservative MP Suella Braverman memorably termed the “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati”, vegetarianism/veganism has never split along ideological lines.
Ignoring the really, really obvious historical example of an extremely right-wing vegetarian, the cucks who would have our children never know the joys of a pork chop would be unlikely to find many friends among the “vegan mafia” of Silicon Valley investors in plant-based food companies. This group includes such progressive icons as publication assassin and Donald Trump enthusiast Peter Thiel and (one-time vegetarian) Elon Musk. John Mackey, the strict vegetarian whose Whole Foods empire was the first supermarket change to set humane standards for animal treatment, is also a union-hating climate change sceptic libertarian who complained about “socialists taking over” when he retired in 2022. Meanwhile, we would bet there was a decent number of vegans among the wellness contingent of the COVID-19 sceptics whose vote various hard-right figures have spent the last few years so assiduously courting.
Has the threat of climate change changed your eating habits? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Could we just all agree that the Australian is little short of a laughing stock, attracts ever fewer readers and has very little influence over the majority of us? I am getting tired of reading of its mindless or banal positions on practically every aspect of everyday life.
If I wanted to read it I would subscribe. I never have and cannot see myself ever doing so. I might once have done the sudoku in a free copy of the Oz while waiting in an airport. And my ex once sent me a very funny article by Philip Adams which I enjoyed. Plus I have read, in other sources, letters to its editor from PJK. But I have not bought a copy for at least 25 years and cannot see myself ever doing so again. Enough already!
They must hate that dangerous lefty woke vegetarian, the British PM?
You left out 36-hour fasts by said PM.
Shamefully, I must admit to subscribing to the Saturday Weekend issue, mainly for the Review for its cultural coverage (book/film reviews) and its glossy accompanying edition for Philp Adams, and its occasional good stories, which do not seem to have an ‘ideological’ bent. The Letters page is good for ‘crazy right-wing uncle’ diatribes and useful for catching up with what the ‘dark’ side is obsessing about.
No need for shame. I got to see the Philip Adams article because my ex has the same view. Plus he says he needs to keep up with what “the enemy” is thinking. I prefer The Saturday Paper – well it is no-contest really.
Still, it does have a disproportionate influence, and I for one am glad that Crikey occasionally lets us know what their latest crusade is.
Yes, I also miss Philip Adams.
Charlie, please tell us how many people actually read the issue?
The reason most of us haven’t read it is, that we are a little tired of their confected arguments on a wide range of topics. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
This is the test of the true Australian conservative. Meat! From mammals, the true meat, the rawer the better. Why even slaughter the cow or pig? Why not just tie it down and hoe in, ignoring the whines of those lefty, greenie, animal-rights poofters out there? It will give us a population of real men and women, hard, butch, voting the Right way. Shame that they’ll all look like extras from The Walking Dead, but then I suspect that most of the New Scorp followers turned zombie many years ago.
Is this a foretaste of the ‘$100 legs of Lamb’ Election campaign to come?
$115 leg of lamb. You forgot to account for the wage-driven inflation. Ms Bullock will explain.
I doubt it’ll come to that. Cultured meat is predicted to be at the $20/kg price level within a couple of years and probably only $2/kg within 10 years. A byproduct might be lots of free land available for solar panels…
There are people who eat a lot of meat and there are people who eat no animal products at all… and then there’s the rest of us who try to find a happy medium somewhere in the middle, on varying levels.
Sad to say to the Vegans, but unfortunately it’s impossible for everyone to be Vegan. People with food allergies, people who need a high protein diet due to Medical conditions and those who have sensory issues around certain foods.
People with food allergies especially would end up on a diet so restrictive that it would be impossible to maintain their health. People with certain Medical conditions would also have the same problem.
Vegans seem to forget that ‘plant-based’ diets don’t mean ‘plant only’. The Mediterranean diet, a plant-based diet, the one most promoted by health practitioners, does not exclude animal products.
So the Australian can clutch at its pearls and be ignored, just like Morrison was ignored when he claimed the ‘end of the weekend’ when Labor wanted to promote EVs, and NOT stop the sale of utes (an entire Facebook tribe of EV drivers proved Morrison wrong.) In this case, an entire tribe of regular people just trying to cook a healthy meal most nights will ignore the Australian as well, probably because with the cost of living, not many can afford any of the more expensive cuts of meat anyway.
And can’t afford the cost of The Australian either.
Nice post, but maybe you can explain to me how capitalizing common nouns works and what it’s for. I’ve never understood it. Momentarily, I worked in publishing in the public sector and the ‘affliction’ there was rife . . . like a deadly virus!
“Sad to say to the Vegans, . . . ”, “ . . . to be a Vegan”, “ . . . a high protein diet due to a Medical conditions . . .”
I just don’t get it: why capitalize common nouns, particularly in the plural? And capitalizing an adjective (Medical) is even more confusing! How does that work?
When the whisk-wielding blood-sucking Rupert Limited News bed bugs jump into bed with you on the premise that their enemy is your enemy – and the need to form an alliance against that ‘common enemy’ – to hell with the bed, it’s really a sign that you need a new home.