Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

Veganism: The real issues of an urgent need to reduce our global meat consumption is masked in the noise of extreme campaigning

Post Thumbnail

I love travelling the A9 – I call it my thinking journey. Many consider the A9 a ‘dangerous road’; in my view the road itself is not.

The road is well engineered and maintained but is currently unsuitable for the volume and nature of traffic that it is expected to carry noting it links the capital city of the Highlands & Islands with the Central Belt and our nation’s capital.

Irrespective, the scenery is stunning, and I find the ever-changing landscape inspiring and thought-provoking – Scotland at its best! Thankfully my FM radio signal faded as I hit the Drumochter Pass (my car is 11 years old!); a programme had just started whereby the opening words of the topic guest were: “…we are not designed to eat meat ….”.

Yet another item on veganism and more air time for what is becoming an ill-represented debate. But it is like most debates these days – imbalanced, hiding an agenda and pandering heavily to the protection of representing a minority position.

JJ Johnston.

Let’s firstly deal with the statement: “we are not designed to eat meat”. Fanciful at best, and outrightly dishonest if genuinely believed! Human beings and other mammals are omnivores.

Indeed, the last time I looked, and having consulted my long-term friend and ‘fang-farrier’ Jonesie, our mouth contains four types of teeth including canines, incisors, pre-molars and molars; this combination of teeth-types is designed to allow us to hold and tear, cut and grind. Choice.

Further, it defines our position at the top of the evolutionary scale whereby we have the choice to eat what we need. Choice. For me veganism currently has a building momentum behind it like any new populist ‘ism’; but it isn’t new with the first vegan society established in the early 1940s.

Disappointingly, some representing veganism purport to offer a generic solution for the environment without the reality of acknowledging the consequence of such an evolutionary change for all.

When my radio re-tuned (albeit to a different station) just south of the House of Bruar, the next article was on the difficulties (note difficulties, and not impossibilities!) of land management if we were to abandon meat production and move to a plant-based food chain.

And bizarrely enough the culprit would appear to be the amount of carbon in the ground, or the lack of it! It would take years (tens of) to create the nature and scale of plant crop cycles that were sustainable without the need for man made fertilisers and earth stimulants.

Ironically, the consequence of removing the meat herd is also to remove a natural cycle of fertilisation and re-usable waste. I have no issues if an individual chooses to be vegan, or vegetarian, but it does seem that more and more people are finding “allergies” and “restrictions” as an easy excuse to avoid foods that don’t fit into their diet.

The higher-level reality is that the world population is now at the point of imbalance with the planet whereby the location and scale of food that humans produce is insufficient to meet what the world’s population need. And unless there is a dramatic reduction in the earth’s population, there is no going back on the catastrophe that we as a planet population are facing in future generations. Unfortunately, the real issues of an urgent need to reduce our global meat consumption and a better use of land and resource is masked in the noise of extreme campaigning.

My experience is that the solution requires collaboration and the achieving of a shared understanding, rather than entrenchment into extreme solutions and stove-piped behaviours.

As alluded to earlier, we appear to have created an intellectual environment whereby minority positions are supported at ‘all costs’ for the sake of inclusion rather than affording a matter to stand on its own merits. It certainly doesn’t feel like a ‘free-speech’ environment, and political correctness has an unhealthy character of constraining real discussion. Is it this lack of open and meaningful debate that is the real genesis of ‘fake news’?

More concerning is that the public majority have little or no representation/view on any topic; but well-funded minority lobbies have all the airtime and ministers’ attention. Again, we have lost the ‘balance’ in the way our country is informed, and parliament is influenced.  It certainly doesn’t feel like we live in a meritocracy; and so the inevitable process of withdrawal and disengagement from the nation’s debates gains traction, the median view becomes muted and the outlying ‘isms’ take hold. We reap what we sow?

When I was seven I had a medical operation that necessitated that I go and live with monks at a monastery in Tai Shui Hang, in isolation, for two weeks. I was tended to by a monk called Henry. He was a kind and wise man who took time to help in my recuperation.

Henry would begin and end each day uttering to me: “your journey of life is a sequence, upon which cycles of adventure act; enjoy the journey by commanding the adventure”.  At the time I had no idea what he meant – today it makes so much more sense.


James Johnston is chair of the Moray Strategic Business Forum and The Malt Whisky Trail and served as Station Commander for RAF Kinloss