ROB PERCIVAL v4.qxp_Layout 2 25/03/2022 18:41 Page 1
BOOKS
Beyond meat Bristol author Rob Percival is set to speak at the Bath Festival on 14 May about his powerful new book, The Meat Paradox. Ahead of his appearance, we sat down with the expert in meat politics to unpick humanity’s conflicted relationship with eating animals...
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survey from January 2021 found that 85 per cent of the British public wanted an urgent ban on all factory farming. Yet, due to the unprecedented demand for meat, 95 per cent of all British chicken reared for meat is still produced in 200 industrial units situated around the country. It is fair to wonder how many of those people voted for the closure of intensive farming while tucking into a chicken sandwich? We will never know exactly. What we do know, however, is that our relationship with meat is emotionally and ethically complicated. The majority of us, of course, care for animals. We don’t want to see or hear about the unnecessary suffering of cows and their calves, sheep and their lambs, deer and their fawns, yet we don’t think twice about picking a pack of marinated fillets from the supermarket shelves. This common form of moral conflict is known as the meat paradox – a term coined by Australian psychologists Brock Bastian and Steve Loughnan and a theory that author Rob Percival has placed at the centre of his new book of the same name. Head of Policy at the Soil Association, a leading Bristol-based charity campaigning for healthy and sustainable food and farming, Percival is an expert in meat politics. He spends his days advocating for a better, more nature-friendly way of producing food, lobbying policymakers in Westminster and leading public-facing campaigns to drive change.
Taking us on a personal journey through farms, slaughterhouses and off into the Amazon, Percival explores a dimension of the debate that has been left relatively untouched up until now
Over recent years, the debate around whether we should eat meat has become polarised and divisive. The surge in popularity for veganism in the UK, Europe and North America has challenged the cultural narratives that sustain our omnivory. Both sides of the debate, however, have formed irrational biases. Throughout The Meat Paradox, Percival successfully identifies and picks apart the claims that have emerged. For instance, he debunks the myth that a vegan diet is a natural human diet. Backed by research, he explains that our species has been eating meat for almost two million years. By the same token, he strongly states that we must put an end to intensive factory farming, which is not only causing great suffering to the animals involved but is exacerbating the climate crisis. Taking us on a personal journey through farms, slaughterhouses and off into the Amazon, Percival explores a dimension of the 18 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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APRIL 2022
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No 209
Rob Percival
debate that has been left relatively untouched up until now. Delving into Bastian and Loughnan’s psychological research, he trawls back through human history, searching for moments which may explain why our relationship with meat is so dysfunctional. “What was interesting [about speaking to people on both sides of the debate] was coming to understand the cognitive dynamics, the psychological forces which are animating some of this debate,” says Percival. “It’s often not the case that people are being deliberately dishonest, but when those of us who eat meat, eat meat, it creates this set of dissonant emotions, which shape our thought perception. Beneath the surface of conscious thought, our attitudes and beliefs are shaped beyond our view, often in ways that are quite surprising. Similarly, at the other end of the spectrum, once you’re committed to this ethical cause, it can be very easy to start to remould the evidence around it to the point where meat becomes toxic waste.” Arguably one of the most illuminating passages in The Meat
