"What looks to us now as a documentary about a lunatic, was actually a cookery show."
Vegan on Female First
Simon Amstell’s hilariously dark new mockumentary, Carnage: Swallowing the Past imagines a world where veganism is the norm. Meat eaters are referred to as ‘carnists’ and young people reflect on the UK’s dark history of consuming meat, eggs and dairy.
Carnage is absurd, funny and thought-provoking – a world where men meet women in dark alleys to buy breast milk in order to get their dairy fix and where teenagers can’t imagine how their sweet grandparents could ever have eaten ‘an innocent little baby lamb’. But, could a world without mass factory farming ever be a reality?
Many meat free brands and brands that are using significantly less meat in their products, are on a mission; to do their bit to help reduce global meat production and at the same time improve the health of the nation by producing tasty food that contains no or very little meat. With the world’s population increasing there are concerns over environmentally sound and sustainable sources of protein.
Animal agriculture consumes one third of all the planet’s fresh water, 45 percent of the Earth’s land is used for farm animal grazing and 91 percent of rainforest destruction is due to clearance for grazing land and growing crops for animal-feed. Reducing the amount of meat that is consumed is not only good for us, it is good for the planet too.
As Fran Caruthers points out for The Huffington Post, “The film deals with many other, all-too-real national problems over the past 10 years - direct effects of climate change and flooding, swine flu, mad cow disease - and shows how each of these issues can be linked to the consumption of meat.”
Carnage successfully manages to point out the flaws with the current vegan movement in a tone, which is anything but preachy, with Amstell at times openly mocking veganism (he is vegan himself).
Founder of Hooba Foods, Mike Botha said, “We believe in less meat, not necessarily no meat at all. Research, drawn up by Forum for the Future, shows that 40 percent of people in the UK have expressed an interest in eating less meat, without becoming vegetarian.
7 billion people live on planet Earth. We rear 70 billion farm animals to feed us. That’s us well and truly outnumbered! Do we really need all these farm animals? The truth is that we don’t. We ‘grow’ enough food to feed 12-15 billion people. However, 1 billion people are starving each day. How is this possible?
Not only that, the NHS recommends that an adult eats no more than 70 grams of red or processed meat per day to reduce the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and even cancer. But it is not easy to cut down on favourite foods. Luckily our prodcuts have all the flavour and texture of meat with none of the nasties.
You don’t need to go completely vegan, just cutting down on your meat consumption is good for you as well as the planet.”
Amstell’s vision looks unlikely, 55 billion animals are killed by the global farming industry each year, and this figure is on the rise. However, the rising trend for ‘flexitarianism’ could mean that the public are starting to seriously consider what they are consuming, and how it affects their health as well as the future of the planet. So for now, meat free and brands using less meat in their products will continue to work towards a future where we reduce the amount of harm that we do to our planet, one sausage at a time.
By Lauren Regan-Ingram
Hooba products are available to order now at www.hoobafoods.com/shop/. Join the ‘Hoobalution’ on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and spread the #hoobalove.
Tagged in Vegan