Burgers And Meat

Regular readers will be aware of my appreciation for BBC Radio 4, and in particular 'The Food Program'.  Long term readers will also be aware of my admiration for Colin Tudge and more recently Simon Fairlie.  These authors are both to be commended for trying to fashion agriculture in a sustainable and biodiverse direction.  Today they both appeared on TFP!  This is what public service broadcasting is all about:

• The burger is one of the world's most popular foods and it made meat eating affordable for millions, but it also became the food that symbolised many of the failings of the world's modern food system.Sheila Dillon looks at a new attempt to revive its reputation as a quality food. This new "burger scene" where, immense care is taken with sourcing the meat and using the right cuts, reflects not only a shift in burger eating, but also in attitudes to meat eating itself.
  
  The highly respected food and farming writers Simon Fairlie and Colin Tudge both share the views on eating meat in the 21st.

Fairlie in particular manages to get across much of the general thrust of "Meat: a Benign Extravagance".  He does much to make the case for 'default livestock' and pricks the parochial unrealpolitik of veg*nism.

Both "Meat a Benign Extravagance" by Simon Fairlie (Permanent Publications) and "Good Food for Everyone Forever - A People's Takeover of the World's Food Supply" by Colin Tudge (Pari Publishing) should be on your reading list! 

The ambition of the former is incredible (if perhaps a little dry for some).  I have not read the latter but I have read a couple of his other works (not least this one) which are written with passion and intellectual rigour.  These guys together with Patrick Whitefield form a bit of a 'holy trinity' in the world of permaculture and sustainable agriculture in general.

Listen again!