1. Michael Winter Livestock Farming and Contemporary Society in the UK: Towards a new mutuality.

3. The end of the affair? I want to give you the story of a relationship, one that started with a love affair, a close multi-layered entanglement of great intensity, that moved inevitably into a seemingly unbreakable marriage. But this was of course an asymmetrical marriage based on possession and obedience. And then ever so slowly a cooling, a distance, but still a degree of tolerance and certainly no irretrievable parting of the ways. Followed by mounting conflict as issue after issue comes between the erstwhile lovers. Are we moving towards the end of the affair or is reconciliation and a new beginning possible?

4. The Human-Animal (one-sided?) love match Based not just on food but also: Fibre (wool, hides etc). Motive power and transportation. Fertilizer for arable crops – manure, blood and bone. Close and direct relationships – in re- industrial England most people interacted with animals on a daily basis. Even the elite who might have avoided it, in fact, turned to pets, hunting etc.

5. The marital chemistry! ‘Meat … is one of the most nutritionally complete of all man’s foodstuffs … Human flesh has a chemical composition hardly distinguishable form bovine, ovine or porcine flesh. It therefore follows that meat.... must be a well-nigh perfect source of the materials necessary for tissue growth and repair.’ Gerrard and Malion 1977: The Complete Book of Meat: a handbook for students entering the meat trade.

6. So what went wrong? the initial cooling Fastidiousness arising from distance (mental and physical) and the loss of knowing about meat and animals and prosperity (we can afford to be anxious about risk) Distaste arising from ethical concern. Re-thinking the relationship – a move from domination to compansionship.

10. The Fastidious Consumer ‘Butcher shops …. transformed as consumers changed from wanting to see the meat taken from the dressed carcase to wanting to see nothing of the animals at all. Supermarkets and fast-food diners … enabled consumers to avoid purchasing and handling meat altogether by selling meals rather than ingredients’. Franklin 1999: Animals and Modern Cultures.

11. The Fastidious Consumer ‘Food is now commonly represented as a pathogen, a source of disease and ill–health. Not only are some foods categorised as ‘unhealthy’, they are understood as harbouring such health-threatening substances as cholesterol, fats, salts, additives and preservatives, inciting allergic reactions and as contaminating in terms of breeding bacteria with the potential to cause food poisoning.’ Lupton 1996: Food, the body and the self.

14. The new companionship Horses Hobby farms

15. UK Meat Consumption Meat type Trend since 2010 (%) Carcase meat -13.5 Beef and veal -15.3 Mutton and lamb -20.0 Pork -4.2 Non-carcase meat and meat products -4.8 Bacon and ham (cooked or uncooked) -8.6 Poultry (cooked or uncooked) -0.6 Meat based ready meals & convenience meat products +1.6 Source: Defra. 2014. Family Food 2013

16. Source: M. Vinnari, P. Tapio / Futures 41 (2009) 269–278

17. And the ‘old’ relationship played well to new concerns: Livestock as agents of nature conservation And conversely the challenge posed by the loss of livestock to cherished landscapes and ecosystems

18. The New Challenges to the Relationship ‘Efficiency’: energy and land take. Greenhouse Gases. Re-wilding. Human Health.

20. Sources of agricultural GHGs excluding land use change Mt CO2-eq Source: Cool farming: Climate impacts of agriculture and mitigation potential, Greenpeace, 2008

23. George Mombiot on the Uplands: They are supposed to represent the natural glories we're losing. ….. The many square miles they cover contain nothing but grass and dead bracken. The majority of wildlife requires cover: places in which it can shelter from predators or ambush prey, places in which it can take refuge from extremes of heat and cold, or find the constant humidity that fragile roots and sensitive invertebrates require. Yet, in the very regions in which you might expect to find such cover (trees, scrub, other dense foliage) there is almost none. I'm talking about the infertile parts of Britain, in which farming is so unproductive that it survives only as a result of public money. Here, in the places commonly described as Britain's "wildernesses", almost nothing remains.

24. Can we sustain the defence of Livestock? Pasture based – using grass where only grass can grow. Need for rotations in agriculture to tackle long- term problems of soil degradation, weeds, pathogens, etc. Use of crop residues. Humility!

25. Towards a new relationship of mutuality We might contemplate the emergence of a fourfold division of (a much smaller) red-meat sector: 1. A few large, intensive units probably on the best land (zero grazing or grain fed) with the necessary economies of scale and professionalism to deal with regulations and fastidious consumers and world markets.

26. 2. A few niche (organic, local, animal-friendly environmental,) producers, with farms appearing as scattered remnants of an earlier farming era. 3.Hobby/residential farmers keeping some stock as mowing machines with only very occasional sales.

27. 4. Wildling (more woodland and scrub) of the uplands and marginal areas with perhaps ranching or some wild cattle or deer and other game management.