This is our Left for you. The Shadow Environment Secretary - the person who would be responsible for virtually all our farming regulations should Labour come to power - is a militant vegan. Not that there is any other kind .... Still, you know you've screwed up when The Guardian calls you out!When Kerry McCarthy, a vegan, was appointed as shadow environment secretary, I didn’t rush to pass judgment. A vegetarian myself, I knew it was a mistake to caricature people. Why shouldn’t a vegan be able to talk to the farming and agricultural industry – or any other industry, come to that? However, in an interview with the vegan magazine Viva!life, conducted before the leadership election, McCarthy says she believes that meat should be treated the same way as tobacco, with public campaigns to stop people eating it. Reading this, my heart sank. She couldn’t have come across as more old-school “loony left” if she’d tried.
Why did what McCarthy said disconcert me so much? I’ve written about animal suffering in the meat industry. I’ve also expressed incredulity at how blasé some people are about the dangers of over-consuming processed meat. In my view, people should take personal responsibility for doing this, just as they are told to when it comes to cigarettes and alcohol. However, even though I wouldn’t eat meat, and I think other people would benefit from eating less of it, I don’t think that all meat per se, from high-quality to low, organic to processed, is equivalent to tobacco.
Does McCarthy still believe that meat should be publicly tackled in the same way as tobacco? More to the point, is this how she wishes to approach her new job? Since the astonished response to her remark, McCarthy has merely demurred along the lines that she wouldn’t want to tell people what to eat, just to be more aware, blah, blah. You get the sense that McCarthy has one eye on the people she would normally be talking to (people who already agree with her) and the other on this new group that she’s suddenly dealing with – not only the agricultural and farming industries, but also the general public.
One could empathise – it’s early days in the job, and an interview (although recent), before she assumed her new position has popped up, However, McCarthy needs to adjust to her new responsibilities quickly, before she discredits the shadow cabinet and makes vegans, vegetarians and animal rights campaigners look like fantasists, hysterics and idiots.
Let’s be clear – most people who are concerned about animal welfare are not fantasists, hysterics or idiots, for the simple reason that they don’t have to be. There’s nothing weird or stupid, or even particularly niche, about pushing for stricter, more humane regulations regarding animal welfare in the meat industry. Many people who eat meat want this too.
Other people are less interested, or simply couldn’t care less, and would probably dismiss someone like myself as a crank, just for being vegetarian. The fact is, it doesn’t really matter if you think I’m a crank. I’m not the shadow environment secretary who has to rigorously maintain credibility far beyond my immediate close circle of like-minded friends, and who needs to ensure that my policies sound just as workable from Merthyr Tydfil to Doncaster as they do while I’m ordering sprouting alfalfa salad in a vegan-organic delicatessen.
Like other Corbynites you could mention, McCarthy has to stop fretting that having the courage and intelligence to deal with reality makes a person a hypocrite. Just as, in my opinion, the poor, the disenfranchised and the disabled need a tougher, more practical, and – crucially – more mainstream opposition party than is being offered right now, so too does the issue of animal welfare need an advocate more plausible than someone who could be ridiculed from the off because she appears to be lost in student activist militant daydreams.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/27/kerry-mccarthy-militant-vegan-shadow-environment-secretary-
