Dining across the divide: ‘I said, if the whole world were to turn vegan, half of us would starve to death’

The big beef

Alex I’m an abolitionist vegan: we should not be using animals for food, clothing, entertainment or science. We consider dairy farming as among the cruellest of the agricultural industries. Taking that cow’s calf away from her, usually after about 24 hours, milking her, and repeating that process again and again until the cow is killed.

Graham I used to be a livestock farmer so I drew on my own experiences. I said, “The first rule of this is: unhappy animals lose you money.” A basic scientific fact is that if a cow suffers fear and produces adrenaline, it suppresses oxytocin and they don’t produce milk. Even if you have no great love for animals, it does pay to take care of them. We have bills to pay just like anyone else, and we need to make money.

Alex He talked about how the separation of the cow and the calf is done for the safety of the calf, as the cow might accidentally crush her child, or the environment isn’t very clean. I tried to explain that the only reason those situations happen is that we forcibly breed these cows in those conditions.

Graham I said, “If you look at it logically, if the whole world were to turn vegan, half of us would starve to death.” You’d be writing off swathes of agricultural land that can’t grow arable crops. He countered that farmers have a lot of grassland, they could rent it out for other use. But what can you rent it out for if you’ve taken away livestock production?