Meat
This section is pretty thorny. For many, meat is delicious and nutritious. We think it is too. However the environmental, social, and animal welfare impacts of the industrialised meat production system have become unjustifiable. The time for change has come.
As chefs with diverse perspectives on meat and livestock, we aim to explore the role of animals on our menus with open minds. Whatever your entry point into food is and whatever your menu currently looks like, you are welcome here.
We have sought expert advice from numerous farmers and researchers to help us shape the information on this page. In particular, The Sustainable Restaurant Association and The Sustainable Food Trust have provided their guidance and knowledge.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
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Most food system models (National Food Strategy, Better by Half Roadmap and Feeding Britain from the Ground Up) show that a reduction in meat consumption is necessary to achieve a sustainable future. The bottom line is, we need an increase in fruit, veg, nuts, pulses, and reliable grains (such as oats and rye) and a decrease in meat and dairy consumption.
At the same time, animals reared in agroecological ways can deliver environmental and social benefits while producing, overall, smaller quantities of higher quality meat. The goal, therefore, isn’t necessarily to remove meat from your menu but to restructure your dishes and source your meat from agroecological farmers (more on sourcing below).
Effective Meat Reduction Strategies:
Simply offering fewer meat dishes may not reduce total meat served, as demand for those dishes may simply increase. Restructuring dishes around vegetables, pulses, and nuts can reduce meat reliance. Use small amounts of meat to enhance flavour or season dishes.
Integrate plant-based dishes into the main menu, not in a separate ‘vegetarian section.’
Provide a variety of appealing plant-based options to give diners meaningful choice.
Ensure plant-based dishes are nutritionally balanced not just for health reasons, but because balanced meals leave diners feeling satisfied.
Important note: dairy products are, in some cases, more resource intensive and impactful than meat products, so use the same approach: less dairy, better dairy, and more plants. This can also be true of some plant products, so any meat/dairy substitutions should be done with a consideration of how and where they have been produced (see our pages on cereal and grains, pulses, and perennials for more information).
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Another thing you can do straight away to support agroecological livestock farming is to use the whole animal and prioritise offal and underused cuts. Small scale farmers need to sell every part of each animal to maintain economic viability.
Purchasing the entire carcass (or all the cuts and organs from a carcass) ensures you’ll use every part. Plan your menus with this in mind—if you want prime-cut steaks in summer, create dishes for the other cuts in the winter.
We want to see more unusual cuts, more offal and more animal fats being used!
Note: Using the whole animal doesn’t mean you have to buy a whole carcass and butcher it yourself. You can buy the whole animal butchered into the various cuts and freeze them. This will ensure you are buying everything the farmer has produced and actually use it. If you don’t have space or cashflow for this method, the final option for moving in a positive direction is to make a plan for carcass balance throughout the year and work with your butcher or supplier to ensure that your restaurant gets and uses all the cuts and offal throughout the year.
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Swelling deer populations prevent woodlands from regenerating and exploding numbers of grey squirrels disrupt ecosystem processes and make it hard to establish nut farms in the UK.
Using these meats reduces environmental burdens and encourages ecosystem health.
Coming soon will be a whole page dedicated to information on wild meats, for now click through to find out more about Venison and Squirrel.
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Some agroecological meat is not available all year round:
Chicken and lamb are seasonal! Hogget, which directly follows the lamb season, and mutton, are available all year round.
Pork is available year-round but be flexible and source from multiple farms as some land is not suited to year-round production.
Beef is available year round - work with a small butcher or abattoir to ensure constant supply.
A common misconception in our industry is that frozen meat is of lower quality than fresh. However, when properly dry-aged, hung on the carcass, carefully frozen and slowly defrosted, you can't tell the difference.
To support agroecological farming, buy your supply of lamb between October - Feb and your chicken from May - December. Be flexible where you source your beef and pork from and have multiple suppliers to switch between when farms go in and out of availability.
For more details, check the individual animal sections below or visit our interview with Abby Allen.
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The food system is complex, but what is key to know about agroecological farming is that it is about reducing inputs and raising welfare standards.
Livestock feed, especially grain for pigs and poultry, requires a lot of resources, so “low-input” means animals foraging on pasture instead! Meanwhile, grazing cattle and sheep raises concerns around methane emissions and land use. When farming becomes too intensive, the manure of all these animals can pollute land and waterways.
To address these issues, innovative approaches like mixed farming, multispecies grazing, silvopasture and mob grazing are gaining traction. These methods can enhance soil fertility, reduce chemical inputs, and promote biodiversity. Learn more about these practices and their benefits on our Farming Practices Deep Dive.
Finding farms that follow these practices is the part that chefs can play now, see the farmer to chef connection page to find more on the vitality of this relationship, and see below on certifications and industry movements.
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For animal welfare, the Soil Association Organic certification comes out on top, as the highest scoring label for animal products.
Soil Association Organic will also ensure:
no artificial fertilisers
very limited use of pesticides
no routine use of antibiotics
no genetically modified crops or feeds
There are several organic certifications available, but the Soil Association is widely recognized for its comprehensive and trusted standards.
Pasture for Life is a good starting place to look for sourcing lamb and beef. The main focus of their standard is that no grain or grain manufactured feed is fed to their animals (that’s why it doesn't apply to pigs and poultry) and that the animals are grazed rotationally on diverse pastures (monocrops are not permitted).
However, it is worth bearing in mind that although Pasture for Life encourages a reduction in the use of artificial fertilisers, it doesn’t totally restrict them. To avoid creating demand for chemical inputs, pair a Pasture for Life and Organic certification.
Final note on certifications: Small scale producers may not be able to afford the certification and labelling system, so when working with small scale producers it is more important to develop a relationship and understand their priorities and principles (e.g. are they agroecological or regenerative). The bigger the farm is, the more important it is to stick to the Organic and Pasture for Life certification.The difference between Agroecological and Regenerative farming:
Regenerative Farming lacks a universally accepted definition. Some define it according to 5 farming practice principles (often adding a sixth: ‘know your context’) whilst others focus on the outcomes it achieves. These outcomes include restoring soil health and soil life, enhancing biodiversity, sequestering carbon, and mitigating climate change.
Agroecology, however, is concerned with the sustainability of food systems from a holistic perspective. It encompasses the outcomes above but also focuses on social, and economic ones. You can find our full definition back on the landing page.
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Agroecologically reared meat is currently more expensive and, depending on who your customers are, you may have limits to the extent to which you can adjust your prices to reflect this.
However, the price of higher quality meat could fit the model of less meat on the menu: the costs saved from having veg-centred plates could become the amount you are able to spend on high quality meat. Utilising offal and less commonly used cuts can also create savings.
The choice to put meat on your menu comes down to scale and context: where you're sourcing it, how much you're using, how it's being used, and whether it's feasible for your specific restaurant.
Get Inspired
Less Meat, Better meat, more plants
Charissa de Zeeuw - Goat Meat
Or delve deeper into the farming practices below
The Methane Issue
No matter how well managed ruminant grazing is, how high the soil carbon is and how biodiverse and ecologically rich the land becomes, cattle and sheep still emit the potent planet warming greenhouse gas methane via microorganisms in their gut. Methane emissions don't necessarily need to be eliminated, like fossil fuel use does, because its life cycle doesn’t rely on geological processes. However, reducing the quantity of it in our atmosphere will help mitigate climate change.
Both the biodiversity benefits of well managed ruminants and the climate impact they have are important factors to consider. If we are going to eat any beef or sheep meat, the issue of methane emissions cannot be ignored. Pasture fed ruminants that deliver biodiversity benefits can produce more methane than grain fed ruminants because of their more fibrous diet, however, these systems do also avoid the methane emissions of manure mismanagement from non-pasture based systems, i.e. slurry. In short, both ruminant systems have methane emission cycles, but agroecological pasture-based systems, tend to rely less on fossil fuels, produce less N2O and CO2, and sequester more carbon across the farmed area.
This is partly why eating a smaller amount of better meat, and lots more vegetables, pulses and nuts will help us move towards a more sustainable future. Other options available to us involve the potential to selectively breed high methane emitting traits out of cattle. Preliminary research shows that breeding could deliver as much as a 20% reduction.
It is important to remember that methane has a much shorter life cycle than the carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel combustion. After about 12 years, it turns back into the less potent CO2 and can be recaptured by carbon sequestration cycles. This means that if livestock numbers were reduced worldwide because of a shift towards agroecological farming systems (which produce less but better quality meat), after 12 years, we would start seeing some reductions in the levels of methane, and the associated planetary warming effects, making livestock reduction a critical and highly promising climate solution! Putting fossil fuels back in the ground is a far more challenging prospect, which interestingly puts the climate risk and responsibility of any farming that relies on fossil fuels (including chemicals), as much in the hot seat as livestock. The path forward is low input systems, i.e. agroecological food production, hand in hand with a reduction in meat consumption.
Bovaer is a feed additive that has the potential to reduce methane emissions in beef cattle by up to 45%, according to information provided by DSM, the company behind the product. However, a key barrier is administering it to pasture-raised cows, which graze freely and do not receive regular, controlled feedings. This challenge is also highlighted in work exploring the use of algae to reduce methane emissions in cattle. It’s also important to note that this additive should not distract from the broader issue of factory farming livestock, which involves numerous other harmful impacts beyond methane emissions.
Farming Practices Deep Dive
The food system is incredibly complex, but lowering inputs and raising welfare standards are clear focus points for agroecological food producers. The most significant input for livestock farming is feed. Current agroecological options are UK-grown grains and pasture forage. Expanding this approach to include more perennial tree crops could further enhance biodiversity and provide a more nutritious diet for animals.
Recently, efforts to reduce meat consumption have been focused on eliminating beef and lamb, regardless of how it’s farmed. Whilst issues around methane emissions and land use (both more relevant for sheep and cows) need addressing, so do issues around inputs for pork and poultry, which are just as pressing.
Growing grains and pulses (the main feed sources for pigs and poultry) involves diverting potential sources of human food towards feeding livestock (this is known as feed-food competition), as well as significant resource-use and land disturbance. As climate change threatens to disrupt agricultural production and likely reduce yields, the viability of this model makes less and less sense.
The upshot is, we need to eat less meat of a higher quality; substituting one meat product for another isn’t the answer. The whole system requires change: beginning with reducing the amount of meat on the table, using all of the animal, and supporting innovative farmers who are reducing inputs and raising welfare standards. The good news is that across cattle, pigs, sheep, and poultry, there are dedicated farmers producing food we can confidently consider for the menu.
Look for mixed farming systems: where livestock graze temporary pasture on arable farms
One of the most resilient uses of land out there is what is known as mixed farming. This is when livestock are integrated into either arable or horticultural land in a way that reduces inputs (especially agrochemicals) and restores degraded soil. Importantly, mixed farming also improves farm resilience and diversity of income streams, potentially giving greater long term productive capacity.
Growing vegetables and cereals requires soil fertility, which must be continuously re-built and replenished as successive crops use nutrients in the soil. Traditionally, farmers grew crops in a rotation that included a few years when the land was under temporary grassland, not being harvested but being grazed by livestock, and re-building organic matter and nutrients.
Industrial farming circumnavigated the practice of resting land like this by using nitrogen fertiliser to boost yields short-term. Ultimately, however, this developed a toxic cycle of reliance on more and more fossil fuel-based fertilisers for ever-diminishing results and ecological destruction.
Grazing livestock on cover crops and temporary pastures (e.g. a herbal ley) as temporary pasture can help solve this: it feeds the animals and manure can improve nutrient cycles, whilst producing meat. As long as the stocking density is kept appropriate, manure is absorbed by the cover crop, rather than becoming run-off.
Supporting mixed farming doesn’t mean other forms of livestock farming are necessarily worse – different contexts require different systems and mixed farming is only possible on land where crops can grow well. However, when done, it improves the circularity of the food system. The West of the UK is polluted by intensive livestock farming, while the arable-focused East suffers from depleted soils, relying on fertilisers as a solution. By grazing animals on arable land that needs to rest and recuperate, meat is produced where food direct for human consumption can’t be, and fertility is built to prepare the field to grow grains or vegetables again, reducing the need for fertiliser inputs.
Multispecies Grazing can get more out of the land, reduce inputs and enhance biodiversity
In some places, where there are currently just sheep, like the uplands, having cattle too could add biodiversity because of their less selective grazing. There are also specific habitats that benefit from sheep taking the grass right down at certain times of the year, so having both can be complementary.
There are many protected habitats and species in the UK that benefit from well-managed grazing. Some sites, for instance, need periodic grazing by cattle in summer and autumn because cows don’t select out the flowers. In the winter, however, sheep reduce the overall amount of grass that has built up which would otherwise overwhelm the more interesting flowering species. There are many other grasslands and Sites of Special Scientific Interests for which grazing is important for biodiversity.
In addition, having multiple enterprises and streams of revenue can be beneficial for the overall economic resilience of farms.
Multispecies grazing is where two or more different types of animals graze the same land, either at the same time, one after the other, or at different times of the year. Different animals have different foraging behaviours and diets, so farmers can get more out of a pasture, and reduce pest and weed problems if multiple animals graze a given patch.
Cattle carry different worm species to sheep, so when they follow each other, the worms’ lifecycles get broken, reducing the need for worming treatments, which have negative impacts on biodiversity (like preventing dung beetles’ ability to reproduce).
Prioritise Mob Grazing
Mob grazing is the most powerful form of rotational grazing, where animals are kept in high-density in small paddocks but moved very frequently onto new pasture (either every day or every few days). This system mimics how herds live and move over grassland in the wild, and recreates healthier grassland ecosystems. It does this both by giving the land long rest periods and by the effect of trampling (where the animal eats the top, high quality fresh forage and tramples the low, older carbon rich matter into the soil to feed soil life)
Key Benefits:
Increased biodiversity: plants have maximum amount of time to flower and set seed, insect populations increase, and then the rest of the ecological diversity follows
Wildlife populations that thrive in pasture have the most opportunity and protection possible because of the extended rest period: cattle are brought in briefly to create habitats and then kept off areas when nesting and reproduction is occurring
Soil carbon levels can be increased in certain degraded soils for a certain period of time.
Animals can be kept off land that’s susceptible to compaction/erosion during wet periods
More even distribution of manure on the land
Reduced risk of patchy overgrazing that can still occur under rotational grazing.
Myth Busting Note: overgrazing is not when too many animals are on the land, but when a plant is grazed again before it has had the chance to recover
Silvopasture is when the pasture the animals are grazing is made up of trees as well as grass and other forage plants.
Tree leaves have a more complex nutrient profile than grass, adding nutrients that animals can’t get from pasture alone, leading to more nutritious meat.
Fruit and nuts from trees also add complex nutritional elements to the animals’ diet, particularly in autumn and winter when forage growth has slowed (e.g. sweet chestnuts).
Tannin-rich plants reduce the need for worming treatments, which lowers the chemical load both in the meat and on the field, increasing earthworm and dung beetle numbers and supporting overall ecology.
Animals who have access to woodlands have higher wellbeing (more physical and mental stimulation e.g. scratching, more stable social hierarchies, and more shelter).
Increased plant biodiversity with trees and sward as opposed to just sward.
Increased above ground carbon stocks (carbon captured in the trees).
Improved soil structure, soil biological activity and reduced erosion due to the permanent and extensive root systems of trees.