Meat the Future

Sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at Frosterley Methodist Chapel, Weardale -

 

22-September 2103

 

Frosterley Harvest Festival 2013

Harvest is one of the most wonderful times of celebration in the church’s year and particularly here in this beautiful and picturesque Dale. There is just unbridled joy at the beauty of the dale in field and orchard and on the heather moors. At harvest time we thank God for all the gifts which have been given to us, those mentioned in our psalm and opening prayers this evening and more; we thank God for all the opportunities made available to us from the world and its resources. Well almost that is!

I say almost because harvest-time presents us with salutary questions about how we provide for and share those resources given to us by God, about how we care for the world and its peoples. Tonight I want to suggest some innovative and perhaps revolutionary ways in which hungry people might be fed in the future. I often feel embarrassed when shopping in our High Street supermarkets by how much foodstuff choices we have on our shelves; I think back to the time I worked in Kenya where many of my staff and in the church I attended lacked even the most basic food products. It’s not easy either having a son who is a Michelin star chef who can command a three figure sum for a taster menu/evening dinner in one of his restaurants - beautiful food of course but uncomfortable prices. And another son who owns a very successful coffee house in Durham. No wonder I need to spend time in the gym!

The workhouse waif Oliver Twist’s comment – “Please sir, I want some more,” penned by Dickens in 1838 echoes down the years and is a strap-line/advertising slogan for many relief agencies - Christian Aid, Tear Fund, Oxfam – how to feed the world’s poor who want more. The Bible Society’s summer magazine entitled “Food Matters” suggest that the world’s population is projected to peak in 2050 at between 8 -10.5 billion; the present world population is 6.8 billion so that means that over the next 40 years world agriculture will have to produce food for an extra 4.5 billion people. Of that 6.8 billion, a sixth, nearly one billion, already go hungry. Every night more than 870 million people go to bed hungry. That number is equivalent to every person in America, Canada, Australia and Europe. And as we know for those living with hunger not just in the developing nations of the world but here at home through our Food Bank Appeals, every aspect of their daily life can be affected if he or she is hungry.  Sadly, the uncomfortable truth is that we’re not able to cope with the current demand for food let alone being able to meet the needs of an increasing global population. But there are some positive and hopeful signs of progress being made in our livestock and food industries that may go some way to help feed future generations – some, it may be said, by unusual and unconventional methods – so here are two examples from our arable and livestock industries you may wish to consider tonight.

I was fascinated, encouraged even hopeful by BBC 2’s Celebration of the British Harvest shown on television over 3 nights last week. The new series followed the stories of 3 farmers over a period of 12 months - from a broccoli field farmer in Lincolnshire, a wheat farmer from Essex to a cherry farmer in Hertfordshire. The science and technology now available to these farmers to provide food straight from the field to our High Street supermarket and onto our plate was truly amazing – awesome in fact – the immense scale of harvesting 24 hours around the clock of potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, broccoli, and wheat was simply astounding, even breathtaking. Harvesting on a mega scale appeared like a high-tech revolution – the cherry farmer alone had 30 miles of poly-tunnels covering his trees, he employed hundreds of migrant workers mostly from Eastern Europe and imported millions of bees from Slovakia to fertilize his cherry blossom. Futuristic farming indeed for a supermarket age! What I picked up from this new television programme was that farmers can benefit immensely from a science that is pioneering new techniques of crop/fruit production with new technological aids in the form of agricultural machinery worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.  Farming efficiency it appears is all important if the nation’s population is to be fed. Of course this creates great challenges to farmers who act as suppliers to the food chain. Add to that the competition for land and water, climate change, maintaining biodiversity and a host of other environmental issues, it becomes clear that science and technology, is the key to increasing our food production.

But if science and technology is helping to improve grain and fruit production in 30 miles of poly-tunnels and glass houses the size of 30 football pitches what about the farmers counterparts in the livestock industry? Well I said there were unconventional methods of food production and here it is. Feeding the world’s growing population is a big challenge which has led scientist in the Netherlands to create the first laboratory cultivated beef burger. The burger was reared in a Dutch lab in trays of temperature controlled pink fluid. It was given texture by tiny hooks to which each strand of artificial muscle attached itself and was dyed blood-red with beetroot juice. A lover of roast beef, steaks and BBQ’s chicken I can’t say that something made from muscle tissue from a cow’s stem cells sounds awfully appetizing, but last month that burger was brought to London, cooked and eaten at a news conference. Even the scientists said it didn’t taste all that good; not surprising since the burger has never seen a cow.  With the first bite £40,000 and a fortnight’s work disappeared into the taster’s mouth. Could there be a future time when stem cells taken from Weardale Cattle located in this beautiful North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty find their way into a British laboratory?

One of the reasons for this innovative research is a growing human demand for meat; the potential environmental damage caused by large increases in livestock production is another. Some people argue we have too many people in our world as my statistics have revealed and that’s the problem; but our world is also a world where huge amounts of food is wasted or thrown away while, as I have pointed out earlier, nearly a billion people are undernourished and go to bed hungry. Vegetarians are quick to point out that the hungry could be fed without the need for meat at all – it is estimated that factory farms kill an astonishing 1,600 animals world wide a second, often reared in conditions that are deeply troubling.  But it is true that the systems of supply and affordability of food will remain crucial whatever the new food technology.

Could it then be possible in future years that we and our children could be eating laboratory cultivated meat, a burger or lamb steak perhaps wedged in a bap made from the super wheat fields from Essex with a side dish of Lincolnshire broccoli, and that this meal could be multiplied world-wide to help feed the hungry in a campaign of food justice? –  all very well for a future dream to feed the world’s hungry but what are the implications for our Christian faith of all this possible futuristic food?

It may be an odd thing to think about at a harvest festival but food and faith are often connected. What you eat and don’t eat varies according to your religion. Dietary rules are commonplace for Jews, Muslims and Hindus – listen to comments and concerns already coming from English Football supporters about what they would eat and drink at the Football World Cup in Qatar 2020, one of the richest Muslim countries in the world.  Alcohol is often forbidden outside the Judean Christian tradition and as we all know cannot be consumed on Methodist premises. I remember Rabbi Lionel Blue once saying that in Western religions God comes to them through their thoughts and feelings whereas in many other regions he come to them through their taste buds.

Think of the Passover meal when the bitter herbs remind Jews of their ancestor’s captivity and suffering while the salt water is a reminder of their tears. We are, so they say, what we eat. Walter de la Mere turned this thought into a little ditty – “It is a very odd thing, as odd as can be that whatever Miss T eats turns into Miss Tea.” All of which makes it the most surprising that of the entire world’s faiths Christianity is so indiscriminate about food – there are no clean and unclean foods. Christianity is astonishingly easy going what its followers can eat, yet its main ritual is a simple meal of bread and wine, the one means by which the followers of Jesus were to remember him. Sharing that meal is for most Christians the way of deepening their relationship with God and with each other and an impetus for service too.

So I am not inclined to reject the scientific work undertaken from the farmers of Lincolnshire, Essex and Hertfordshire or of those Dutch scientists as unnatural or unwanted. This research may yet have a part in feeding the hungry. Public acceptance will of course be gradual but sooner or later it will come. Meat cultured from cows’ stem cells, fruit, vegetable and crops from high-tech futuristic farming methods may take decades to reach the check out but such methods are a compelling answer to a problem that world population growth poses on a similar timescale. At the end of the century there will be close to 10 billion mouths to feed!

 

Amen