I TRAVELLED to Melbourne the other day to hear Peter Singer speak. You know him. He's the guy who says by eating meat we aren't respecting animals or being humane.

Even though I occasionally have a steak, I'm not completely closed to this notion.

The title of his talk was "Why we need a beef tax". Pretty controversial huh?

I felt sure I'd run into some tomato and egg chuckers there but there wasn't a whiff of them about.

Singer's talk held no surprises; he said we need to tax red meat (beef and processed meat such as ham and bacon) because, well, healthwise, it's not good for us and since we tax things like ciggie smoking, he asked, then why shouldn't we tax this meat for some health revenue too?

"The health evidence is quite clear; there is a connection between red meat and bowel cancer," Singer said, quoting a "large US report", the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Victorian Cancer Council.

Citing the Victorian Cancer Council, he claimed half of Australia's one million bowel cancer cases are connected with eating red meat.

He claimed a tax on beef wouldn't necessarily stop all those cases but it would have a significant impact.

Another reason was because, he claimed, cows produce an awful lot of methane, which is a greenhouse gas, and given that we've got just 20 years to cut our greenhouse gas emissions savagely if we're to stop irreversible warming, then a tax was a fair way to recompense all the poor people in Africa who'd be hard hit by the warming.

Plus in 20 years, he reckoned, those cows could do more global warming damage than our coal-powered fire stations. Whammo.

Singer piled up his reasoning, to back his philosophy - that being humane means we shouldn't eat meat.

As he went on, I tried to picture how he might present his case were he presenting in the heart of cattle country, say in Howlong or Hamilton.

I looked around the room and I wondered if all those who'd come to hear Singer speak, and Singer himself, might give up their air conditioning or quit taking plane trips to help slow climate change, just so the farmers - who've already copped so much with drought, collapsing returns and reduced water allocations - might have a spell from the hammering they've been getting for about 20 years.

Then came question time and a woman asked, "I just wonder if you have given any thought to the future of the pastoral industry and the hardship of people in it who have various elements like drought to deal with now, whether you have thought anything about it.

"What future would they have?"

Ah well, replied Singer, "it's very difficult to tell people who've been making a living in a way they've been brought up to believe is acceptable and useful and decent ... that they are contributing to serious harm that is already and in the future increasingly will befall hundreds of millions of people who are much poorer and worse off than they are.

"But unless someone can come up with a kind of magic bullet to prevent cattle emitting methane then I just think we have to accept the fact that there is no future for the grazing industry and the beef industry in particular."

So that's it for our pastoral industries. Just like that.

Where did the compassion and empathy go that Singer's always on about?

Where's the thinking and the process for change that will help farmers adapt?

He didn't have anything to say about that. Talk about kick a dog when it's down.

  • I mistakenly called a book written by former Miranda columnist June Alexander The Kid is Back in my column last week. The correct title is My Kid is Back. My apologies.