FOR those of us who have been trying without success to kick the meat-eating habit, or at the very least to eat less of the stuff, Simon Amstell’s new mockumentary on the BBC iPlayer might be an instructive way to spend an hour.
Amstell is the youthful comedian best-known to TV audiences for his stint as host of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, his most memorable moment being when one guest – Preston, singer with The Ordinary Boys – walked off, nettled by Amstell having fun at the expense of Preston’s then-wife, Chantelle Houghton.
Amstell has now written and directed Carnage, which is set in the Britain of 2067. Everyone is now vegan and, naturally, quite unable to believe that people once killed animals for food. “For these youngsters,” Amstell says over a shot of a group of young people in a bucolic setting, “the idea that human beings like them were once complicit in a bloodbath of unnecessary suffering is too absurd to imagine”.
Carnage tells the story of veganism and of the campaign for animal rights. Its moments of patent absurdity recall Chris Morris’s influential TV satire, Brass Eye. He uses old footage of vegan pioneers and celebrity chefs alike (the latter including a slightly terrifying Fanny Cradock, and Nigella Lawson, who is seen taking pleasure in the sound of a chicken’s breastbone being broken – the voiceover says: “What looks to us now like a documentary about a lunatic, was in fact a hit show about cooking”).
There are fleeting moments of birds and animals being slaughtered, too, though they are used sparingly. Overall, Amstell gets his points across about veganism, and animal rights, without ever sounding preachy or excessively right-on.
He may be pushing at an open door so far as meat consumption is concerned, though. A little over a year ago, the British Social Attitudes survey found that nearly half of the British public had cut back on meat or were already vegetarian. At least some of the impetus had come from warnings from the World Health Organisation that processed meats, such as bacon, sausages and ham do cause cancer.
Just as strikingly, the New York Times has just reported that Americans, conscious of how food affects health and wellbeing, reduced their beef consumption by almost one-fifth between 2005 and 2014. Quoting research by the environmental group, the National Resources Defence Council, the Times added that consumption of pork and chicken also declined.
Even if many of those eating less beef may not have had the environmental impact in mind – greenhouse gases are created when cattle are raised – the NRDC says the drop in pollution was equal to the emissions of 39 million cars.
World Meat-Free Day, which this year takes place on June 12, is hoping to convert more people to the cause. With the global population expected to exceed nine billion by 2050, it says, the increase in meat production is forecast to reach 200 million tonnes, “a demand that simply cannot be met”. Carnage, then, might be as a useful tool in the campaign to urge people to eat less meat, if not to actually become vegan. Watch it, and you might think twice before eating your next burger.
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