seedmagazine.com: by Paul Roberts

Humanity’s rapidly increasing appetite for meat is fast becoming a matter of global consequence. Paul Roberts on the science, and morality, of our planet’s modern palate.

It’s a quiet sunday morning when we roll into Weifang city, in China’s Shandong province, to interview local food producers, but our hosts are unperturbed. The export scandals are still months away, and the government is happy to show Western journalists the glories of China’s rapidly evolving food system. Within an hour, my interpreter and I are being escorted through the city’s newest showcase—a duck-processing plant where a shift of workers had been brought in and several thousand ducks dispatched—so that I can witness China’s most recent great step forward. And it is impressive. In huge, spotless rooms, rows of workers in clean-suits and hairnets are swiftly and methodically disassembling birds on a mechanical conveyor at a rate of 3,100 an hour. By tomorrow, these ducks will be bound for supermarkets in Beijing, to be snapped up by upscale shoppers as quickly as they can be put in the meat case. [ read more ]