Sama Hoole@SamaHoole
A criticism arrived this week suggesting that Gerald represents a "fantastical, cherry-picked version of British beef farming that bears no relation to industrial reality."
Let's address this directly.
There are no beef cattle in factory farms in the United Kingdom.
Not some. Not most. None. Factory farming of beef cattle: the indoor, grain-fed, densely stocked system that generates the statistics most people cite when they cite beef statistics, is an American model. It does not exist here. It is not legal here in the form it takes there. The land, the climate, and the regulatory framework do not permit it.
Every beef cow in Britain is raised outdoors on pasture. Approximately 85% are grass-fed for their entire lives. The majority are grass-finished: they reach slaughter weight on forage, with some grain added in the finishing period. The beef in British supermarkets comes from fields, not feedlots.
Gerald is not a carefully selected exception. Gerald is the norm. Gerald is what British beef production looks like. The farmer near Ledbury is not running an artisan heritage operation. He is running a standard British beef farm.
The statistics people reach for: the emissions figures, the land use figures, the water figures, are global averages heavily weighted by the American feedlot system, the Brazilian deforestation story, the industrial grain-fed model that does not apply to a field in Herefordshire and has never applied to a field in Herefordshire.
Gerald grazed permanent pasture today.
Gerald has grazed permanent pasture every day of his life.
Gerald is the rule.
The feedlot is in Kansas.
Kansas is four and a half thousand miles from the south corner.
