[MIT Tech Review] Bill Gates: Rich nations should shift entirely to synthetic beef

Let's hope that after Bill Gates solves the world's problems with synthetic beef that he'll move on to developing synthetic deer

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/europe/uk-deer-cull.html

As England’s Deer Population Explodes, Some Propose a Mass Cull
A pandemic-fueled expansion of the herds threatens the plant life that many species depend on for survival. But will the public accept killing many more deer?

By Fleur Macdonald

July 3, 2021

CIRENCESTER, England — During a spring day of sun and showers in Gloucestershire in southwestern England, Mike Robinson, a restaurant owner and self-styled “hunter-gatherer,” was out counting the deer on his land. On any given morning he can see up to 40. He spotted a hind, a female deer, walking more cautiously than normal, a sign that she had company.

“Generally baby roe deer are smaller than the height of the grass,” he said. “So very often you just see the top of their heads or their ears.” Hinds had only started giving birth in recent days. “We’re going to see this colossal increase in numbers,” he said, sounding worried.

In a normal year, deer hunters and government culling programs help limit the herd, and restaurants form an important market for the venison. With the pandemic, hunting and culling stopped, the market for venison collapsed and, as a result, the deer population of Britain is exploding, decimating the plant life that many species depend on.

“Heavy browsing and grazing can impact severely on woodland plants and heath land, and salt marsh habitats,” said Martin Fowlie, a spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. That can lead to declines in bird populations, he added.

To avoid that, some wildlife experts now see a need for drastic action to reduce the deer herd, including through an expanded program of culling. In Britain, which prides itself as a nation of animal lovers, that might be hard for many people to accept.

For some, the answer to making a cull more acceptable is simple: “Anything shot must be eaten,” says Tim Woodward, the chief executive of the Country Food Trust, a charity that distributes game meat, and who supports the idea of a mass cull. But even if that would make a large-scale cull more palatable to the public, it would present a steep logistical challenge that some are only now thinking about ways to meet.

While deer are difficult to count, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says the population exceeds two million, causing over 74,000 traffic accidents a year and inflicting heavy damage to crops, woodlands and marshes.





Deer are also among the challenges to Britain’s plans to reduce its carbon footprint. The government has said it hopes to increase tree planting to about 74,000 acres a year by 2025, up from about 25,000 acres a year now, to sequester carbon. Herds of voracious deer munching on unprotected saplings could undermine that effort.

Chris Packham, a noted wildlife activist, has recommended the culling of deer that destroy the dry scrub habitat that serves as a nesting ground for nightingales, whose numbers have declined sharply in recent decades.

Charles Smith-Jones of the British Deer Society, a deer welfare group, also accepts the need for what he calls “active management,” adding: “Of the active methods available, only shooting is really practical.”

Advocates of a cull broad enough to bring the population into balance say it would ultimately require eliminating as many as a million deer through the combined efforts of private landowners, licensed shooters and public bodies like Forestry England, which manages the nation’s forests, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Even if a program of that breadth could be organized, and if it proved politically possible, that would still leave the problem of what to do with all of the meat.

A major hurdle is resistance to venison, which has never been a popular menu item in the country. A cull large enough to reduce deer to manageable numbers would produce much more meat than could be consumed at current levels.

Yet even before the pandemic, nearly eight million people in Britain were struggling to get enough to eat, Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee reported. Even with the pandemic beginning to ease, food charities around the country are coping with an increase in demand.

In Britain, venison is not typically eaten at home; it has a reputation of being a treat for special occasions.
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more at the link

 

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