Translator: Thuna Dinh Reviewer: Amanda Chu
I love meat.
(Laughter)
And because I love meat,
I want my children and grandchildren to be able to eat it.
At the moment,
it doesn’t look like this is realistic.
In order to explain how I know this and talk about what we can do,
I want to take you a couple of years into the past.
In 2011,
I was working in a popular grill restaurant
here in Munich.
And at that point,
I was not thinking much about meat consumption yet,
even though much of my work revolved around meat.
I was responsible for the grill,
which was one of the restaurant’s main attractions.
Over time, I realized
that most of our customers ordered an unbelievable amount
of T-bone steaks, entrecôte, roast beef and fillets.
And every evening, I witnessed the typical cliché
of a large group of men going by the grill,
making what you would qualify
as "manly" sounds and comments of approval.
For them, the pure amount of meat they ate
was some sort of a status symbol.
In the meantime,
I began to wonder what happens to the rest of the animal.
What is left over,
and why do these parts not make it to the menu?
Soon we started to buy from local farmers,
and I learned from them what happens to the rest.
When you buy from a local farmer,
you generally buy packages of mixed animal parts.
So we frequently ended up with a quarter of a cow in our kitchen
and had to figure out what to do with it.
The popular parts, like steaks and fillets,
were easy to use.
And also the cuts we stewed for a couple of hours,
like upper shell of calf,
went over quite well with our restaurant's guests.
The challenge was to sell parts
like heart, liver, tongue, bone marrow.
They are unpopular,
but if you prepare them right, they are delicious!
So, my challenge was to guide people’s attention and appetite
toward these parts of the animal,
which have been wrongly forgotten,
and put them on the grill along with the steaks.
I tried everything I could:
I put them on the daily special;
I coached the waiting staff to advertise them;
I told everyone who would listen
what it actually means to eat the whole animal.
I suggested dishes
such as roasted bone marrow with caramelized onions,
grilled bread with herb butter.
Doesn’t this sound delicious?
It even looks delicious!
Indeed, the customers got excited
but only until I told them
which part of the animal was in front of them.
Then they went back to “No, thanks. But do you also have filet?”
When I left the restaurant,
I made it my mission to show people
that the way they are looking at, buying and consuming meat
is wrong
without telling them they should stop eating meat altogether.
Remember, I am not a militant vegan -
I love meat.
But we need to realize
we eat too much meat,
and this applies to almost all of us who eat meat.
And what’s more -
most of us eat meat
for reasons that are not rational and sometimes not even conscious.
The truth is daily meat consumption
is neither good for our personal health
nor for the health of our planet.
Acccording to a study by the World Wildlife Fund in 2014,
every German can produce nearly 800 kilograms less of CO2
if he or she completely drops meat from their diet.
This is as much as a roundtrip flight from Munich to Hamburg
generates per person.
But you don’t need to go to extremes.
How about cutting our meat consumption in half?
That would still mean 400 kilograms less of CO2,
which is already an improvement.
On average,
meat-based meals produce more CO2 than vegetarian meals.
But this is not only due to farting cows
but mainly due to the processes that are involved
in producing each piece of meat.
What it means -
hundreds of liters of water to produce and feed the cattle
as well as the emissions for animal and food transport, for example.
And don't forget
that 80% of the agricultural area
are actually used for livestock feed.
To make things worse, our population is growing fast,
and the amount of people who are demanding more meat
is growing even faster.
Without a fundamental change in our diet,
it won’t be long
before it becomes impossible to feed us all.
In fact, I think we have two options.
If we continue down this road,
the time will come
where all of us have to completely stop eating meat,
our agricultural system will collapse under the growing pressure,
and we will not only have problems producing meat
but also any kind of food at the necessary scales.
The alternative is to reason with and to regulate our meat consumption.
So, I want to go down this second road with you
and point out some things that you can do
to regulate our meat consumption.
Let me introduce my four steps of ethical meat consumption.
Step 1: Your shopping matters.
Shopping is an activity each of us does frequently.
For most of us, it also involves buying meat.
So everyone knows these pictures of mass meat production:
those of cooped-up chickens, pigs that panic so much
that they bite the tails off of each other,
cattle that is standing in mountains of their own shit, right?
Everyone has seen at least one of these pictures at some point,
and they are disgusting.
Then why do so many people still buy the meat of those poor animals?
Our purchase supports this meat mass production,
this factory farming
that completely ignores the well-being of the animal.
The saddest part is ...
everyone can buy the meat of this happy cow
we only know from these cliché advertisements.
But you need to understand
that you won't find it
under the neon light of a discount supermarket.
This cow is standing on a farm,
raised by a farmer whose biggest concern
is not achieving the greatest level of efficiency
but raising cattle in a species-appropriate way.
If you choose this type of meat,
you support your local farmer and the ecosystem behind him.
Grocery shopping is really a political act,
and every purchase of yours strengthens one of the systems.
Step 2: Reduce meat waste.
We have a waste problem.
So, you've probably heard that before, and most probably dismissed it.
But 1/3 of our groceries ends up in the trash.
So we really need to talk about it.
I think the root of the problem
is that we have lost the connection to our food
and what is involved in producing it.
Imagine you open your fridge,
discover a piece of ham covered with mold.
How do you feel?
Probably disgust by the mold but not much else.
Let me point out the obvious:
Behind this piece of ham is a living animal
that was born, raised and killed
to produce it.
And you throw that away?
Imagine you had farmed the field, planted the vegetables,
raised the calf,
brought it to the slaughterhouse and watched it die.
How do you feel now?
As I said, we do this to 1/3 of our groceries -
you don’t care?
Then let's try the financial angle.
Every German throws away groceries worth 400 euros per year.
Personally, I have many ideas to better spend this money.
But how do we get these 400 euros out of the bin?
An easy but effective tip is write a shopping list.
By writing this list,
think about how often you will eat at home,
will you have guests,
and what exactly you want to eat.
Check some cookbooks or apps -
be creative -
and decide upfront what you want to cook,
and then buy only what is on the list.
Step 3: Eat every part of the animal.
At the risk of repeating myself,
heart, liver, tongue, ox mouth, bone marrow
are delicious!
Think about fried pork ears dunked in mayonnaise,
ox mouth salad with pumpkin seeds,
silently sizzling bone marrow,
medium grilled liver.
Doesn’t this get you excited?
So, once you found your trusted farmer that I described,
why not ask him for some heart or liver?
I would bet he will be very happy to sell it,
and he also will offer you some tips on how to prepare it.
Some of you may think
you need years of experience or must be a trained chef
to be able to cook this.
To the contrary,
if you can prepare roast beef, you also can prepare a heart.
Just remove the tallow and the larger tendons,
make sure you don't cut away the red muscle,
fry it shortly in a pan,
put it in the oven for around 10 minutes,
slice it and serve it with some salt.
Come on.
This is so Instagramable!
(Laughter)
Even looking at it makes my mouth water.
Bone marrow is even simpler to prepare.
Just try it out.
Or are you already experienced?
Try preparing some liver.
Every time you use one of these cuts of the animal,
you are improving the balance of our meat consumption,
and you also contribute
to reducing the number of animals required to feed us.
Step 4:
Celebrate eating meat.
But first, ask yourself:
Is it really necessary to eat meat every day,
on every meal?
There was a time when eating meat was a luxury.
Take my grandma as an example.
She was born in 1920 and will turn 100 next year.
She still vividly remembers
when the whole family gathered around the Sunday roast,
feeling excited and blessed to be able to eat it.
It was a real occasion.
Sure, back then it was mostly for financial reasons.
But if we paid realistic prices for our meat,
we won’t be able to afford the amounts we consume today.
Meat as a cheap commodity
is only possible by the broken system that I described.
If we buy our meat from local farmers,
we pay the justifiable, real price for it,
which means we cook less of it,
which makes it a special treat.
So, I invite you to enjoy meat like a good bottle of red wine.
You don’t open it on any day,
you do it consciously
and celebrate the privilege to be able to enjoy it -
ideally in good company.
As I said, I love meat.
If we don’t change our behavior now,
we won’t be able to enjoy it in the future.
But the good thing is, together,
we can secure a future with meat as a culinary option
while reducing our CO2 emissions.
The path to getting there
is by consciously consuming meat -
these four steps:
shop responsibly,
reduce meat waste,
eat every single part of the animal,
celebrate eating meat,
and most of all, enjoy.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)