Beef

by Brian W. Aldiss


'Thank goodness, the cow  is now extinct!' said  Coriander Avorry, in the  final
year of this millennium.

Avorry was speaking at the Peterborough Ecological Crisis Management Conference,
late  last  century.  He  had  recently  assumed  the  presidency  of  the   ECM
Association. Although  his announcement  roused a  deal of  applause, there were
many delegates who thought that the final extinction of the cow - and of  ninety
-nine per cent of the world's sheep - had come about too late.

'For too long,'  Avorry continued, 'motives  of profit and  high yield dominated
agriculture. Biotech took over compassion. Industrial agricultural practice  has
slowly  broken the  so-called developing,  actually decaying,  nations. Now  our
greed has brought the First World to disaster.'

It was then that the bomb exploded. It had been planted under the dais. Many  in
the hall were injured, some fatally, including Avorry.

His daughter, herself slightly wounded, ran  to his aid. She threw herself  down
by his side, weeping to see his terrible injuries.

Who planted the bomb? It could have been the Meat-Eaters on the one hand or,  on
the other, the Undead.

Consider  their cases  dispassionately, if  possible. The  Undead had  as  their
objective the ruination of the First World. Fortress Europe had previously  been
breached with the  aid of H-bombs  manufactured in India  and Pakistan. Although
the Undead were a comparatively small  unit, their fanaticism knew no reason  or
compromise. They were perennially reinforced by members of the Third World.

Although Third  World debts  had been  rescinded and  placatory loans paid over,
"ransom money!' cried the throats of  Africa. The Undead came from a  dislocated
world. There, literally  billions of people  lived and suffered  on starvation's
edge. They were landless. Powerful companies had bought up the land, farming  it
- raping it -with fertilisers and pesticides and inappropriate monocultures.  So
the landless and uprooted could obtain food only by payment. And when they could
no longer pay -well, the improvidence  of the poor was well-known. They  died of
it, unwanted and unwashed.

And where did the food grown on their land go?

Take India.  According to  the Undead's  campaign statistics,  forty per cent of
arable land  was devoted  to growing  fodder for  animals which  were killed and
exported. Other acreage  grew soya beans  - exported to  feed the cattle  of the
First World. The  old India, frugal  as it was,  had died. Its  poor farmers had
once relied on cattle  for dung and for  pulling and carrying-power. Now  prices
had soared beyond their  reach. Such farmers and  their families were now   dead
- or building bombs.

Such was the background of most of the Undead.

Now consider the case of the Meat-Eaters. Their claim was that if they ceased to
market beef, the entire world economy  would collapse. At this time, this  claim
had a grain of truth in it, since collapse was imminent in any case.

The Meat-Eaters' anodyne picture of  the world depicted cattle grazing  placidly
on green pastures. This  had become fantasy long  before the end. The  truth was
that sentient creatures -  not only cattle, but  sheep, pigs and fowls  -were no
longer animals but mere meat-production units, destined to make the journey into
the greedy stomachs of the West as quickly and cheaply as possible.

To keep  these meat-production  units healthy  in their  short lives,  they were
stuffed with penicillin. So  antibiotics became increasingly ineffectual  in the
task  of  curing  an increasingly  sick  population.  Their meat-gorging  habits
accelerated the rate of illness.

So the Meat-Eaters, as dedicatedly as the Undead in their different way, set the
stage for global disaster.

What finally  tipped the  balance? The  threat posed  by the  incursions of  the
Undead had caused  the rural populations  of Europe to  withdraw to increasingly
policed cities. In the neglected forests and woods, wild boar multiplied.  Their
numbers were estimated at  two to three million  in France, Germany, and  Poland
alone. Cases  of CSF  - Classical  Swine Fever  - were  frequent, and  spread to
domesticated  pigs.  A stage  of  thought had  been  reached whereby  it  seemed
indecent that any animal should roam unchecked in the wilds.

The  German  and  French  governments  took  it  upon  themselves  to  develop a
genetically controlled  virus which  was unleashed  on wild  herds as, a century
earlier,  myxomatosis  had  been spread  among  rabbit  populations. Biotech-shy
neighbouring governments protested, to no avail.

Wild boar died in their thousands  and hundreds of thousands. Their dead  bodies
lay in forests,  copses and fields.  The virus mutated  and infected sheep.  And
from sheep a trans-specific variant spread to human beings.

Not since the Black  Death had such devastation  befallen the human race.  Their
dogs and cats, as well as their livestock, died with them. Their  over-populated
cities made ideal breeding grounds.

The Third World  had its moment  of triumph before  it too was  hit. Amongst the
undernourished populations, CSF spread rapidly.

The world economy collapsed, crumbling like an old man without teeth.

Such survivors as there were had to make do in a different world. It was an even
harsher world than the one preceding it. But one thing was certain: all men were
now perforce vegetarians. Their cattle had been wiped out.

Coriander Avorry had been a vegetarian all along.

So  who  was responsible  for  his death?  The  Meat-Eaters, busy  trying  to re
-establish the old order? Or the Undead, busy trying to destroy the remnants  of
Western civilisation?

The world was too chaotic for the crime to be solved.

One thing was certain, as his weeping daughter declared. Avorry was dead.

So were the cows.


Meat Makes You Ill. It Has Made the Whole Planet Ill.