It is often said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
At the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow, 104 countries signed a commitment to reduce their methane emissions by 30 per cent between 2020 and 2030.
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Australia was one of the few countries that was not prepared to sign up to the Global Methane Pledge, due to the significant impact that it would have on our ag sector.
Unsurprisingly, this pledge kicked off the inevitable round of livestock sector bashing as activists demanded a drastic reduction in the consumption of beef or the banning of its consumption all together.
This is of course just another cynical attempt by animal activists to achieve their aims via another route - a Trojan horse for an anti-animal agricultural utopia if you will.
And how have blanket bans on consumer products fared historically?
Prohibition in the 1920s was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and improve health in America.
The results of this US experiment clearly indicate that it was a miserable failure on all counts.
Although consumption of alcohol fell to begin with, illicit production and distribution continued to expand throughout Prohibition despite ever-increasing resources devoted to enforcement.
So if a beef ban did come to pass, I would not be so churlish to suggest that Sirloin speakeasies would pop up all over suburbia, but can you imagine getting between a red blooded American and a hamburger.
I am not advocating violence for one second, but America is already a political tinderbox and this would be grounds for major civil unrest.
What about some more current examples closer to home.
Recent evidence would suggest that Australian lobster fishermen shut out of mainland China appear to be selling millions of dollars' worth of crayfish to the once-booming market via unofficial 'grey channels', namely Hong Kong.
The most egregious example relates to China's continued use of products derived from tigers, despite the fact that it legislated to ban the use of tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicines in 1993 and it is a signatory of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
Critical legal 'grey' areas continue to exist, most notably the allowance of captive breeding.
As a result, China has over 6000 captive-bred tigers living on tiger farms today, which are killed to produce tiger products.
The moral of the story is that the market and demand always seems to find a way, and banning a ubiquitous and well loved product such as beef would clearly fail, irrespective of the geographical location.
One would hope that this outcome would be obvious even to the shrillest of voices, but I have a sneaking suspicion that those demanding that we eat less meat, will not be making any such sacrifices themselves.
- Trent Thorne, agribusiness lawyer
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