As a meat-eater, I’ve long found it convenient to categorize veganism as a response to animal suffering or a health fad. But, faced with these figures, it now seems plain that it’s the only ethical response to what is arguably the world’s most urgent social justice issue. -George Monbiot, “Why vegans were right all along,” Dec. 2002

Guardian columnist and well-known environmentalist George Monbiot ate the above words yesterday — with a dash of salted crow, one imagines. In a column titled “I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat — but farm it properly,” he tells how a book released in England this week has persuaded him that meat eating per se isn’t environmentally irresponsible, it’s the current industrial farming model that is.

Cows on grassMonbiot himself is not vegan. In 2008 he wrote that he gave up all animal products “for about 18 months, lost two stone, went as white as bone and felt that I was losing my mind. I know a few healthy-looking vegans, and I admire them immensely.”

We all do. Vegans have long been the ornery saints squatting cross-legged at the intersection of the food and environmental movements; only recently have things like vegan cupcakes crossed over to widespread, Food Network-validated success.

But now those who have been arguing for a more moderate, catholic approach, one that sees pasture-based livestock raising as an equally green choice to eschewing meat altogether, have new ammunition.