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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— April – May 2013
T
HE horsemeat scandal has been dis-
missed as a labelling issue. But ‘mystery
meat’ is symptomatic of a wider crisis
in meat production that fuels pathology,
sullies our environment and treats other crea-
tures with unnerving brutality.
The issue of food is often consigned to the life-
style columns of newspapers but its importance
cannot be overstated as we attempt to feed a bulg-
ing global population of over billion. Effective
and secure nourishment for us all remains the
most burning political question.
To address this we must curb a growing world-
wide appetite for animal products. A developed
country like Ireland needs to undertake a die-
tary and agricultural shift. The alternative offers
cheaper food, improved nutrition and wellbeing,
as well potentially as mitigating the catastrophe
of climate change.
The environmental indicators are stark.
Estimates of the anthropogenic emissions
that emanate from livestock production range
between a conservative % (FAO: Livestock’s
Long Shadow) and a startling % (Goodland
and Anhang, ) of the total.
Every environmental watchdog under the
sun, apart from eccentric or industry-paid-up
exceptions, is calling for reduced production and
consumption of meat. Most recently Professor
Mark Sutton of the UK’s Centre for Ecology and
Hydrology, called on people in rich countries to
become “demitarians” – eating half as much meat
as usual.
Per capita meat production is almost twice as
high in Ireland as it is in the United States, and
the well-rehearsed argument that curbing our
production will only lead to increased production
elsewhere is disingenuous. There is little to dis-
tinguish the environmental impact of our cattle
from that of production elsewhere, especially as
grass-feeding actually produces four times more
methane than grain-feeding. A new paradigm
would see much of the barren west of Ireland
profitably revert to forestry with food production,
based primarily on horticulture and tillage, clus-
tering around the main population centres in the
fertile south and east. We would lose one indus-
try but others would take its place and potentially
offer greater employment opportunities.
The media, politicians,
the IFA and the CAP
promote beef rather
than plant foods, to the
detriment of health,
the environment and
the poor
culture
What’s
your
beef,
horse?
frank armstrong
Obesity and Wellbeing
In terms of the obesity epidemic it is clear that high
consumption of meat correlates with increased
body mass index (BMI). A Johns Hopkins study
[] led by Dr Youfa Wang analysed poten-
tial connections between meat consumption and
obesity. Wang’s team found participants who
consumed high amounts of meat were per-
cent more likely to be obese than participants
who ate less meat. This corresponds with find-
ings of the ESRI in their study Determinants of
Vegetarianism and Meat Consumption Frequency
in Ireland ().
Nutritional surveys are notoriously unsatisfac-
tory: simple correlation as opposed to causation is
usually established, but the bare statistics reveal
those who eat meat to excess (the World Health
Organisation says we should not consume more
than g of meat a week) are often overweight,
and unhealthy. This may not simply be a product
of meat’s high caloric value. According to Paul
Pitchford: “when protein is grossly overstated
in the diet, one will crave concentrated carbo-
hydrates in the form of refined sugar, sweets,
pastries, polished rice, and the white-flour breads
and pastas. Alcohol also enters the equation, as
it is essentially liquid sugar”.
Fast-food companies seem to exploit this
meat/sugar combination as much as they can
get away with. Almost every dish on McDonald’s
meaty menu, sweet and savoury, contains refined
sugar.
Beyond obesity, excessive meat consump-
tion (especially of red and processed meat) is
correlated with the onset of various cancers.
Furthermore, long-term Chinese studies spon-
sored by Cornell and Oxford Universities showed
that Americans, particularly American men, had
a per cent greater incidence of heart dis-
ease than Asians eating a grain and vegetable
based diet.
Barnard, Nicholson and Howard []
studied the medical costs associated with meat
consumption in the USA, estimating it to be
$- billion per year through higher prev-
alence of hypertension, heart disease, cancer,
diabetes, gallstones, obesity and food-borne
illness among omnivores compared with
vegetarians.
The figure for Ireland (where meat consump-
tion is only just below US levels) has not been
determined but we could make a conservative pro
rata estimate of € billion per annum: roughly
the saving secured recently by our government
with great fanfare on the relief of our bank debt.
The plight of our fellow creatures in meat pro-
duction is usually disregarded in any debate, but
this brutality can be linked to conflict between
human beings. As George Bernard Shaw put
it: “While we ourselves are the living graves of
murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal
conditions on this earth?”.
A peaceful or at least respectful relationship
with other creatures, especially those similar
to ourselves, engenders harmony. Thus every
spiritual tradition preaches restraint or even
abstinence from meat consumption.
The brutality of modern mass production and
slaughter, now hidden from view in giant feeding
lots and abattoirs, must exert a terrible strain on
those who work there; this probably accounts for
why, despite high unemployment, there has been
a labour shortage in this sector. According to the
FÁS website: “The work is smelly, noisy and dirty
at times” and “You cannot afford to be squeamish
or sentimental about animals”.
If the wider population were exposed to real-
ity would they continue to eat meat in the same
way?
Limp Response
The decline in religious practice has removed
many of the constraints that once prevailed. At
a time when food is cheaper than ever, over-con-
sumption is encouraged by companies seeking
to maximise profit.
It is left to politicians and the media in Ireland
to make counter arguments. But they have not
delivered. A determined minority of large land-
owners is allowed to dictate national food policy.
Few people are aware of the environmental impact
of meat, and assume it is healthy to eat it in large
quantities – a notable failure of our education
system.
Perhaps one of the shocks of horsemeat is that
it connects the consumer directly to the actual
animal as opposed to the meat. It is interesting
how many words for animals derive from the
robust Anglo-Saxon while their associated meats
derive from the effete Norman-French or Latin
(sheep, mutton, mouton; pig, pork, porc) and
how the non-Anglo-Saxon descriptions ‘equine
DNA’ and ‘cheval’ emerged to counter the vivid
animality.
The IFA primarily represents large farmers
whose ancestors inherited much of the land after
the Great Famine and the Land Acts of the late
th and early th century. The old agrarian
cry: ‘The land for the people and the bullock for
the road’, was ignored as farming became synon-
ymous with livestock production as opposed to
growing crops for direct human consumption.
In his seminal work Irish Agricultural
Production () Raymond Crotty argued that
“within the existing institutional framework, the
interests of farmers, or landowners, and the
nation are essentially conflicting”.
Crotty showed how Ireland’s switch from
Perhaps one of the shocks of
horsemeat is that it connects
the consumer directly to the
actual animal as opposed to
to the meat
— April – May 2013
tillage to pasture after the Napoleonic wars, due
to changing demand in Britain, set in train a cycle
of emigration of which the Famine was the high-
water mark. Low employment in agriculture saw
the population of the country decline to under
three million by the early s, having risen
to over six million in the counties before the
Famine.
Profit in extensive dry cattle afarming was
maintained by keeping production costs as low
as possible, thereby reducing employment oppor-
tunities. The end product was expensive and most
of it intended for export. This system kept the
cost of food as high in sparsely-populated, rural
Ireland as in the densely-populated, urban United
Kingdom throughout the twentieth century.
Crotty argued that the high cost of food acted
as a brake on the development of other indige-
nous industries. He advocated a land tax that
would force the sale of extensive farms, with
cheap loans made available to suitably-trained
individuals wishing to start their own inten-
sive farm enterprises. He based this on a Danish
model which brought great prosperity there.
Irish crop yields compare favourably with our
European neighbours’: during the Famine three
million were living at a subsistence level on one
million acres of land, often in marginal locations,
out of a total potential farming area of some
million acres. Crotty said: “with twenty million,
instead of one million, acres of land available for
the production of the population’s food require-
ments even with the worst conceivable crop
failures, an abundance of food could have been
grown to feed eight or more millions of people”.
It has been estimated that a small (.ha)
garden can produce two tonnes of food a year
for hours of work, generating three times
the energy put in. It will produce more food per
unit of area than a farmer growing heavily-ferti-
lised and sprayed potatoes. We may not be able to
grow all crop varieties in Ireland but we can pro-
duce significantly more than we do now, increase
employment opportunities and improve health
outcomes.
We can devote far less land to agriculture and
restore woodland if we just eat less meat. But this
country is adopting a largely irresponsible atti-
tude and brooks no dissent. Harvest looms
large.
Responding to the government’s new Climate
Change Bill Harry McGee wrote in The Irish Times
on February th: “The Government argument
is that an per cent reduction by means
annual emissions of million tonnes of car-
bon equivalent, for everything. But agriculture
alone accounts for million tonnes at present.
That means if everything else was reduced to zero,
Ireland would still need to substantially reduce
the amount of food produced, or dramatically
cull national herds”.
He continues: “That is not a feasible solution,
practically or politically, it is argued”. In Irish pol-
itics pastoral farming is the sacred cow, and no
alternatives are imagined.
The media
The reaction of the national broadcaster to the
horsemeat scandal has been superficial at best,
and often quite craven. Most commentators
accept as axiomatic that the interest of pastoral
farmers is identical to the interest of the nation
at large.
There has been no discussion on the wider
issue of livestock production or the over-con-
sumption of meat. Debates revolve around how
‘we’ restore the reputation of Irish beef, and blame
the perfidious supermarkets for promoting cheap
food. No commentator has advocated a serious
reformation of our farming.
The promotion of meat can be insidious, as
when it involves celebrity chefs on shows such as
Pat Kenny’s: regular contributor Catherine Fulvio
(a Bord Bia representative), for example, often
touts recipes containing significant quantities
of red meat.
Kenny repeatedly stated on air that the discov-
ery of horse meat in beef products was a labelling
issue rather than a health concern until finally
disabused of that notion after it became appar-
ent that horsemeat could contain traces of the
painkiller Bute whose consumption by humans
is linked to anaemia and leukemia.
Most startlingly, within days of the story
emerging, the John Murray Show hosted the
owner of a stall that sells horsemeat (legitimately)
in Temple Bar. Live on air, John munched his way
through a horsemeat kebab pronouncing favour-
ably on it. With Murray breaking that taboo, it
seemed as if listeners were being habituated to
the consumption of horsemeat lest they should
be turned off their beef.
From the horse’s mouth
The horsemeat scandal shows that regular con-
sumption of beef is becoming unaffordable for
those towards the bottom of the socio-economic
scale. Average weekly household expenditure on
food in - is € in the richest house-
holds but just € in the poorest. Clearly in the
Recession the poorest are going to come under
pressure to skimp on food – to choose prod-
ucts created out of horse (around €/tonne)
rather than beef (€/tonne) for example.
Although recent research is showing that high-
processed-meat consumption leads to a per
cent increased risk of dying from heart disease,
and an per cent increased risk of dying from
cancer, supermarkets and fast-food chains have
long promoted it, bulking up their products with
cheap fillers. It seems the rising cost of feed com-
modities in the wake of the failure of the US maize
harvest and heavy rains here last summer pushed
the industry over the edge.
Money was saved by allowing horses to enter
the chain. In a murky business where millions of
animals are slaughtered each year, ‘Black Beauty’
sentimentality does not figure. Given the scale of
abuse, it is hard to credit that those at the top did
not have any knowledge of what was occurring.
The reason dry-cattle production has endured
in Ireland is because of the inflexibility of land
ownership which has meant that potential new
farmers cannot get land. Through the nineteenth
and twentieth century the model required low
employment to be profitable. It also kept food
prices high as many of our staples had to be
imported, and allowed for little variety in the diet.
Raymond Crotty’s solution was to tax this form
of agriculture through an export levy. Instead we
do the opposite and farmers are now subsidised
through the CAP. Perversely, the bigger they are
the more they get.
Subsidies should be linked to low-impact pro-
duction and the delivery of healthy, cheap food
for the population. The Irish farming model pro-
motes the opposite.
Instead of promoting beef consumption in
order to help cattle farmers and the beef indus-
try, the national media and politicians should be
encouraging cheaper and healthier plant-based
nutrition.
Until then many of the poorest in our society
will be subjected to low quality, ersatz versions
of what the rich can afford. Horse-beef is another
lamentable chapter in the woeful tale of modern
meat production.
culture
Per capita meat production
is almost twice as high in
Ireland as it is in the US
When protein is grossly
overstated in the diet, one
will crave concentrated
carbohydrates. Fast-food
companies seem to exploit
this meat/sugar combination
Red-blooded Fulvio
