Make eating beef taboo again - Village Magazine

58 — village July - August 2012

ç½ãçÙ

Make eating beef

taboo again

An environmentalist who happens to eat meat is

like a philanthopist who doesn’t happen to give

to charity

¥ÙÄ»ÙÃÝãÙÊÄ¦

T STRUCK me” Ailill said, “how much better

oﬀ you are today than the day I married you”.

“I was well enough oﬀ without you”, Medb

said … So began an epic bragging match cul-

minating in ‘Táin Bó Cúailnge, The Cattle Raid of

Cooley.’ In response Queen Medb leads an army to

capture Donn Cúalinge, the bull stud, to impress

her husband before being thwarted, single-hand-

edly, by Cúchulainn, a supernatural teenager.

Cattle have long occupied an important posi-

tion in Irish agriculture, especially west of the

Shannon. Previously kept for milk or occasionally

drained of blood – just as is done by

the Masai Mara in Kenya – in Gaelic

Ireland they were not raised for meat.

That situation obtained until the sev-

enteenth century: referring to cattle,

an English observer remarked in the

Advertisement for Ireland of 1623

that “the common sort never kill any

for their own use being contented to

feed all the year round upon milk,

butter and the like”. It is possible a

taboo emerged about beef consump-

tion on account of the importance of

dairy with which there was a sacral

relationship.

On his arrival in Ireland in 1171

King Henry decreed that children

should be baptised in churches by

priests, for it had formerly been the

custom in various parts of Ireland for a child to

be immersed three times in milk. Just as Japanese

people venerated rice, Slavs rye, Mayans corn, and

Christians wheat, the Gaelic Irish saw supernat-

ural forces at work in dairy: according to Daibhí

O’Cróinín: ‘Goibniú, the artiﬁcer-god of pagan

times, was still invoked by the butter-makers in

the ninth and tenth centuries, and many other

pagan beliefs about the ‘turn’ and the ‘luck of the

butter’ survived until the co-operative creamer-

ies took butter-making out of the hands of the

farmers”.

A T Lucas says: “a whole corpus of ritual and

magic, of which we know only the dwindling

remnants, existed to promote their fertility,

increase their milk yield and protect them against

malign supernatural inﬂuences”.

Deriving beef from this quasi-maternal ani-

mal may have been considered immoral as was

the case in India, Japan and some Germanic tribes.

Lucas asserts: “There are no beef-eating heroes in

Irish mythology”.

Fattening cattle for meat was a wasteful use

of resources especially in the absence of refrig-

eration and winter fodder. This changed with

the arrival of renewed English colonisation in

the seventeenth century after which

Ireland became a source of beef for

the Empire; the introduction of bar-

relling allowed it to be preserved and

Ireland became the leading exporter

in Europe.

It was in this time that much of

our remaining native hardwood

forests were felled to make way for

intensive agriculture, leading one

poet to mourn: Cad a dhéanfaimíd

feasta gan adhmad? Ta deireadh na

gcoillte ar lar?; “Now what will we do

for timber, with the last of the woods

cut down?”.

The Great Famine removed the

last residue of subsistence farming.

From the late nineteenth century

farmers on ever-larger holdings

became producers for the international market.

In post-colonial Ireland 90% of our agricultural

land is devoted to pasture. We have the lowest cov-

erage of forestry of any EU, a mere 10% of our

total area, and typically biodiversity-inhibiting

conifers.

The island of Ireland is a mass-production

site for livestock, with dangerous environmen-

tal consequences.

The New Caviar

A 2006 UN report Livestock’s Long Shadow out-

lined its startling contribution to climate change:

rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases

A taboo

emerged

about beef

consumption

on account

of the

importance

of dairy with

which there

was a sacral

relationship

60 — village July - August 2012

than driving cars. Consuming steak regularly

might be considered more environmentally-del-

eterious than driving an SUV.

The Green Revolution which began after World

War II has allowed the consumption of meat to

reach these unsustainable levels. It doubled crop

yields around the world but depended on ﬁnite

fossil fuels: herbicides and pesticides are by-

products of oil; synthetic fertiliser is produced

by burning natural gas; the harvesting, planting

and drying of grain all demand signiﬁcant energy

inputs.

Much of what is cultivated is not consumed

directly: 80% of US grain is fed to animals. Since

the 1960s, average per capita meat consumption

in many countries, including Ireland, has doubled.

On average 6 grams of plant protein is required

to yield 1 grams of meat protein. Beef along with

meat from other ruminants is the least eﬃcient.

With a rising population and peak oil on the hori-

zon a calamitous future may await, especially as

Third World diets converge with those in the First.

Vaclav Smil estimates that if the world’s growing

population decides to eat the same amount of

meat that the world’s aﬄuent minority now con-

sumes, we would need 67 percent more land than

the earth actually contains.

In his book ‘Just Food’, agricultural historian

James E McWilliams reaches a stark conclusion:

“every environmental problem related to contem-

porary agriculture that I’ve investigated ends up

having its deepest roots in meat production …

Monocropping, excessive applications of nitrogen

fertilizer, addiction to insecticides,

rainforest depletion, land degrada-

tion, topsoil runoﬀ, declining water

supplies, even global warming – all

these problems would be consider-

ably less severe if global consumers

treated meat like they treat caviar,

that is, something to be eaten rarely,

if ever”. Howard F Lyman goes so far

as to say: “To be an environmentalist

who happens to eat meat is like being

a philanthropist who doesn’t happen

to give to charity”.

Green Delusions

It is incorrectly assumed that Irish

beef is a pure product of terroir. In

reality, grain, most of it imported

and one million tonnes of it geneti-

cally modiﬁed, forms, on average, nearly 40%

of their diet. Synthetic fertiliser boosts the grass

they graze and pollutes the water. But apart from

external inputs, grass-fed cattle actually produce

four times more methane through enteric fermen-

tation than their feedlot cousins.

Teagasc, the Irish Agriculture and Food

Development Authority admits: “Ireland is unique

among the EU countries for the proportion of its

greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions which origi-

nate from agriculture, representing 29.1% of

national and 40% of the non-Emissions Traded

Sector (non-ETS) emissions”. This is compared to

an EU average of 9%.

Among developed economies only that other

island of livestock, New Zealand, has a higher pro-

portion of emissions associated with agriculture.

Teagasc’s submission to the derailed Climate

Change Bill disclaims any responsibility for Irish

agriculture: “the impact of rising food demand

means, other things being equal, that a reduc-

tion in food production in Ireland to

meet national GHG reduction targets

would result in increased food pro-

duction elsewhere.

This can result in a net increase

in global GHG emissions, if the coun-

tries expanding food production were

unable to produce food with an emis-

sions intensity that is as low as in

Ireland”. But this argument ignores

that the production of Irish beef is

heavily subsidised. McDonalds pur-

chases Irish beef because it is cheaper

than the alternatives, not because it

is has a better environmental record

or is higher quality. An artiﬁcial-

ly-low price increases demand for

hamburgers. Moreover, Irish beef

is aggressively marketed at home

and abroad. The Minister for Agriculture Simon

Coveney is currently attempting to bypass the EU

and sell directly to the Chinese market.

With each new trade deal his popularity rises

and he is seen by many as a future

leader of Fine Gael. The EU could

curb demand for beef by increas-

ing tariﬀs to take account of its

contribution to global warming. In

certain scenarios embargos could

be applied. Third World production

can be curbed by reducing demand

in the First. Europe can be a beacon

of responsibility.

Teagasc also ignores how, if we

move away from livestock produc-

tion, we could plant more forests

thereby oﬀ-setting our emissions and

satisfying long-term energy require-

ments with carbon-neutral fuel; we

would also increase biodiversity and

make the country more attractive to

tourists; while forest-gardening and

permaculture oﬀer sustainable sources of food.

Furthermore it seems likely that consumers,

in the developed world at least, will alter their

consumption to take greater account of beef’s

environmental impact and health consequences.

Our agriculture model may become obsolete just

as British coal mines did.

Alternatives

The option of developing our dairy sector at

the expense of beef production oﬀers some

encouragement but the same environmental haz-

ards apply, albeit with greater energy yields. In

bygone times, when dairy formed an important

component in the diet, the population was below

one million and most consumption was on a sub-

sistence level; low level production preserved

many of our woodlands.

We can certainly maintain that sector but

instead of moving towards mass production we

should focus on quality, nutritious produce: arti-

san cheeses and non-homogenised,

even raw, milk should be promoted

instead of being stymied by over-

regulation. These will have more

value added and can create greater

employment than the powdered milk

produced by multinationals that our

government ﬂogs to the Chinese.

Cattle should be integrated into

agriculture, allowing their manure to

be used as fertiliser in mixed farms,

rather than generating further meth-

ane as it decays in feedlots.

Diversifying production would

certainly beneﬁt our tourist sector:

a recent poll found that only four per-

cent of visitors come to Ireland for

its food.

Perhaps in this time of economic

hardship we should not reform a proﬁtable sec-

tor. But it is important to analyse wider costs. The

government’s promotion of domestic beef con-

sumption is potentially injurious to the health of

the population, thereby increasing medical costs

and reducing productivity.

The author of a recent study of the Harvard

School of Public Health featuring 100,000 men

and women concluded that “regular consumption

of red meat, especially processed meat, contrib-

utes substantially to premature death”.

Human health will not suﬀer if we abandon

meat consumption altogether. On the contrary,

the China Study (2005), a comprehensive epi-

demiological survey conducted over twenty years,

revealed that a plant-only, wholefood diet min-

imises or reverses the development of chronic

diseases. Contrary to the nutritional myths that

abound, plants provide ample protein sources.

In Ireland we should grow crops for human

consumption. The challenge is to re-think the

whole model of food production in Ireland. The

UN has declared 2013 the year of Quinoa; known

as Mayan gold, it contains all our essential amino

acids and grows well in temperate conditions just

like the potato, another Andean crop.

We should embrace it. Without an awareness

of methane emissions or health studies our ances-

tors seem to have developed a taboo against beef

consumption. In our complex and unsustainable

world that taboo would be wiser still.

Frank Armstrong is a food historian and teacher in

the adult education dept. in University College Dublin

ç½ãçÙ

The proportion

of Ireland’s

greenhouse

gas emissions

which

originate from

agriculture

represents

29.1% of the

national total

On average 6

grammes of

plant protein

is required

to yield 1

gramme of

meat protein