Meat and pollution - What’s the alternative?

THIS week opened to a crisis in the Irish meat industry and closed with an EU deal to protect the environment. The two issues may seem unrelated but it is unlikely that will remain the case for much longer.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation the production of meat for human consumption is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global”. It has been suggested that meat production is responsible for more emissions than all the world’s cars, trucks, trains, ships and aircraft combined. If that is the case it can only be a matter of time before the issue has to be confronted.

This would do great damage to our economy so maybe it’s time to start considering what might happen to the thousands of jobs and revenue already threatened by this week’s pork panic.