Meat consumption - Change that represents opportunity

A HUGE cultural change on the consumption of are source once regarded as plentiful, healthy and a cheering part of everyday life is on the way. And it isn’t about how we use oil, it’s about our addiction to meat.

We’ve already heard of “peak oil” and “peak water” but we may soon add “peak meat” to that lengthening and disturbing list.

The two staples have a lot in common. Like oil, meat is subsidised. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as once-poor nations become wealthy. And — like oil — meat is something people will be encouraged to consume less of, as we cannot survive the consequences of unlimited industrial meat production.

We have been warned by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation that production of meat is “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global”. That stern warning was reiterated by the European Union yesterday.

Irish farmers are in dire straits and how, they are entitled to wonder, will they cope with this challenge to an income stream now weak but cyclically reliable? There is no easy answer but it seems certain that a sea change is underway and unless we prepare the food sector will face even greater challenges than it does today.

Meat production, and this is an uncomfortable realisation for a country very proud of the beef it produces, is responsible for more emissions than all the world’s cars, trucks, trains, ships and aircraft — combined.

One-third of world grain production is used to fatten animals we intend to eat. With almost one billion people hungry it seems daft to turn 760 million tonnes of grain into animal feed. Every year, Americans eat nine billion animals, mostly as junk food. The methods used to rear and feed these seas of corralled cattle, pigs and chickens create vast environmental and ethical problems.

Though we all have to have food to eat and farmers must be able to make a good living we can no longer brush these monumental warnings aside. But, is it just possible because our food sector is based on units more humane than the vast, corporate feed lots of the USA and mainland Europe that we might be able to turn this coming change to our advantage?

Right now Irish agriculture may not have the resources to reorientate but it cannot expect to remain untouched by the growing condemnation of meat consumption. People will always eat meat but a lot less of it. It will be a luxury item and we have the traditions, the skills the temperate climate — for the moment anyway — needed to satisfy that need.

Conservatism and inertia have been great enemies of this country but surely we can shake off those shackles to turn this change to our advantage?