Have farmers got all eggs in one basket?

THE news that the World Health Organisation (WHO) will publish a report on Monday that will show that eating some processed meats exposes consumers to cancer risks on a par with misusing alcohol, asbestos, arsenic or cigarettes will hardly encourage a light-hearted breakfast mood on Ireland’s 140,000 or so family farms this morning. Most of them are, after all, directly or indirectly involved in meat production.

The same report, from the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, will also advise that eating too much red meat heightens cancer risks. This will hardly be a champagne moment for the 8.8% of the country’s workforce employed directly or indirectly through agriculture.

The report will add to the growing body of evidence that suggests our almost insatiable appetite for meat is an environmentally unsustainable health risk. This suggestion will of course be anathema to the meat industry, as will the WHO suggestion that we should eat processed meats like ham, bacon or salami as infrequently as possible. The safety threshold suggested by the WHO — that we should not eat more than 500g, just over a pound in old money — of red meat each week represents a huge challenge for farmers and meat processors, especially as the WHO net is thrown pretty widely. The agency describes hamburgers, minced beef, pork chops, some sausages and lamb and mutton as red meat.