Ireland's dairy export boom, is it without consequence?

Enda Kenny feeding a baby milk formula at Glanbia launch

If a picture tells a thousand words what does this one say? It's enraged people. Mostly women, and mostly those women interested in how feeding formula milk is considered "normal" while breastfeeding is seen as "unnormal".

Today was the first day in 31 years that Irish and European farmers were able to produce milk without limit. As part of a series of features by Irish writers on the social and economic impacts of the end of milk quota, I wrote the following piece about baby formula for the Irish Independent.

Baby formula is a huge part of our dairy export boom but is it a product without consequence? Some people think not...

Earlier this week on a farm in Carlow I watched milk splashing into jars as 80 doe-eyed Holstein Freisan ladies took their turn in the milking parlour. The farm, in beautiful well-drained Carlow land had been farmed by its 69 year old farmer and his father before him. This was the perfect place to talk about Irish milk and a brighter, quota-free era.

“Quota was a kind of madness” said the farmer as we shared bread, butter and marmalade in his kitchen after morning milking finished. His college-going daughter, wearing her local GAA team shirt, placed a hot pot of tea and a 2 litre plastic carton of milk on the table.

I’ve sat in many such kitchens of dairy farms in Ireland. Despite the oft-heard view of the dairy farmer swimming in money, few of these farmers want to be rich. All want to educate their children, and work hard at a relentless 365 day a year job. As I poured milk into my tea I wondered if I should ask this man if he felt what he did for a living was putting families in other parts of the world at risk.

Increasingly questions are being asked about the nature of our dairy miracle and its big dependence on milk powder. Is this hugely successful industry which has helped bring Ireland out of recession selling a product to those who have the least money to spend on it - baby formula.

This is relevant both to developing countries and in Ireland where the ESRI named us in a report produced in January as having the lowest breast feeding rate in the world (yes you read that correctly).

Ireland makes 10% of the infant formula fed to babies around the globe. Our food and farming industry presents this as a green, healthy foodstuff and in many ways it is. Ireland is the only country where all our dairy farms are monitored for green credentials and where waste, energy, animal feed and every last input is measured and accounted for.

Yet both the World Health Organisation and HSE policy is for mothers to breastfeed rather than use formula milk in the early months, or in the case of the WHO up to two years of age.

“I was enraged when I saw this picture” says Krisia Lynch from AIMS – the Association for Improvement in Maternity Services talking about the Enda Kenny, Phil Hogan and Jim Bergin from Glanbia feeding three babies infant formula at the launch of Glanbia’s new infant formula plant in Belview earlier this month. “It was outrageous. On one hand you have the department of health saying breast feeding babies is policy then here’s the department of agriculture encouraging and selling this baby formula message. We can guess which of the two is the stronger lobby group.”

Glanbia’s infant formula is fed by parents in West Africa, the Middle East, Asia and central America. Their new factory is the largest single infrastructure investment in Ireland by an Irish company since the construction of Ardnacrusha in 1929. When I contacted the Taoiseach’s office on the above photo their comment was that the plant is expected to contribute an estimated €400m a year to the Irish economy and provide around 1,600 jobs as a result of the extra dairy activity. 

This baby formula boom is hugely valuable in the multiplier effect of income spread in rural areas. To suggest to these workers that what they are making is wrong is incorrect. But are we asking all the questions around to whom and how our infant formula is being sold.

“Our tiny little country manages to feed 10% of  the children of the world with artificial milk” says Krisia Lynch. “While on the other hand professionally here the message on breast milk is being re-written. It’s not now “breast is best” but “normal”. So your baby has a normal response to immuniolgical diseases, gestational diabetes, chrones disease etc... with the underlying message is that if baby is not fed human milk it will have a sub optimal response.”

In the 1970s infant formula companies began to see their first backlash as they began selling product in developing countries. To make up a baby’s bottle you must have a clean bottle, and a clean water supply. Many companies came in for abuse and scrutiny on how health workers and doctors were incentivised to sell baby powder to mothers where breastfeeding was clearly the safest option.

Children died and legislation was changed. In 1981 the UN World Health Assembly ruled that baby formula companies are not allowed influence health professionals on advising mothers.

Unfortunately this doesn't always work. A recent report by Save the Children accused Nestlé in Pakistan, of handing out branded items to health workers and free samples of formula and bottles to maternity facilities.

Ireland gives around 600 million euros to the developing world annually. We aid rural farmers and increasingly women to form micro-businesses that will earn them surplus cash to spend on health or sending their children to school. Some buy baby formula with his cash, thinking it is a better choice for their infant.  Is this a double standard? Is Ireland both playing poacher and gamekeeper?

“The debate on breastfeeding versus infant formula will continue but there is always needs to be choice” says Cormac Healy of the Irish Dairy Industries Association. “We also have to remember that in the scale of things we produce less than 1% of the world’s milk so single handedly we’re not going to change the consumption patterns of any marketplace.”

20% of the milk produced on Ireland’s 18000 dairy farms goes into baby formula. Irish factories produce from milk to finished product in packaged tins but we also export base milk powder for blending in other countries. We are not in control of how this product is sold to third parties or mothers.

“Were not a one trick pony here, infant formula is an important sector but it’s not all we do” says Cormac Healy. “It’s also produced under very strict regimes and has a very valid place in the nutrition area. In terms of the breastfeeding debate, there is the factor of choice and a lot of the time this is about information and support to mothers.”

Closer to home global food giant Danone has plants manufacturing infant formula in Macroom and Wexford, with Macroom producing over 125,000 tonnes of infant formula annually. Danone sponsors the Irish “First 1000 days” baby and toddler nutrition campaign. SMA owned by Pfizer, sponsors Ireland’s Pregnancy and 

Baby Fair in the RDS Dublin and Cork City Hall this April.

In Irish maternity wards, understaffing and the nice lady with trolley of made-up baby formula bottles are also pretty good at undermining the breast is best (or breast is normal) message.

Hospitals pay for the formula and new mums get it for free once they’re admitted to the maternity ward. Like most new mothers I planned on breastfeeding my first baby. Generally it went well but within two months I was back working and baby was wholly bottle-fed from then on.

With my second child I ended up back in hospital having surgery for a C-section complication. I pumped breast milk every four hours even straight after surgery like a demented person but eventually folded and bottle fed. And the brand I chose to continue feeding to my baby once I was discharged was the brand supplied in the hospital, in this case Aptamil. Most mothers do the same thing – if they baby feeds well on what the hospital supplied why fix something if it isn’t broken? 

Women who’ve just given birth, especially with their first baby are exhausted, and if the baby doesn’t latch on and feed they will often take the option of the handily available and free formula milk. Maternity staff are over-stretched and there are not enough bodies on the wards to literally sit with women, help them and motivate them to start or to stay breastfeeding. 

Some women desperately need infant formula, I needed it myself. But the WHO’s position and on wards in Ireland the reality is that most women don’t.

I put the question to twitter -  How do we feel about #babyformula in Irish hospitals? As a mother or parent was it manna from heaven or expensive road to ruin? #nutrition

Siobhan @Smdoyle76 ·  @campbellsuz I think it’s a necessary evil - very little support to establish breastfeeding in hospital and the first few days at home.

  elizabeth macdonnell @yummymummyby4  @campbellsuz it's pushed as the easy option when in fact the opposite is true, the pressure to 'give a bottle/top up' begins in hospital

ShinyPrettyWant @fingalfoodie @campbellsuz if they didn't give it to me my child would have suffered. I can't produce sufficient breast milk due to a hormonal condition.

I found spending 15 euro on a box of formula really expensive and I’m living in a rich country. Imagine how expensive this is in real income terms in Africa or even China? But hang on – if we don’t sell this stuff to them somebody else will. Black market baby formula contaminated with melamine not only killed babies in China but has been found in milk powder sold as baby formula in East Africa. Surely Irish baby formula is the safest option. But is breast milk not the safest option?

Should we be finding other routes for high-quality Irish milk rather than baby-formula? It’s lucrative and valuable to the rural economy but it’s also controversial. The quality of this product is a world beater but Ireland could find itself the future focus of international criticism from NGO’s who work in the fields of infant and mother care.

Ear to the Ground and ten years later..

H

I was very excited to hear this week that I have been shortlisted in the Guild of Agricultural Journalist's Awards for "Best Online Journalist". This is a huge thrill for me. I started Basketcase two years ago to keep up a discussion on issues affecting farming, food and rural life in Ireland. As you've gathered, the blog is written for anyone interested in food, where food comes from and the affect that food policy has on farming families and people who enjoy the countryside.

Being nominated is a huge honour. Many years ago I produced a TV programme which won a Guild award for Best Television Programme. Myself and journalist Mairead McGuinness (who is now a MEP) travelled to Holland to investigate the dioxin crisis there as part of the "Ear to the Ground Investigates" series. Our programme won and we went on to make many more investigative programmes where we tackled harder stories about the food chain and food policy. They were great times and great stories.

I learned a huge amount about both producing and writing from working with Mairead who at that time was editor of the Farming Independent. Mairead was hard to please but rightly so. Information had to be correct, properly researched with no stone left unturned. In fact it wasn't a story until at least five phonecalls had been made on it which is a pretty good rule I still tend to follow. It then had to be developed, and shaped into something that made sense quickly to readers or viewers with care and the correct emphasis. I then went into RTE television and radio where I produced and directed entertainment and current affairs programmes. Over my time there I directed shoots in France, UK, Belgium and Thailand and became more hard-bittened and cynical about the business. I interviewed both Bertie Ahern, and Beyonce, neither of whom made much sense.

The best moments are the things people say off the record. And sitting opposite Condoleezza Rice on George Bush's visit to Ireland on the Washington Press Corps bus, because it was the only posh coach with a toilet. Being in the right place at the right time always helps.

Like many people I found my creative and journalist impulses flattened by working inside a large organisation like RTE. At that point I got out to concentrate on writing. I still return to Montrose to contribute on food and farming on Radio One's Today with Pat Kenny and Countrywide, and to chat at people's desk and get the gossip. I also report for television - last season on The Daily Show, The Consumer Show and earlier this month at the Dublin Web Summit. Going in and out of television is a whole lot better than working there full time. And there's nothing like the very off the record craic you have on the road with a crew.

I'm still quite old fashioned about how I work and when I see "holes" in stories or information that is simply incorrect it drives me mad. Opinion is not reporting, but the lines between both have become hugely blurred now with web publishing and the huge splurge of content available to us. Blogging is a great medium but not when it's simply selling product. Many food blogs unfortunately have become spin shops for food brands; great for PRs, but not great for readers. There is still great writing and journalism out there, you just have to look harder for it.

When I worked on Ear to the Ground Investigates I was delighted our programme won a Guild award but to be nominated for my blog is much more a personal thing. Farming journalism in Ireland is of a very high standard with publications like the Irish Farmers Journal, the Farming Independent and Farmers Monthly writing content specifically for those who farm be it in the poultry or suckler to beef sector. These papers are vital to the farming community and for me they provide news, features and comment across all the different types of food production which in Ireland are widely varied. They also provide very strong technical content whether you are looking at upgrading your milking parlour to changing your AI to improve productivity.


With Basketcase I try to write for those both inside farming and also outside it and give a picture of how farming policy affects consumers and those who are interested in food provenance, development issues and the environment.

My print work at the moment can be found in the Farmers Journal, the Irish Independent consumer pages on a Thursday and in The Gloss magazine every month as part of The Irish Times. For The Gloss I write a food column "This Edible Life" which is the more fun, and dare I say the sarky side of both myself and the food business. I am also continually involved in TV - we made two "What's Ireland Eating" documentaries in the last two years and we have other projects in development. I don't write much about my personal life in my blog, and sometimes there is a pressure to do this if you are a journalist as personal information is of interest to people and gives them a window inside your life. I try to keep my family life fairly private but I do hope to write more about one personal project I am involved in that relates very much to Irish rural life so keep a watch out for that. Basketcase may have to produce a sister blog if I find it's of big interest to readers.

The awards ceremony is this Friday the 9th November so I'll have to pull the hay out of my hair (literally) and get the glad rags on to attend the awards dinner which I'm really looking forward to. It's always great to catch up with old colleagues, editors and people in the same field. Writing for me is a quite solitary job apart from when I'm on farms or visiting food businesses. It's nice to connect with people in the same field and start taking notes on the back of a napkin like several of us ended up doing at a recent awards dinner. While journalists are great at talking, they'll never miss out on a good story...

http://www.farmersjournal.ie

Want to ban cheese ads being seen by Irish kids? You've two days to do so... or not

Cheese is getting cheesed off. And I'm not surprised. If you're a supporter of Irish cheese or hate the fact that cheese could soon be banned in advertisements shown during children's television, you have just a few more days to submit your views to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland on the proposed ban.

What the BAI want to do is ban ads for foods which can contribute to obesity in children. There's no doubt we have an obesity crisis in this country but under the BAI's nutritional profiling model, cheese is classed in the same grouping as fast food burgers and chips, soft drinks and chocolate bars. This is because cheese frequently has high levels of saturated fats, and there's no doubt that it does - with the average commercial cheddar made up of about 40% fat, or more.

But as we know, cheese has a very clean slate of ingredients compared to processed foods and snacks which are at the heart of our obesity problems. Many in Ireland's food sector view the ban as something that could be both detrimental to our dairy industry and also to children's diets. With research showing that many Irish children and teenagers are deficient in calcium it seems a contradictory approach to class cheese as a "bad" element of a varied diet. Particularly when you compare of dairy produce to the empty calories that children and young people are getting from soft drinks and the super high fat foods that they eat outside the home.

The proposals are also potentially harmful to the international push we are giving Irish dairy products in huge grocery marketplaces like China. This is the view of Irish artisan cheese producers, the Irish Farmers Association and summed up pretty much here in the The National Dairy Council's view on the issue -

“Restricting the advertising of cheese in Ireland will directly undermine the development of the Irish cheese industry, an industry where a huge element growth is predicated in terms of exporting increased production of Irish cheese to international consumers. The positioning of cheese in this proposed regulation as, effectively, 'junk food' could create reputational issues which may take years to reverse.”

My piece on the issue from the Irish Independent is at the link below which fleshes out the subject.

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/smart-consumer/cheesed-off-are-tv-ads-helping-to-make-your-kids-obese-3110747.html

If you want to submit your views to the BAI, you have until this Thursday 31st May to do so. Check out the link at the bottom of the page, and if cheese is your passion, let your opinions be heard. 
http://www.bai.ie/?p=2431

The pizza that's saltier than seawater

Did you eat pizza lately? If you did, you're one of the 40% of us who eat one of Ireland's most popular foods every week. And if you live in London, you could be eating a pizza that's saltier than seawater. Yes sireee. Health authorities in the UK released an analysis of a pizza from the Adam and Eve restaurant in Mill Hill London which contained 10.57 grams of salt. At 2.73 grams of salt per 100, it means the pizza is saltier than Atlantic seawater.

Other pizzas analysed also showed high levels of salt and fat, some of which would give Elvis Presley's deep-fried peanut butter sandwich a run for it's money.

The trouble is, I really like pizza. Restaurant pizza, take-away pizza, home made pizza. There are many pizzas which are very healthy and clearly others which are not. Mostly these days I make my own, and hopefully by doing so I can control most of what goes into it. With fresh meats from my butcher and local cheeses it also tastes pretty good.

The problem with most mass-produced pizza is that it's full of salt. Salt is a major issue in terms of what we eat in Ireland as one third of us will die of heart-related illnesses. Eating foods with high levels of salt ramps up blood pressure, as your body has to hold on to much more water to get rid of it. And even if we don't add salt to our cooking or at the table, plenty of foods have hidden salt which we're totally unaware of.

Earlier this week I wrote a piece in the Irish Independent about the big offenders in the hidden salt category - even soups which we may think of as healthy often have large amounts of salt. Check it out for tips on what to avoid, and some tactics to beat the food manufacturers at their own game.

http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/health-fitness/too-much-salt-can-leave-more-than-just-a-bad-taste-3072076.html

Would you like fries with that? We're being codded, again.

A year on from when I first wrote about the fish labelling scandal going on in Ireland it seems nothing has changed. In the second survey into what exactly we are buying when we purchase "cod", the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has revealed that nearly one in five fish are not what it says on the label. So what are the implications for consumers and does this point to murky goings on in the fish trade?

This most recent survey was carried out in retail outlets, fish shops, hotels, pubs, restaurants and takeaways all over Ireland. The FSAI found that 19% of products it sampled were labelled incorrectly. The largest sector selling us fake cod was takeaways, with 32% of takeaways found to have mislabelled fish produce on sale.

Do takeaways rely on people being either (a) drunk and on their way home from the pub when they buy their "cod" and chips, or (b) their product being so doused in salt and vinegar that your box of fish and chips could be in fact battered Nike trainer with deep fried turnip peelings?

The point is that this isn't so much a food safety issue but common or garden food swindling, based on making money from innocent consumers. Cod is generally an expensive fish and in this case it’s being replaced with other varieties, and food businesses are increasing their own profit margins by selling fake produce.

This survey was undertaken last autumn when cod stocks are traditionally low and found that fish such as pollack, coley or smelt were being sold as cod. At that time cod was about 11 euros a kilo; pollack about 6 or 7 euro a kilo so you stand to make a lot of money if you can replace one with the other.

Okay, so a bit of coley posing as cod won't kill us. However, in terms of food safety, food substitution in the past has had fatal consequences. In North America two people died from eating puffer fish that had been labelled and sold as monkfish; a pretty terrifying outcome. As consumers, we need to have confidence in what it says on the label. Particularly in the EU, we are under the impression that strict policies on labelling and traceability are in place. Instead, what this study reveals is a level of disfunction in the labelling of seafood in Europe.

What’s shocking about this is not the first time that mislabelling of fish has found to be an issue in Ireland. About 12 months ago when I first wrote on the subject UCD did a study on fish and found much the same problem. A quarter of the fish they examined was mislabelled. In one major supermarket chain, seven out of their 16 "cod" products weren't cod. The research calculated that by selling cheaper alternatives, this retailer could be getting inflated profits of between €400,000 to €550,000 per year on Irish cod sales.

So who is doing the duping – is it the supermarkets, the fish and chip shops or is it the fish dealers who are selling them the fish? The FSAI can’t name and shame the outlets or merchants involved in this sting so to speak. They found that some of the mislabelling may be due to a certain amount of ignorance, but a few names popped up in the retail and wholesale side where several instances occurred, especially in the battered and smoked fish. They’re being investigated as this would suggest that it was more than accidental.

Unfortunately the penalities are low even if charges are brought and while you can name and shame an outlet for food safety breaches, mislabelling food comes under “misleading the consumer” which hasn’t huge penalities – most will get a verbal warning, then if they persist be taken to court.

Not very heartening for the consumer is it? Will it take a serious health incident arising from food mislabelling to change the law? Why can't we find out who the worst operators are and therefore make our own choice as consumers to stop being codded at the fish counter? If you want to hear more on this topic I'll soon upload my interview on RTE radio with Pat Kenny teasing through the issue. And no, there won't be any bad jokes, I promise.

In part two of this post, I'll be examining the sometimes hideous, sometimes hysterically funny history of food substitution and I'll have some tips for how to buy Irish fish, that's the genuine article. We've so much great fish in Ireland it's ridiculous that we're buying not only fake product but fake product that's mostly coming from outside the EU. But that's a whole other story... part two coming soon.

Here's me with some sandwiches, best avoid them, I promise

Irish Independent - Smart Consumer: Do you really know how much salt is in your lunchtime sandwich?
By Suzanne CampbellThursday Nov 18 2010

Ignoring the salt cellar at the dinner table might make some of us feel that we're eating more healthily. But avoiding high blood pressure, heart disease and the consequences of eating salt is more difficult than we think as many of us eat high quantities of it without realising.
New research shows that over a teaspoon and a half of salt is eaten every day by most Irish people, causing health risks that we're completely unaware of.

The recommended intake of salt per day is no more than six grams. But the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has found that Irish adults are eating on average 10 grams of salt a day -- putting us at risk of death from heart disease and stroke.

Frequently we don't even know the salt content of many foods that we eat. Meat, fish and dairy products provide about a third of our daily salt intake, with a further 26% provided by bread and rolls.

Other foods that regularly contain high levels of salt are sauces, biscuits, confectionery and breakfast cereals.

The frustrating thing for consumers is that while we may be aware of the dangers of salt, food manufacturers don't always share the same view -- pizzas, ready-meals and the humble sandwich are some of the biggest culprits for high salt content. Sandwiches and ready-meals can contain between 25% and 50% of your daily recommended intake for salt. And using petrol stations for more than a fuel top-up may find you eating more than you bargained for.

A Topaz mixed sandwich containing cheese, chicken and stuffing has three grams of salt -- half your daily allowance. And if you go for an M&S quick dinner option, their Macaroni Cheese ready-meal has 2.4 grams of salt, more than 40% of your daily allowance. But the top score goes to M&S's 12-inch cheese and pepperoni pizza, which contains nearly six grams of salt, your total salt intake for the day.

Tesco doesn't fare much better, with their Finest range Italian salami and mozzarella sandwich containing 2.6 grams of salt, and many of their ready-meals containing half your daily allowance.
As cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in Ireland, the Irish Heart Foundation point out that reducing our intake of salt to six grams a day would save more lives from what is a widespread disease.

Pat Crowley, a GP in Co Kilkenny, explains how salt can work in the body with dangerous consequences. "When you have salt in your bloodstream, your cells have to increase the volume of blood to balance it, and that's the reason blood pressure rises."
Eating too much salt confuses the normal functioning of cells and affects how our systems are balanced.

"Sodium, chloride and potassium constantly work together so that the function of your cells are normal. If these levels are out of kilter or too high, you can develop an abnormality pretty quickly, leading to heart arrhythmia or more seriously, a heart attack."
Many of Dr Crowley's patients find tracking the salt in their diet quite difficult .

"Food manufacturers have always put salt in food as a preservative, so even if you're not sprinkling it on your food it can still be there in large amounts". Salt labelling doesn't help as it's sometimes labelled 'sodium content'. Sodium amounts are smaller than 'salt' as 1.6grams of sodium equal 4 grams of salt. So thinking a chilled Thai green curry is healthy because it has one gram of sodium on the packet isn't the case -- it actually has 2.5 grams of salt.

Indeed "healthy" food options such as wraps and salads can sometimes contain surprising amounts of salt. M&S's Crayfish and Mayo salad contains two grams of salt and their Hoisin Duck Wrap has nearly the same amount. Salad dressings are often hidden sources of salt, as are mayonnaises, sauces and other additions to "healthy" lunchtime options.

Food manufacturers like adding salt because it ties into what we expect food to taste like. But this can lead to health issues not just confined to cardiac-related problems.

"High sodium intake is also linked to osteoporosis and other conditions, so there's a range of dangers people are unaware of," says Dr Daniel McCartney from the Irish Nutrition and Dietectics Institute and lecturer in human nutrition at DIT. Food labelling can be improved -- not all sandwiches or prepared foods show either sodium or salt content and this is more difficult if you buy your sandwich from a deli counter. "At the moment it's not mandatory to label salt content in food," says McCartney. "Consumers should have the benefit of clear labelling because then they can at least make an informed choice."

One thing very clear from our survey is that food sold in garages not only had some of the highest salt content, but it's often purchased by men who are spending the day in a car -- making them a key risk group for cardiac problems. "Research shows that the more educated and affluent people are, the more knowledgeable they are about healthy eating.

"So unfortunately there are sectors of society unaware of the dangers of salt in their diet and the damage it's causing," says Dr McCartney. Taxing convenience foods, like they do in Denmark, may be one way to drive people away from high-salt foods but it could be difficult to implement.

Dr McCartney has an alternative approach. "Subsidising healthy foods might be a better way to deal with this and would be certainly easier to implement. People could then displace foods that they might have planned to eat with something healthier and cheaper."
- Suzanne Campbell
Irish Independent

Read more: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/health-fitness/smart-consumer-do-you-really-know-how-much-salt-is-in-your-lunchtime-sandwich-2425449.html#ixzz15eETEMlh

Red meat - the most intense nutrient-rich food available to human beings

A new take on meat - my piece in today's Irish Independent

With celebrities from Paul McCartney to Star Wars actress Natalie Portman telling us to eat less meat, switching our shopping habits towards a vegetarian diet is one of the pieces of advice dominating the food world right now.

The rise in obesity levels combined with the unsustainable nature of beef production means that consumers are now encouraged to limit the quantity of meat they eat and turn instead to buying more vegetables, fish and meat alternatives.

But a new book by Irish butcher Pat Whelan argues that going back to the old-fashioned staples of our traditional diet; eating plenty of beef, pork and lamb is not only a healthy choice but one essential to our wellbeing. Whelan, who is the fifth generation of his family to be involved in meat production, runs a butcher shop in Clonmel, Co Tipperary and his knowledge of meat from farm to fork has earned him a Rick Stein Food Hero award.

In his book "An Irish Butcher Shop", Whelan argues that one of the reasons consumers find it easy to turn away from meat is a lack of knowledge on how to prepare it and an over reliance on inferior quality meat sold in plastic packaging in supermarkets.
He points out that beef should not be sitting in a pool of its own blood in a plastic box, and that everything about the mass production of meat and the way it's marketed to consumers is contrary to the core benefits and joys of eating it.

He argues that instead of turning away from meat, we should be appreciating its unique benefits -- red meat is the single most intense nutrient-rich food available to human beings. It's a crucial source of iron and trace elements such as zinc and copper, as well as vitamins B12 and B6.
Fat on meat is also something we shouldn't be afraid of -- it is fundamental to the taste and tenderness of the finished product.

Irish beef that is fed on pasture develops a good covering of fat which gives it great flavour. Because it's grass-fed, this makes the meat a high quality, close to organic product. Meat from grass-fed animals has up to four times more omega-3 fatty acids than meat from grain fed animals. It is also the richest known source of CLA or "conjugated linoleic acid"; an exceptional omega-6 fat which has been attributed with antioxidant and anti-cancer properties.
Most of the current opposition to beef consumption is related to cattle "feed lots" -- vast industrial-scale feeding units found typically in the US but now growing in popularity in India and China. Here animals live on a regime rich in maize and cereals which is not their natural diet.
As the appetite for beef grows across the world, we have to produce more cereals (wheat, barley and so on) to make the animal feed that cattle eat.

In many developing countries, feeding cattle (or chicken and pork in large quantities) takes other foods and water resources out of the food chain. Put simply, if everyone across the world adapted to the 'Western Diet', we'd run out of many foodstuffs, and water.

Farm animals also produce more than 10% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions but new approaches to the anti-meat argument such as Simon Fairlie's book -- Meat: A Benign Extravagance has swayed even the hardened environmentalists such as best-selling author George Monbiot back towards eating meat. Fairlie argues that it's specifically feed-lot production of cattle that reduces the world's food supply and that what we should be doing is eating meat but simply less of it.

In Ireland the situation is very different; cattle and sheep roam outdoors and eat grass which is in plentiful supply, so the beef and lamb we eat takes a minimum of inputs and is fairly sustainable.

However, most pigs and poultry in Ireland are farmed in intensive indoor units where the quality of the animals' lives is poor and again they are eating a cereal based diet.
Ireland comes closest to factory farming in these pig and chicken "units"; vast indoor sheds packed densely with animals.

The intensive production of chicken and pork over decades has also affected what we're getting on our plate -- pigs are slaughtered at about seven months old, and unfortunately quality and flavour of modern pork has been affected by the breeding of faster maturing pigs. So the consumer pays the price with an inferior-tasting product.

The bacon and rashers most of us eat have been injected with brine, and can often contain more water than meat content. So while we think mass-produced cheap rashers are good value, if they end up a third of their original size after cooking then it's a bad deal.

You might get better value from an artisan-produced pork that's more expensive raw but yields more meat when cooked. One way to keep both sides happy is to continue to eat meat but put more thought into what we buy.

Pat's book is full of recipes for everything from 'pot-roasted shoulder of lamb' to 'boozy rabbit with prunes'.

His advice is to vary what you buy from the old staples of sirloin, fillet, lamb cutlets, pork chops and rashers. Try new cuts and free-range or artisan products occasionally. The pay-off is in quality, taste and ultimately better value for money.

An Irish Butcher Shop by Pat Whelan, published by Collins Press. Suzanne Campbell's food blog is at www.basketcase theblog.blogspot.com
- Suzanne Campbell
Irish Independent

And I thought salmon was naturally that colour

Smart Consumer: The unpalatable truth about the salmon on your plate
By Suzanne Campbell
Thursday September 23 2010



Close your eyes and picture a salmon. Odds are that you think of a gleaming muscular fish leaping up a river in full flood. It's this image which informs our decision making at the fish counter.



We also think of salmon as a healthy food -- rich in omega-3 fish oils and a tasty source of low-fat protein. But a new book by American food writer Paul Greenberg probes into the image of salmon, revealing some uncomfortable truths about Ireland's favourite fish.
More than 99% of the salmon sitting on Irish supermarket counters and in delicatessens is farmed.



Some of it is Irish fish but most of what we eat originates in Scotland or Norway.
Wild salmon is scarce around the world and with the ban on drift netting in Ireland, it's now out of reach for most of us and will only appear on the menus of very good restaurants or in small quantities at specialised fishmongers.



The fact that we are eating almost exclusively farmed salmon doesn't seem to affect our appetites for it. What Greenberg points out is that while salmon has obvious health benefits, questions have to be asked about what eating farmed salmon does to the availability of other fish. The book also shows how our demand for cod, tuna and sea bass led to their shrinking availability.



But for Irish consumers who return to the fish counter again and again for salmon, what does he say about how healthy a choice it really is? Salmon from fish farms are artificially spawned, reared in pens with thousands of other fish all swimming tightly together in circles and fed a diet that contains colorants to make its flesh pink. There's little natural about a farmed salmon except that it's still living in water.



Even less appetising is that farmed salmon are fed pellets made from ground-up wild fish, mixed with soya and cereals -- not quite its natural diet. The pellets also contain a pigment to colour the salmon's flesh; the tone depends on the country the fish is destined for. So you'll find farmed salmon in South America very red in colour, whereas we in Ireland prefer it a soft pink.
Critics of farmed salmon find this 'Dulux colour card' approach enough reason to boycott it, but the fish farming sector claims that the colourant is nothing more than a natural carotenoid pigment named astaxanthin; exactly the same molecule that wild salmon get from eating small shellfish.



Astaxanthin is now made in a laboratory rather than by shellfish, so what are we worried about? Aren't many of the foods that we eat artificially coloured? Or is it just that colouring the flesh of live animals crosses some kind of line?



Of more impact is the colossal amount of other fish species that go into creating the fish pellets farmed salmon eat. Greenberg points out that it takes up to six pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of salmon and that part of the problem with the world's diminishing fish stocks is this hoovering up of other species to feed our insatiable appetite for pink fish.



The farmed salmon currently on our fish counters has also been genetically selected to have a quicker growth rate. Since the Norwegians pioneered farming salmon on a mass scale they've engineered a fish that has double the growth rate of wild salmon. This super salmon matures faster and dominates salmon production across the world, so much so that three billion pounds of farmed salmon are produced globally; three times the amount of wild fish harvested.
While this may be hailed as a breakthrough by fish breeders, this immense salmon production has been at the cost of the nine billion pounds of wild fish that have been caught and ground into pellets to feed them.



Greenberg points out that as humans have been farming salmon since the 15th Century you'd think we'd have got it right by now, but sadly mistakes have been made.
Blood meal from chickens was routinely fed to salmon to provide micro nutrients and only banned after BSE came to light. Fish were also crammed into cages that were too small and sea lice proliferated, affecting other species.



In Ireland, Scotland and Norway, studies found that the presence of salmon farms increased the level of sea lice infestation on sea trout. It also badly affected Irish wild salmon.
But most detrimental to the image of farmed salmon was the extent to which they were found to contain PCBs -- polychlorinated biphenyls, which came to light in a report published in 2004.
PCBs are toxins which have found their way into fish from run-off into rivers of waste from manufacturing plants. They accumulate progressively over time meaning that those at the top of the food chain -- humans -- are exposed to the highest levels.



In the research published in the journal Science, farmed salmon was found to contain higher concentrations of PCBs than its wild counterpart. PCBs were subsequently banned, but not before confidence in farmed salmon had taken a hit. Many Irish fishermen still claim that the waste from salmon cages is not sufficiently washed out to sea and affects the local environment as waste pellets and faeces fall through the nets onto the seabed underneath. The Irish fish farming sector claims it's one of the cleanest in Europe as it is located in strong Atlantic seas which quickly get rid of the waste.



How to spot the best fish over the counter -

Salmon farming will continue to grow all over the world, despite its detractors. If you want to still eat fish with strong health benefits that doesn't wipe out our future choices of seafood, here are some alternatives.

For fish rich in Omega-3 oils, buy anchovies, sardines and mackerel. Mackerel and herring have healthy populations in Irish seas and have plenty of flavour; even when grilled and served with a simple salad.

Ling, blossom and coley are cheap substitutes for cod. They are so close in flavour, texture and appearance to cod that they have been found to be labelled and sold as their more expensive cousin.

If you really want salmon, ask for salmon that's farmed in Ireland at the fish counter of your supermarket or delicatessen. 75% of salmon produced in Ireland is organically certified, so not only is the cereal feed organic, the fish component of the pellets is of a low percentage and comes from monitored fish stocks. The stocking density in organic salmon cages is also less dense.

Buy fish in M&S -- they have been rated the leading retailer for responsible fishing by Greenpeace and only stock tuna caught by the pole and line system which is more sustainable.

Look out for the Bord Bia Seafood Circle mark at the supermarket fish counter or at the fish mongers. These fish sellers are the most educated in terms of the quality and source of the fish that they stock, and can give you the best information about what's fresh, in season and how to cook it.

Suzanne Campbell for The Irish Independent



Four Fish by Paul Greenberg is published by Penguin. Suzanne Campbell's food blog is at www.basketcasetheblog.blogspot.com