Hate to say I told you so #horsemeat

One of the frustrating things about Europe's current horsemeat crisis is that welfare groups in Ireland warned the Department of Agriculture many times about the problems of horses being transported live to Europe. These animals were known not to have passports and dealers openly admitted (also documented in the UCD report of 2010) that forging passports to get horses into factories wasn't an issue.

For many years I have helped the Irish Horse Welfare Trust to try and heighten awareness of the neglect of horses and the issue of live transport. For cattle and sheep transported to Europe or elsewhere there are strict regulations on travel times and welfare, none of which exist for horses. Horses are not checked at Irish ports before they travel for health or individual identification. This free movement of horses under the tripartite agreement between England, Ireland and France was identified in the UCD report as detrimental to bio-hazard controls - laughable now we have proof that many of these horses were going for human consumption. Authorities here denied that Irish horses could be going into the food chain until a Dutch processor in Nijnegan was revealed last week to be selling Irish and Dutch horsemeat as beef. This piece of news closed the circle in effect, though it's still not clear whether this meat came from carcasses killed in Irish abattoirs or from the live trade.

www.IHWT.ie

What we also know is that of the five Irish plants who were granted licenses to slaughter horses to cope with the surplus of horses after our boom years, only two are operating horse slaughtering at present. Why? Because there are much larger numbers (the department estimates around 16,000 horses) going out live on lorries to Europe.

horse transport

If 12500 equines were killed in licensed slaughterhouses (excluding the knackery system) here in 2011, why the larger number of animals going for live transport with its additional costs? Think about it. You have to have a passport (albeit very easy to obtain) to bring a horse to a factory here. Not so if it is killed abroad, even in the UK. The USPCA have identified false passports and forged veterinary signatures used on passports of animals going on the live trade, some which have been dosed with bute or other drugs. So of course the numbers are bigger - it's far easier to get them into a factory in Poland or Italy than in Ireland, as loose as the system here is.

I have two horses, both of whom I could apply for a passport for tomorrow from the 12 agencies allowed to issue them and get both into a factory next week. That's no reflection on B and F Meats et al. It is an illustration of how the passport and identification scheme doesn't work. This situation has been pointed out to the department many times - by myself, the IHWT, the USPCA and the SPCAs involved with horse welfare and rescue. The lack of regulation has been boiling under the surface for so long that it comes to no surprise to anyone involved in horse welfare or movement that there is horsemeat in the food chain. Horses are sold in Ireland for as little as 10 euro. Last year I loaded up a horse with an IHWT officer outside Bray that had been stabbed in the shoulder and was living on a piece of scrap land with no feed or water. It had been sold to a 10 year old child for 30 euro. Doubtless, its destiny was a lorry to Europe before we got hold of it.

An IHWT project on urban horse welfare in Limerick

What has been of little mention throughout this debate is the welfare issues involved here. Horses are put on lorries that are injured, about to foal or dying. Can you imagine the hellish journey these animals go through without food or water to be slaughtered in hellish conditions like those filmed by hidden cameras at the UK abattoir.

What the horsemeat scandal has revealed is there is overwhelming problems with the equine identification and movement system. Vets need to go back into ports, and the passport system enforced. Having a scheme in place is nonsense without enforcement.

These points were put to the Department of Agriculture's chief veterinary office Martin Blake on Primetime by broadcaster Claire Byrne and myself in a segment on the horsemeat issue. It seems there is little admission of the scale of the problem or how long it has been going on for. All I can hope is that recent events will speed up the will to look again at the tripartite agreement. Something radical needs to happen about the welfare and slaughter issues at the heart of this trade, let alone the dangers for us humans the consumers. You can view the segment at the link below.

http://www.rte.ie/news/player/prime-time/2013/0218/

Would you eat meat that was grown in a lab? Even if it solved world hunger?

Winston Churchill - bon vivant and lover of food, drink and the odd giant cigar, once offered a view of the future where meat would be grown not on a farm, but in a lab. Churchill wrote: "We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.''

While it sounds very Orwellian and proves that Churchill wasn't just handy at moving model armies around a giant map table - now, eighty years after his pronouncement, Churchill's predictions are coming to pass. Scientists are close to producing the world's first commercial meat grown in a lab. Mark Post of Maastricht University, one of the premier scientists in this field, claims he will produce the first "cultured meat" burger by the end of the year.The question is, would you eat it?

Most initial reaction will no doubt go along the lines of "Hell No!!!"

After all, lab grown meat is grown from stem cell technology, a science that makes a lot of people squirm as in the first place, let alone, suggest they eat the results. In order to grow "cultured" meat, stem cells are taken from pig or poultry muscle and then cultured with added nutrients to form a film of animal flesh. Think - chicken fillet, only thinner.

If you're at this point pretty repulsed by the idea, think of the following reasons for why lab-grown meat could be better for animals and also, better for people.

Growing meat, whether in factory farms or out in fields, is one of the major contributors to global environmental degradation, especially de-forestation and global warming. It uses up water resources and has contributed to huge loss of biodiversity. Currently our appetite for meat has meant that almost one-third of global land use is used for growing either meat, or cereals to feed meat animals - including cattle, pigs and poultry. You could argue (and plenty do) that our lust for meat, and the growing "middle class" appetite for meat in China and India is killing the planet.

And how does the alternative stand up? - research shows that cultured meat has 80-95% lower greenhouse gas emissions, 99% lower land use and 80-90% lower water use compared to conventionally produced meat in Europe. More importantly, even if the meat produced by factory farms (which certainly in the US and in some cases Europe, have proved to have dubious records for animal welfare) was replaced with cultured meat, it would take the horrors of large scale factory farming out of the food chain. If people don't want to look at video of where their chicken is produced well then they probably would be better off served by something grown in a lab.

But the real issue comes when you look at world hunger. Cereals are grown all over the world not for people to eat, but to go into animal feed. And this is the case even in developing countries where hunger and deprivation are serious issues. Cultured meat, (given that over time it would have to be produced at huge levels) would mean that less cereals leave the food system for animal feed and instead can be given to humans, yes - us, to eat.

So what about it? Would you eat it, even if you knew it was morally and ethically more correct?

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