Irish leaders need to start being honest about livestock’s long shadow and our unsustainable diets
Livestock and our unsustainable diets – news from the Irish Republic and Sadhbh O’Neill
{Livestock and our unsustainable diets – extract below}
It is almost a year since the Environmental Protection Agency deleted a now-famous tweet advising people to cut down on their red meat consumption after a hostile reaction from Irish farming organisations.
At the time, the agency’s director general Laura Burke argued that to reduce a complex debate to a single tweet would “diminish the seriousness of the discussion we need to have”; presumably about land use, climate change and diets.
It is indeed a complex issue. Optimising the nutritional health of a global population expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 while minimising environmental and climate impacts is a challenge of epic proportions. It will require every single scientific, cultural and behavioural lever we have to be put to work. It will also require a political shift so that the role of the state is redirected in support of a food production model that is healthy, affordable and environmentally sustainable.
In truth we are not always very sensible in our food choices, something that is not helped by the abundance of cheap, ultra-processed foods all around us. Subsisting on pizza and chips might have less of a climate impact but such a diet is clearly not healthy. And yes, avocados do have a big impact due to the food miles associated with ripening and transporting them from the tropics. Some animal products provide essential nutrients that can be difficult to replace. Then there is the issue of food waste: over a third of all the food that is produced for human consumption is wasted.
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