A new report entitled "Factory Farming and Human Health", written by Dr Tim O'Brien for the Compassion in World Farming Trust, draws a simple conclusion. It says: "Animal welfare and food safety are two sides of the same coin. When animal welfare is jeopardised by overcrowded and unhygienic rearing, transport and slaughter conditions, food safety is compromised."
Take chicken, the most popular food in these islands. "Consider the conditions which prevail on factory farms - for example in intensive broiler chicken sheds: animals crowded together so much that the floor is scarcely visible, and where it is visible, it can be seen to be covered with excrement. An atmosphere full of dust and airborne bacteria. Scarcely any sunlight.
"Would we be surprised if disease was rampant? Of course not. And yet these are the conditions in which many of our food animals are reared."
These systems produce fowl in which salmonella infection is widespread - 41 per cent of frozen birds sold in the UK were contaminated, according to a 1996 study. The birds are infected by the airborne route, by faecal contamination, and via contaminated feed - research in Holland found that 10 per cent of the poultry feed examined was contaminated with salmonella. Furthermore, although BSE may have stopped agri-business making cows into cannibals, "poultry can still be fed with hydrolysed feather meal, and the `off cuts' and waste blood from poultry abbatoirs".
The report alleges that poultry is also extensively contaminated with Campylobacter, symptoms of which include not just nausea, headache and so on, but even neurological complications. Guillain Barre Syndrome is today the most feared cause of paralysis in the Western world, and its most common cause is Campylobacter infection. In Northern Ireland, a study found Campylobacter in 94 per cent of fresh chickens examined.
Okay, so maybe we won't have chicken tonight. But what about beef - and what about this beef from the continent of America, which the World Trade Organisation is so desperate to force on the EU countries? If the WTO says we must have it, isn't it okay?
Well, here is how a Canadian beef farmer described the treatment of their animals: "Hormones are used quite commonly in the raising of beef cattle in Canada. We implant about 40 per cent of the animals that are raised for meat purposes. These implants are used mostly in the larger commercial feedlots, perhaps slatted floor barns that are feeding out thousands of head of cattle each year . . . All our male calves are traditionally castrated in Canada at approximately three months of age . . . Because these animals are castrated we lose some of the production efficiency. To regain this efficiency we implant growth hormones." As Dr Bell summarises it: "Because this is what the feedlot operators of America are doing to their cattle, the EU is being told by the WTO to lift its ban on the import of meat from these hormone-implanted steers - in spite of resistance from European farmers, uncertainty about the risks to human health, and widespread scientific evidence of animal health problems associated with the use of these substances."
The single sentence in the report which is most chilling is a quotation from Prof Hugh Pennington, who reported on the outbreak of E. coli poisoning in Scotland at the end of 1996. Following his investigation, Prof Pennington has said it is now logical to assume "there was something happening out there in the animals".
What is "happening out there" is quite simple. The systematic denial of animal welfare in intensive farming has reduced our food animals to production units. As Paul McNulty, Professor of Food Engineering at UCD points out: "It's a huge issue, and when you have poultry and pigs reared in a highly populated environment then the risk of infection is ever-present. "The arguments for intensive farming say that it produces high quality meat at a low price. On the other side, there is the fact that people are worried about the build-up of antibiotics, and I certainly don't want my food laced with antibiotics, for of course a resistance to antibiotics can build up in humans. This is where organic production comes in, and the crucial thing is that the consumer should have choice and should be informed."
The Compassion in World Farming Trust report says: "The overcrowding of animals in unhygenic factory farms, coupled with very high levels of antibiotic use, may constitute an uncontrolled experiment in bacterial genetic engineering on an enormous scale."
I asked some questions of the Department of Agriculture about the level of monitoring to detect salmonella and what, if any, research has been carried out on the use of antibiotics in animal feeds, and what they had done in relation to antibiotic residues in pig meat.
At first, the replies seem reassuring. The Department operates a salmonella monitoring programme, and says that "no broiler breeding flock was confirmed salmonella positive in 1996 and 1997". Official samples numbered 639 in 1996. The Department has done no research regarding antibiotics in animal feeds, relying on the fact that in the EU, "when . . . a medicinal additive does not present a health hazard and whose formulation and preparation has met with all the requirements of the relevant EC Directive, it is approved for use otherwise, the marketing of the additives is precluded within the EU".
The Department proudly points out that, regarding antibiotic residues, "the number of carcasses deemed positive has been reduced to 1.4 per cent as compared with some 12 per cent for the same period last year. All animals deemed positive are condemned and do not enter the food chain."
That's alright then, isn't it?
Well, no, actually. For what is implicit in all of these answers is the the Department does no more than toe the line. They accept, for example, that pigs can be fed antibiotics, so long as they are given a standard withdrawal period before slaughter. But the pig doesn't need antibiotics if it is decently and humanely reared. How is it reassuring to know that we toe the EU line on antibiotics in animal feeds, when the real problem is the over use of antibiotics in modern farming, and what effect this is having on animal and human health? The salmonella results seem positive, but again the real problem here is the intensive nature of the poultry business, and the capacity for harm which such a system, by its very nature, possesses.
We ignore this report at our peril. The new Teagasc Achievements report, published last week, stresses that food safety is a vital constituent of Irish agriculture. But nowhere does it mention animal welfare. It is not enough, today, to simply toe the line. To pride ourselves on being "Clean and Green", we need a virtuous, conscienable agriculture, an agriculture which echoes the intentions of the Federation of Swedish Farmers, who in August 1996 stated that no antibiotics are added to feed for growth promotion, and those used are only for treating illness, after a veterinary prescription. They had reduced the amount of antibiotics given to animals by 40 per cent over the decade, and the amount used in animal feed had declined by 90 per cent. The results had improved animal welfare, animal environment and management. This is what Ireland needs to aim for, a system of farming with animal welfare at its very centre. "Clean and Green" is a neat cliche. It should be transformed into a neat reality.