Letters

Sustainability and a glass of milk

How sustainable is it to drink nut juice from California?

Wed Sept 14 2022 - 00:14

Sir, – I don’t doubt for a minute that Angela Ruttledge’s article “I am one step closer to my last glass of milk”, Opinion & Analysis, September 13th) is completely sincere, and in the face of such sincerity, we are usually tempted to forgive logical inconsistencies and leave the undercurrent of self-righteousness unstemmed. I always have. I have always accepted anybody’s right to criticise farming and will listen patiently to anyone explaining why for ethical reasons they do not consume dairy or beef. It’s good manners and it is nearly always much more revealing than the explainer might imagine.

Expressing her disappointment when her son returned from school with a carton of milk that he’d been given, Ms Ruttledge turns to the question of agri-emissions and lists the challenges.

But why start with the carton of milk? Are there any emissions involved in getting the child to school? How is the power for the school generated and are there any emissions in that? What about his teacher? How does she get to work? Any emissions involved in that?

Farmers and any fans of logic will struggle to understand why emissions involved in living and getting around, say, Cabra are somehow more ethically and environmentally acceptable than the emissions here in Tipperary involved in producing the food that keeps the people of Cabra going.

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It’s hard to get away from the nagging suspicion that urban or suburban emissions are to be considered necessary, while rural and agri-emissions are, somehow, a matter of choice. And a choice, moreover, in which everyone, regardless of whether they live in those farming communities or not, is entitled to have an opinion.

Those suspicions will not be allayed by Ms Ruttledge’s declaration that the success of Irish food exports is not about “supporting a traditional way of life or rural communities”; it is apparently all about “big business”.

Actually, it is all about supporting a traditional way of life. The average Irish dairy herd is around 85 cows and if by “big business”, she means the determination of our farmers to retain a stake in the processing co-ops that their forefathers founded and built generation-on-generation, then guilty as charged. Irish dairy farmers are the only sector making above the average industrial wage through farming and as their recognised representative body, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) would contend that the main reason for that (relative) success is our ability to actually determine to some degree what we are paid for our milk through that co-op model.

On a related note, the reason why Irish food exports and our agri-sector grew so dramatically in the decade after 2010 was that the Government beseeched it to: our farming and agri-exports sectors were the “last man standing” after the developers and bankers did their work. It was the Irish farmers who produced the food that earned the exports revenue on which our economy was painstakingly rebuilt for that first five years. That’s not an opinion; it’s a matter of record. But I suppose that’s eaten bread by now. Or drank milk.

Ms Ruttledge is perfectly right to be upset and outraged by what happened those calves on that farm in Limerick. Her outrage is shared by every farmer in Ireland; how we treat our stock, and their health and well-being is how we judge each other, and this individual will face the full rigours of an extremely regulated administration. On the broader question of bull calves, she is correct too that the matter must be faced, and it will be. The ICMSA has already had its proposal for a scheme adopted by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and we’ll try and refine and build on that. We’ll put sensible and practical options on the table, all premised on the basis that animal welfare and compliance with regulations are the starting point.

But If I’m willing to concede on some of these broader aspects of her article, then I feel entitled to ask Ms Ruttledge to look at some of the broader aspects that follow on inexorably from her position.

Does she think, for instance, that turning California into a desert, so real “big business” can use already scare water to grow the almonds to make a nut juice that cynically camouflages itself as “milk”, makes any sense? Does she have any opinion about the emissions involved in that nut juice being flown to Ireland to sit in the retail or café fridge alongside our own grass-produced milk from a herd of cows five miles out the road? Does she see anything incongruous in dismissing 90-odd cow Irish farmers as “big business” while, beneath that din, some of the biggest corporations on the planet move smoothly and unchallenged into the burgeoning area of the replacement synthetic “meats” and “milks” that will go from lab to lip?

Angela Ruttledge is entitled to her views. I am entitled to mine. I accept the challenges before us on emissions and animal welfare, but it’s going to involve effort and expenditure, and everyone is going to have to pay something.

In the meantime, I look forward to the searing indictment of the sustainability challenges around producing almond “milk” and those avocados that Angela Ruttledge felt the need to apologise for. – Yours, etc,

PAT McCORMACK,

President,

Irish Creamery

Milk Suppliers

Association,

Limerick.