When I read the latest RTÉ Guide “blurb” for the RTÉ Investigates programme due to be aired tonight (Monday, July 10) on the Irish dairy sector, it stated “at a time” when there are “increasingly more vegan and allergy related alternatives on our shelves ..Irish dairy continues its growth”.
I thought ‘here we go again’ – is RTÉ’s emphasis on vegan alternatives out of step with the practical, buy-in based reality needed to deliver decarbonisation of the Irish economy?
Let me explain why: I recently attended the National Economic and Social Council (NESC) conference entitled ‘Exploring Just Transition in Irish Agriculture and Land Use’ in the conference hall in Dublin.
The unanimous view was that the last three years of blaming and shaming had run out of road and that for true decarbonisation and environmental improvement across the Irish economy to be delivered, buy in by farmers – particularly in the case of agriculture and land use – was the absolute key, and for buy in to happen the tribal, binary, anti-farming tirade must stop.
In essence, what is now being recognised is that for implementation of decarbonisation to be effective, practitioners must be brought on board – whether that is farmers in the case of land use and agriculture, or householders / car owners in the case of home heating or transport challenges .
Why then the RTÉ focus on vegan alternatives?
Let’s first state the obvious: Irish dairy growth has absolutely nothing to do with vegan or other alternatives products, it is a ludicrous distortion of reality to suggest that the context of Irish dairy growth is somehow in opposition to the availability of vegan alternatives.
The facts are with regard to Irish dairy that its production and demand modalities have been determined by EU regulatory framework since 1973.
Quotas
This imposed a whole raft of quality and product definition standards from 1984 to 2015 and supply restrictions, through a national quota regime – with a fixed quota for Ireland restricting milk output to maximum of 5 billion litres per annum .
It is worth noting again in this context that New Zealand produced five billion of litres in 1984 and increased its milk supply to over 20 billion litres by 2020.
Since the abolition of EU quotas in 2015 Irish dairy production has seen milk supply increase to 9 billion litres per annum with exports of dairy products exceeding €6 billion and even more importantly, Irish economy expenditure increasing from €1.5 billion pre quota abolition to €5 billion in 2022
In addition to the huge increase in Irish economy spend, 60,000 jobs from farm to processing to distribution, research and development are supported by Irish dairy output and despite statements to the contrary, dairy cow numbers in Ireland at 1.6 million head are only at 1980s’ levels.
Moreover, any informed analysis of Irish dairy output will show an increasing production of clinical nutrition products, that cannot be replaced by vegetable substitutes as it happens.
Irish dairy
In recognition of the multiple dimensions of Irish dairy, the sustainability of Irish dairy has at its core, a programme of continuous improvement to all aspects of dairy production – including environmental and animal welfare impacts – while continuing to produce a grass-based product for which there is growing global demand.
It is this very strong global demand that will determine the success or otherwise of Irish dairy growth and a feature of this demand is that emissions from Irish dairy which are reducing as per carbon budget requirements are around half global averages.
In addition to this, dairy spreads with a mix of vegetable and milk fats, were developed by Irish dairy companies in the late 1980s initially to address the challenge of spread ability, despite concerns among many in the dairy sector that this might kill off butter production.
Fast forward and the situation that has evolved is that it is pure margarine production that is under threat and composite products now make up the biggest proportion of the yellow fat market .
Butter
Meanwhile, butter consumption itself continues to grow, driven by increasing demand from the baking and confectionery markets.
So the notion of any binary-ness regarding Irish dairy is nonsense and represents a tired, ideological attempt to position food choices as solely based on a hierarchy of contrived moral superiority.
In reality, food consumption and food choices are based on a larger range of dynamic parameters such as nutrition, taste, culture and provenance, as well as the key questions of price and availability.
With regards to Irish consumer consciousness, the primacy of traditional dairy products is surely underpinned by the most recent focus on the price of a litre of milk at the core of the cost-of-living crisis.
Despite the oftentimes preachy and contentious debate about what constitutes sustainable food production over the last three years, nowhere in the food inflation debate has there been any mention at all of dairy substitutes or the fact that – in many instances – they are priced at up to three times the price of real milk.
In summary, Irish dairy has its challenges as we know, but the notion that a context to these challenges is vegan substitutes is off the wall, demonstrating equal measures of extreme prejudice and detachment from reality.