Food and the Economy - Beef

Researching these latest postings has been an education for me, and I hope that they have provided a small insight into the way that British farming has changed in the last seventy or eighty years. The way that Beef farming has changed has been the greatest revelation for me.

It is not without reason that the French call the English “Le Roast Bough” as while the French, and across much of Europe, cattle was kept as a draft animal (Pulling the plough and harrow), the British kept cattle for milk and dairy and for meat.

In the original Agricultural revolution back in the 18th century, the earls and lords who were the major landowners had their prize winning cattle painted. Well I suppose they were like members of the family, either that or the inbreeding of the upper classes just made them overly eccentric. But these were rather large beasts. My assumption was that the artists had painted them to flatter the landowner. Yet that assumption was wrong as the beef cattle were that large, they had been breed to be that large. But even when I was a young adult, beef cattle were not that large. Or was that my memory playing tricks on me?

By the 1920s and 30s beef breeds had been breed to be smaller and more compact. The standard explanation for this was that following the first world war the great houses, the big estates the stately homes, there was not the same numbers of staff available. This combined with the depression meant that the very large joints were not required hence the breeds of beef cattle were shrunk to produce smaller joints for the smaller household. Nice story but as it takes thirty to forty years to breed the waist high cattle then this dwarfing of beef cattle must have started long before the first world war.

The truth was that via the empire the beef industry had been exported to places like Argentina and Australia. The reality was that this dwarfing of the beast helped the carcasses to be hung between the decks of the ships that transported the meat back to Britain. This is one of the reasons why the German U Boats were able to hold Britain to ransom during the first world war. When the second world war started, Britain imported eighty percent of the beef exported from Argentina and Australia.

While the current threat regarding food security is not impending war, the mistakes of the past are being repeated yet again. The ability to trade food between nations is important, but it should be trade of items that we don't have and items we can not grow or produce. Growing beef in the deserts of Australia was something particularly stupid. This is not just hindsight, as there were respected agriculturalist saying this back in the 1880s. To produce beef requires water, lots of it per cow. Further, to grow the maximum area of grass, most of the trees were cut down. These trees provided the micro climate that enabled the moist air to flow in from the sea at night and generate the small rain events that enabled the environment to function at all. Here along with sheep production we have the source of the major droughts and loss of ground water there is in Australia today.

While since the Second world war, Britain has based much of its beef production at home, the poorly thought out support system changed farming so that the mixed farm that had always been the feature of British agriculture became a thing of the past. It even separated Dairy farming from beef production. The traditional breeds that were kept for meat and dairy, were replaced over time with breeds that were either Dairy or Beef. Further, this intensification lead to cattle being fed concentrated feeds so they could bulk up quicker.

This led directly to BSE, as the cheapest protein came from diseased and fallen stock, and any illness these dead beasts had were inevitably going to be passed on to the animals that were forced to eat their fellow species. BSE alone cost the British tax payer eighty billion pounds.

While the farmers themselves were not totally to blame, the British government and the major retailers have to shoulder their responsibilities too, as it was this desire for ever cheaper food that lead directly to BSE. While not a welcome cure, the outbreak of Foot and Mouth and the mass slaughter programme that followed, did remove BSE from the national heard.

Now we face a situation where increasing volumes of beef are being imported, along with other meats. All driving down welfare standards and the margins that farmers make. Yet in dairy farming, each and every day new born male calf's are shot at birth as they are not “suitable” (profitable) to be grown for meat. Even with a beef carcase, as people have lost the skills to cook the cheaper cuts, about twenty percent of each beef carcase was being thrown away. Well this was true just before the banking collapse and recession, but no reliable figures are available for what is happening now.

The long term costs go far beyond the price we pay for beef. We need to rediscover the skills of nose to tail eating and to no longer expect to have meat as cheap as French fries. The reliance on feeding grains to cattle has to be stopped as cattle can and do thrive on grass. The problems of BSE would never have happened if the farming industry had applied a simple principal. Would the public approve of what was going on and if the public were to see the farms means of production would the farmer be able to justify what the lay man could see? Additionally in the news recently there has been reports about an outbreak of E.coli 157. This is a rather nasty newish variant of a gut bacteria that has existed for thousands, if not millions of years. One of the ways that beef production has been increased has been regularly giving anti-biotic to livestock. E.coli 157 is a direct result of this practice.

Farmers have a lot to be proud of, however far to often the people involved in the Agribusiness companies and governments of all flavours have allowed some diabolical practices to become mainstream. The emphasis has been on quantity and not quality. While it is vital that there is enough food to feed the population, we can already do that if we stop wasting food. Also we need to stop the practices that is causing food to be harmful. Food is supposed to nourish and nurture us, not kill us.