LEAF Speak Out: Difficult Questions - Beef

I’ve heard that red meat is bad for you, what would you say to defend your posi­tion as a farmer sup­ply­ing red meat?

Some peo­ple choose to eat, and real­ly enjoy red meat. Some peo­ple eat it for health rea­sons, for exam­ple some­one with anaemia might eat it to boost their iron consumption.

Eat­en in mod­er­a­tion, red meat can be an impor­tant part of our diets. Red meat does con­tain high­er sat­u­rat­ed fat than, for exam­ple chick­en, so some doc­tors rec­om­mend lim­it­ing red meat con­sump­tion to once a week and cut­ting off excess fat. Like most things, it can be good in mod­er­a­tion and as part of a bal­anced diet.

Cat­tle pro­duce a lot of methane and are bad for the envi­ron­ment, shouldn’t we move to a diet with less reliance on meat and dairy to help farming’s car­bon footprint?

Some peo­ple choose to eat, and real­ly enjoy red meat and dairy prod­ucts. Some peo­ple eat it for health rea­sons, for exam­ple some­one with anaemia might eat it to boost their iron con­sump­tion and grow­ing chil­dren drink milk to boost their cal­ci­um intake.

There are also parts of the UK where we can­not suc­cess­ful­ly grow veg­etable-based diets because soils are poor, and the cli­mate is more wet, such as in parts of Scot­land, Wales and south-west Eng­land. In these regions, farms can eas­i­ly grow grass. Humans don’t eat grass, but cows and sheep do. If we didn’t have cows and sheep in these areas, there would be lim­it­ed, or no food pro­duced from the land.

Why is beef so expensive?

The price of beef relates to the mar­ket price (sup­ply and demand), the cost of rear­ing it (its food and hous­ing) and the amount of edi­ble meat pro­duced from each ani­mal (typ­i­cal­ly 45% of a beef car­cass is ined­i­ble e.g. bones). You will often see beef on a menu that is 21- or 28- day hung, and this process also needs resources (eg labour, elec­tric­i­ty) which all adds to the cost.

Why do you leave your ani­mals out­side in the snow/​rain/​cold?

Cat­tle are out­door ani­mals and the main part of what they eat is grass, so they need to be in fields for this. Dur­ing the late autumn, win­ter and ear­ly spring, they are housed in big build­ings to keep them warmer and fed whilst there is no grass grow­ing, and also to pre­vent too much poach­ing of the ground. They are fed silage and grains in the win­ter. Silage is pick­led grass and the grains are like cow’s mues­li – a mix­ture of bar­ley, vit­a­mins and min­er­als, and soya. 

Isn’t the poach­ing that cat­tle cause bad for the soil?

Most farm­ers keep their cat­tle in build­ings in the win­ter, so that soil isn’t dam­aged dur­ing wet weath­er. Where cat­tle are kept out of doors and the field is dam­aged, the soil will recov­er over time.