A FEW sorry creatures trickled into The Irish Times the other day, looking pale and pasty. Some spent the day vomiting in corners one simply nibbled on the outskirts of a piece of lettuce, sighing and contemplating the temptations of an open window and a two storey drop to the pavement below.
They had the night before been watching a programme on beef. This is not advisable. Though I love beet, I am against knowing how it is produced. I am against all knowledge which makes you uncomfortable with what you love.
On similar grounds, I would earnestly counsel a young girl tremblingly recumbent upon the bed where she is to lose her virginity not to be watching a film of a breech delivery of twins just as the foreplay begins. Her ardour will wane rather rapidly and soon she will find she is contemplating an application for The Poor Clares (Penal Servitude Tendency).
One can never comfortably watch a documentary telling the truth of the beef industry. But this is so of many areas of life. Princess Diana has never exercised quite the same charm for me since I read of her addiction to colonic irrigation. Most of us, even her most fervent admirers, might prefer not to watch a film of this procedure.
I intend to eat beef forever, regardless of what vegetarian propagandists and militant animal rights activists say. But the main enemies of the beef industry have for a long time not been the cranky, nut burger fringe sillies but the producers of beef all along the line from the farmer in his field to the cattle dealer, the beef processor, the ministers for agriculture, the EC commissions and the entire CAP.
No Greater Conspiracy
In the history of the EU there has not been a greater conspiracy against the taxpayer and the consumer than that by that particular interest group. We have been defrauded and cheated, robbed and insulted it is more than possible that some of us have been poisoned, too.
And the quite wonderful truth about the entire matter is that there are no names. Animal feed companies fed filth to animals, violating the rules of nature and common sense, and poisoned an entire food chain and got away with it.
Nobody is in court, no company is being pilloried, no executives are being hounded though the excesses of some Irish meat companies were as nothing, nothing, compared to the antics of the bright lads who thought it would be a good idea to feed sheep offal to cattle.
And no names. Not one.
Any child can tell you from perusing his comic strip cartoons of dead animals in a desert that the one part of an animal that carnivores leave alone is the spinal column. It is insane, wicked stuff. Mad as mercury. Do not touch.
Far from not touching, the bright lads from the unnamed food companies fed this filth to animals we were going to eat, spreading a disease to them they would never naturally get.
Enough Hysteria
We do not know whether eating the maddened beasts will make us as mad as Diana. There is no evidence as yet, though, of course, there is enough hysteria about the whole matter to convince the credulous people of Europe that we are teetering on the edge of a new Black Death.
We are not, of course. But still it is worth asking how it was possible that a Europe up to its ears in the corpses of unwanted dead steers could create a policy which increases the production of such steers by feeding them dangerous filth. One word, the word which people have not been mentioning in the entire discussion on mad cow disease CAP.
For years, CAP has been encouraging farmers to produce beef which Europe does not want. It has been subsidising them to do this by headage payments, subsidising their purchase of the contaminated feed which increases beef production, and then buys the unwanted carcass resulting, no matter whether there is a market for it or not.
This system was bad enough, but it was enforced by government ministries which are unique in Europe. All other ministries in all governments take industry, say, or justice govern competing interest groups. They establish rules of competition, whether they are between rival chemical companies or the police and the judiciary.
Ministers for agriculture are different. They are simply lobbying ministries for the agribusiness monopolistic cartel in each country.
Farmers do not compete the way other people do. They are assured of an outlet for their produce. The ministry which supposedly governs their conduct is no more than their collective representative in government.
Their Own Guardian
So farmers do not look on the minister for agriculture as one who supervises the agricultural sector in the broader interests of the governed and the government. They look on it as their particular guardian.
Other ministries administer their areas of responsibility for the electorate in agriculture the relationship is the other way round. The electorate pays to ensure that the interests of the agri business community are protected by the ministry.
Which might be fine if the farmers of Ireland were paying the cost of the Department here. But most farmers are being aided and abetted by their friendly Department inspector. Some not only do not pay tax but have not even got RSI numbers.
In that context, it was hardly surprising that the Department of Agriculture funded and supervised the greatest scandal in the history of the State, the TB Eradication Scheme. The real surprise surely is that Europe's insane agriculture policies have not produced more food scares sooner.