Sir, – Conor Pope’s recent article discusses the factors behind the increase in the cost of butter but omits one important fact (“Why is the price of Irish butter soaring?”, News, May 28th). For many years consumers have been able to buy food at unsustainably cheap prices which do not reward the producers adequately, whether they are farmers in Ireland producing milk and beef or other farmers across the world producing other food. This food system is a race to the bottom, which is contributing to the environmental issues the human race is facing.
A sustainable food system has to be economic at production, at processing, at distribution and at retail; it must also be environmentally viable. While it may be counter-intuitive, while it may cause pain, it is a brutal fact that it is in our collective interests that we pay the economic price of the food we consume and all of the stages in the system are viable and sustainable. – Yours, etc,
PAUL DUGGAN,
Rathmines,
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Dublin 6.
