‘People need meat to get protein or they could fade away’

FARMER Francis Burke has a suckler-tobeef farm outside Thurles. Co. Tipperary, and feels the beef industry is already facing a number of difficulties.

‘I think people need meat for protein’, said Mr Burke.

‘I have a daughter myself and her partner who went off meat for a month and they nearly faded away. They thought they would never get back on it again’, he said.

Referring to the campaign to reduce meat consumption, he said: ‘It probably is damaging to the farming industry.

‘The consumption of beef will go down. It’s expected to go down maybe 20% to 30% in the next couple of years.

‘Beef has to be produced and it’s being produced under cost under severe pressure especially the beef farmers.

‘It’s not viable at the moment and with Brexit and everything we just don’t know where we are.’

He dismissed the idea that farmers were not conscious of the environment.

‘As regards to farmers we are the custodians of the land we have to keep the land right if we want to produce what we want to produce. The land has to be right. If you blaggard your land you won’t get the production from it,’ he said.

‘If you go overproducing and overmanuring, it will have consequences down the road on your land.’

‘We look after the cattle better than we look after ourselves.’