As livestock farmers, we are under increasing suspicion of not only encouraging dangerous methane production but also of feeding grain to cattle that should be used to relieve human hunger.

A recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) gives some straight facts which I had not been aware of.

The most striking statistic was that 86% of global livestock feed is composed of what humans cannot digest.

So as well as grass and leaves, there are crop residues, fodder crops, oilseed cake and a whole range of by-products.

Using everything

When we had a sugar industry, beet pulp was a common feedstuff but there are also spent grains from the brewing and distilling sectors as well as compost from straw being an essential part of the mushroom sector.

All of these would still be produced by the food and drink manufacturing sectors.

If there were no livestock to consume them, or land to spread them on, the costs and difficulties of disposing of them would be enormous.

As it is we not only have the production of high quality protein for human consumption but also valuable fertiliser to maintain soil fertility.

With roughly 75% of agricultural output being ruminant-based, Ireland has a huge interest in having decisions being made on facts rather than prejudice in this whole debate about future sources of food.

Good news

The good news is that outside of the vegetarian bubble, meat and milk production as well as consumption continue to increase and the world keeps producing enough feed grains to meet this growing demand for animal protein.

Side by side with this demand, science is giving us the technology to reduce methane emissions.

Science has also enabled India to become not just self-sufficient in wheat, but it now grows enough that it is an exporter of the pre-eminent cereal used as a human food, together with rice.

Nobody is suggesting that increased production for humanity take place without sensible environmental safeguards, but we are collectively in danger of losing a sense of perspective in the midst of plenty.