On Thursday I’ll be tucking into a mixture of nuts, grain and soya protein topped off with brussels sprouts, bread sauce, roast potatoes (sans goose grease) and all the trimmings. It may not sound as mouth-watering as turkey and ham, but it tastes better. And unlike some Irish beef sold recently, it does not have dioxin levels up to 400 times the permitted limit. Soya, grains and nuts can’t look you in the eye either.

I’ve stuck to a largely vegetarian diet for about five years now. I have occasional lapses, and when I am invited somewhere my preferences aren’t known I try not to make a fuss or give a lecture. A fellow erstwhile vegetarian once advised me “not to be a fascist about food” and pointed out that when you are invited out to dinner the beef is already dead but the host or hostess still has feelings.

Full-time carnivores aren’t always so tactful. Giving up or cutting down on meat can feel like giving up smoking. As soon as friends who still have the habit find out, they insist you are missing out on one of life’s great pleasures. Instead of offering you cigarettes they wax lyrical about the joys of bacon or sirloin.

Last week friends ooed and aahed so much over the delights of mini roast beef and Yorkshire pudding canapés topped with horse radish sauce that I tried one and followed it with a chicken satay finger. The experience, much like taking a puff of a cigarette in a moment of weakness or stress, was a distinct let down.

Some people may need red meat or oily fish for health reasons but the pressure to consume more and more farm animals is now a problem which the recent pork and beef scares have thrown into sharp relief.

A recent headline on Associated Press said it all: “Irish find high dioxin levels in beef, but no risk.” The news agency recounted how the Food Safety Authority of Ireland had initially estimated that the level of dioxin contamination from tainted feeds was two or three times the legal limit, but that lab tests had shown it was in fact 100-400 times the permissible level. AP pointed out that dioxins can cause cancer if ingested in sufficient quantity for a long enough time, and that the dioxin found in the Irish pigs and cattle was polychlorinated biphenyl, which accumulates in human fat and remains there for many years.

But governments north and south insisted there was no risk and we shouldn’t panic. Michelle Gildernew, the agriculture minister in Stormont, and Michael McGimpsey, who is in charge of health, made a news event out of a joint breakfast at which cholesterol-laden Ulster fries, also known as a heart attack on a plate, and bacon butties were served up to guests with no healthy alternative on offer. The photo opportunity was to assure us of the safety of meat products and to ensure pork was back on the menu in time for Christmas.

It all brought back memories of John Gummer, Margaret Thatcher’s agriculture minister during the BSE crisis, as he apparently force-fed a hamburger to his four-year-old daughter for the cameras. It later emerged that Cordelia Gummer was only pretending to eat the burger and a civil servant had taken a bite out of it for her.

Ministers should think long and hard about publicly promoting increased meat eating. There is no doubt but that even the current scale of consumption is causing serious health and environmental problems.

Research shows that life expectancy is higher for vegetarians or occasional meat eaters than it is for those who eat meat on a regular basis. Standard health advice is to consume five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. High levels of dietary fibre, folic acid, vitamins C and E, and magnesium, and low consumption of saturated fat, are all beneficial aspects of a largely plant-based diet.

On the other hand, studies show that regular meat eating is a significant health problem. Only a few months ago the World Cancer Research Fund carried out the largest-ever study into the causes of cancer and pointed one of its fingers at meat. “The bad guys in terms of increasing your chances of getting cancer are alcohol, meat consumption and being seriously overweight,” said one of the report’s authors. “There’s plenty of evidence showing that meat is linked to cancer. Huge numbers of studies have shown that.”

The author added that there is no recommended safe level of meat consumption, and indeed alarm bells start ringing at quite low levels — 100g per day. So why do we spend public money encouraging meat consumption and why do health ministers urge us to tuck into fried pork?

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