8 - 14 March 2001
Issue No.524
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 8 - 14 March 2001 Issue No.524 |
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Meat for thought
In the last few days Egyptian, Arab and Muslim peoples celebrated the blessed Eid Al-Adha, as they do every year. And the sacrificial lamb of the Eid was, as usual, the first guest to arrive at the dining table, bringing down the barriers separating rich from poor. Yet the magnitude of the concerns expressed in various circles about the spread of disease among cattle and sheep -- which make up the principle source of meat for human consumption -- was such that few were able to pass the Eid carefree.
After mad cow disease invaded Europe, causing a major scare in various parts of the world (particularly among countries that import beef or livestock from Europe, Egypt being one of them), foot-and-mouth disease exploded suddenly in Britain, infecting so many animals that it has effectively closed down the meat industry. A curfew was imposed on agricultural areas, and European countries declared the situation an emergency, as they frantically tried to trace any livestock that had arrived from Britain.
Since then the risk involved in eating meat has rendered the carnivorous urge a major issue, disrupting people's normal dietary habits everywhere.
Many of the diseases plaguing the animal world can be contracted by humans. And more disturbingly, preventative methods and cures have yet to be discovered.
Part of the problem is that Egyptian officials continue to assert that livestock slaughtered locally is completely free of any such diseases, while at the same time cases of mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth have been discovered in several Asian countries. Yet local officials now make a seemingly contradictory concession -- admitting that meat was imported from Asian countries after the diseases had ravaged Europe. Most Arab countries, it should be added, do not have the laboratories, equipment or experience needed to test imported meat and ensure that it is safe.
In the light of these disturbing phenomena, which appear to be connected with modern methods of rearing livestock -- employed in the West and adopted elsewhere for many years -- Europe began reconsidering the dynamics of large-scale meat production, whether for consumption or export. This should be an incentive for us to either achieve self-sufficiency in terms of meat production or review our nutritional habits. Reducing meat intake, or adopting fully-fledged vegetarianism, have now become political issues.
Many medical studies assert that giving up meat, particularly beef and lamb, has no adverse effect on human health and might even be beneficial. Vegetarians everywhere are vindicated, and commentators have been keen to point to those communities that, for religious or cultural reasons, have always refrained from consuming flesh. Vegetarianism comprises a minor current in Arab and Islamic history, too, the Abbasid poet Abul-Alaa Al-Me'ari being one famous example of a proselytising vegetarian.
We know now that animal epidemics capable of jumping the species gap to humans have been around for at least 15 years, in the case of BSE. And since the kind of intensive farming methods to which cattle have been subjected, and which have resulted in the spread of diseases, are also used in the farming of poultry and fish, there is no reason at all to suppose that these latter will remain immune. The phenomenon is quite likely to lead to a nutritional revolution that will transform modern life.
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