Eat This Podcast
Talking about anything around food

In praise of meat, milk and eggs For poor people, a little animal source food goes a long way

1 February 2017

Excluding animal products from your diet as a vegetarian or vegan is a choice some people have the luxury to make, and if they know what they’re doing, and take care, they can be perfectly healthy. But there are probably far more people who have no choice in the matter. They would eat meat if they could, but they simply can’t afford it. For those people, a little bit of animal source food – milk, meat, eggs – can make a great difference to their health and wellbeing. It can be easy to forget that, in the clamour for meatless Mondays and other efforts to respond to climate change. There’s also the fact that in many parts of the world, animals play a very useful role in transforming things people can’t or won’t eat, like grass, into good food.

One of the organisations promoting greater access to animal source foods is ILRI, the International Livestock Research Institute. They’re faced with some formidable challenges. One is to ensure that more animal foods doesn’t mean greater emissions of greenhouse gases. The other is to manage food safety as the demand for animal source foods grow. To find out more I talked to two people at ILRI: Shirley Tarawali, Assistant Director General, and Delia Grace, a veterinarian and epidemiologist.

Notes

  1. International Livestock Research Institute
  2. Industrial production of poultry gives rise to deadly strains of bird flu H5Nx
  3. Banner photo by ILRI/Dave Elsworth
  4. Other photos by ILRI/Stevie Mann

huffduffer icon   Huffduff it

Filed under: Podcasts
See also: ,

4 thoughts on In praise of meat, milk and eggs For poor people, a little animal source food goes a long way

  • AgroBioDiverse commented 5 years ago.

    Yes: a good wet market is better than a bad cold chain.

    Mind if I take the opportunity to mention a podcast with two @ilri researchers who

  • Khürt commented 5 years ago.

    In praise of meat, milk and eggs For poor people, a little animal source food goes a long way by Jeremy Cherfas from Eat This Podcast
    Shirley Tarawali, Assistant Director-General, and Delia Grace, a veterinarian and epidemiologist.
    Excluding animal products from your diet as a vegetarian or vegan is a choice some people have the luxury to make, and if they know what they’re doing, and take care, they can be perfectly healthy. But there are probably far more people who have no choice in the matter. They would eat meat if they could, but they simply can’t afford it. For those people, a little bit of animal source food – milk, meat, eggs – can make a great difference to their health and wellbeing. It can be easy to forget that, in the clamour for meatless Mondays and other efforts to respond to climate change. There’s also the fact that in many parts of the world, animals play a very useful role in transforming things people can’t or won’t eat, like grass, into good food. Eat This PodcastShare:TwitterFacebookLike this:Like Loading…Related

  • Jeremy Cherfas mentioned this post 5 years ago.

    Where to push for greater food safety as food supply systems change is such a difficult question, as discussed in my podcast with Shirley Tarawali and Delia Grace @ILRI https://www.eatthispodcast.com/in-praise-of-meat-milk-and-eggs/

  • Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Webmentions

    Webmentions allow you to respond on your own site and have that appear here. Your response should include a link to this post. Paste the URL to your post below and your comment will appear here. (Learn More.)

Help Keep the Lights On

Ratings and reviews are great. So is an actual donation.

Elsewhere

There are other places I write and respond.

Our Daily Bread

Our Daily Bread was a series of micro-episodes on the history of wheat and bread, with an episode every day through the month of August 2018.

Posts are in correct chronological order, so you need to scroll to the bottom to find the latest.