How strong does the message have to be to convince people that the current anti-dairy campaign, which I mentioned a few weeks ago, is dangerous and damaging?

After I wrote about the use of widespread expensive advertisements in this campaign, I bumped into a senior civil servant whom I greatly respect. The dairy denigration campaign came up in conversation and he pointed me in the direction of an extraordinary paper by the International Food Policy Research Institute – a body with impeccable credentials. The paper is entitled “Animal Sourced Foods and Child Stunting”. The authors analysed 112,000 children aged from six to 23 months in 46 countries. The results are staggering and compelling.

The conclusion in the paper is spelled out clearly: “animal-sourced foods are dense in a wide range of micro-nutrients linked to growth and cognitive development’’.

The first 1,000 days in a child’s life are the really crucial period and malnutrition during this period is impossible to compensate for.

The paper presents conclusive evidence that animal-sourced protein, and particularly dairy products, play a critical role in the physical and mental development of children and have permanent effects on how these children develop as adults. Anyone who has travelled to the under-developed world will be aware of the mental and physical lethargy that seems to affect large sections of the population. It is a lethargy largely caused by a diet lacking animal- or fish-sourced protein.

The Food Policy Institute reckons that stunting affects about 160 million pre-school children around the world and “imposes significant costs on a child’s health, cognitive development, schooling and economic performance”. The link between mental and physical stunting and poor childhood nutrition is incontrovertible.

From an Irish perspective, infant formula and beef are products of which we can, and should, be proud.

The campaign to denigrate both is not only dishonest but hugely damaging to children across the world who lack access to the foods we take for granted.