Across the developed world, governments saddled with ever-growing healthcare costs are encouraging their populations to eat more balanced diets rich in vegetables, fruits, whole-grain cereals, and other foods not derived from animal proteins. But not in Hungary! Instead, starting next month the Ministry of Agriculture will launch an ambitious public awareness campaign aimed at increasing the average Hungarian's consumption of red meat, such as that carved off of the two understandably skeptical szürkemarha (gray Hungarian cattle) pictured above.

According to a story on the new campaign in daily Népszabadság, the pro-meat PR drive will involve ads on billboards, in the print media, and in food stores, and is aimed at reversing a 10% drop in per-capita consumption of red meat (including, confusingly, pork) between 2002 and 2005.

Regular readers will know that we love meat in all of its many forms, from burgers and goose-liver stuffed tenderloin of veal to camel meat tarhonya. Still, for a few reasons this whole thing strikes us as meatheaded. First, it's not like Hungarians don't eat a lot of meat already. Even after slicing off that 10%, in 2005 the average Magyar consumed 26.7 kilograms of pork and 3.1 kilograms of beef, not including whatever half-chewed bits they coughed up while having their first heart-attack. And even if that is less than comparable numbers in other countries, the fact is that far too many Hungarians suffer from all the ailments associated with excess consumption of red meat, or at least inadequate consumption of fresh veggies and other healthy alternatives. Just this week, market researcher Nielsen released a survey on food consumption in Hungary showing meat as the most popular of 86 food categories as measured by overall purchases, followed by beer, cheese products and "fizzy drinks." Meanwhile, Népszabadság points out that many believe the eat-red-meat campaign is being waged on the urging of lobbyists for the industry, and that that leafy greens and other such wholesome eatables are not getting a similar campaign.

Even more idiotically, the same Ministry of Agriculture that is mooing about the drop in red meat consumption is crowing that the price of corn used to feed livestock (and people) is too high, apparently oblivious to the obvious fact that if you encourage people to eat more meat (a very inefficient use of cereal proteins) it will only drive fodder prices even higher.

Then there is the question of why Hungarians actually eat so little beef compared to pork, a gap that seems to be of special concern to the Ministry. We don't think it's due to a lack of proper marha-marketing, but because many Hungarian consumers are finally wizening up to the fact that, at least compared to the (very tasty) pork, most domestic beef is pretty much inedible. So rather than putting up a bunch of billboards with enticing pictures of sizzling steaks, people from the ministry should instead drag local ranchers down to Tesco and show them what good beef actually tastes like. That is, unless the folks at the Ministry of Agriculture are as ill-educated about how to cook meat as those at the Ministry of Education.