By Rhoda Wilson/The Expose

An internal document, a Department of Agriculture briefing paper, reveals that a €200m budget is needed to cull 65,000 cows every year for three years to meet climate goals – that’s 195,000 cows in total.

Culling 200,000 Irish dairy cows is the wrong way to meet Ireland’s climate targets, the president of Macra na Feirme, Elaine Houlihan has said. Macra creates a platform that allows young farmers’ voices to be heard. Houlihan described the report which contained the proposal as a “complete kneejerk report.”

Houlihan also pointed out: “Has anyone taken a step back and seriously looked at what signals these reports focusing on culling send to young farmers considering entering a sector? Are Ireland and Europe serious about Generational Renewal?”

Any plan to cull Ireland’s dairy herd must be voluntary, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (“ICMSA”) has warned. ICMSA is a lobbying group that represents all farmers in Ireland, particularly dairy and livestock.

ICMSA President Pat McCormack told Newstalk Breakfast on Tuesday: “If there is to be a scheme, it needs to be a voluntary scheme. That’s absolutely critical because there’s no point in culling numbers from an individual who has borrowed on the back of a huge financial commitment on the back of achieving a certain target that’s taken from under him.”

Further reading:

What climate alarmists and those who seek to profit from the agenda refuse to acknowledge is that the livestock/methane narrative is a misconception.  The proponents of the climate agenda consistently portray cows as pumping additional methane into the atmosphere. This is simply not true.  Ruminant livestock methane is virtually irrelevant as a greenhouse gas.  And methane from cattle is part of the biogenic carbon cycle which has been around since life began.

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