Lights on, lights off, lights out for Irish farming
SO another year is ending, and as emigrants come home, and Christmas lights shine bright, other lights are being snuffed out, quietly, without fanfare, as more poor souls are live exported to Libya and Turkey. You can see them in footage taken by Ethical Farming Ireland at Kennedy Quay in Cork, stumbling across the transfer bridge into converted old car transporters.
Along with lights barely lit before they are extinguished; like the three truckloads of weanling calves that travelled overland to Albania last month. And there will be more, with one of Ireland’s biggest calf exporters planning to expand and looking for new markets in North Africa.
Though it’s not just the lights of all those lives that are going out, but also, arguably, the light of human decency.
For was that not the real issue raised by Ned O’Keeffe, the former TD and pig and dairy farmer who caused uproar recently when he claimed at a meeting that “a small, honest-to-goodness farmer milking 80 cows... went to a knackery and saw 400 calves in a dump, and he asked a man in the yard where did they come from, and he said ‘they saw the lump hammer’.”
He went on to reveal how he “heard of a farmer trying to kill male bobby calves with plastic bags... We all know this is happening. Now is the time to stop it.”
Or maybe it’s the cue to be more careful to conceal such gruesome realities. Certainly, Minister Creed’s response was along the lines that farmers and industry need to be conscious of the broader audience that is listening.
Followed by the wellworn mantra about how we are, and always have been, committed to the very highest standards of calf welfare. And coded talk of “comprehensive proposals” and “contingency plans” to deal with the crisis of approximately 750,000 surplus bull calves expected next spring.
Anything but admit that shipping defenceless creatures as far from our shores as soon as possible is the preferred solution — even though there are alternatives that would allow Irish agriculture to hold its head up high.
Like the failed but valiant attempts of Beet Ireland to redevelop our once thriving sugar beet industry. Or the shocking revelation that over 75pc of applications were rejected in the Organic Farming Scheme, despite farmers having full organic registration and making significant investments.
Indeed, our green and fertile land has one of the lowest organic production levels in Europe, just above Malta and Romania. So much so that we import over 70pc of the organic fruit and vegetables bought here. Despite the massive potential of the European market, where international organic retail sales have doubled since 2010 and are estimated to be worth over €85bn.
So isn’t it time we stepped into the light?