Those in the farming community who regard RTE’s Monday night expose of some of the more unsavoury aspects of the Irish Dairy industry as very conveniently timed are almost certainly justified in their suspicion. The programme coincides nicely, after all, with two things: First, the Green Party’s push to significantly reduce the size of the Irish dairy herd, and second, RTE’s somewhat enjoyable public travails in front of the Oireachtas committees investigating their use of public money. Making the dairy industry as a whole out to be the nation’s new villains suits a lot of people.
And yet the Dairy Industry should face up to an uncomfortable fact: RTE would be unable to make programmes showing wholesale animal cruelty taking place in the live export sector if wholesale animal cruelty was not taking place in the live export sector the first instance. It should also wake up to the fact that for a growing number of consumers, ethical considerations factor highly in their consumption choices. At home, and abroad.
There are two good arguments for the ethical treatment of animals in farming: First, and most importantly, that it is the right thing to do. A farmer who cares about their animals will not fail to notice that almost every animal is a sentient and sensitive creature capable of enjoyment and suffering in equal part. Nor could they fail to notice the natural ties between mother and calf, or the joy that cattle experience when released into the fields in Spring. Captivity and suffering is not the natural state of any creature.
The second good argument, though, is that treating your animals well is basic good marketing. People want to feel good about the food that they eat and, as free range and organic eggs prove, will pay a premium to do so.
The live export of animals is a cruel business. Many Irish cattle exported to the middle east end up dying a death that would rightly be entirely illegal in Ireland. The journey is torturous, and many do not survive. It is also, in relative terms, a very small part of the Irish agriculture sector. It has limited economic importance, but does significant damage to the image of Irish farming.
But the Government has questions to answer too: The Department of Agriculture told RTE that out of 1,000 inspections, “just” 96 breaches of animal cruelty legislation were uncovered in recent years. That is intended to sound small and insignificant – but if 10% of inspections in Irish hospitals or schools were uncovering breaches, there would rightly be an outcry.
Too often, in Irish agriculture, animal cruelty is treated as a thing that we pretend to care about in order to keep the softy townies happy. But the problem is this: The softy townies are your customers. They are the people who eat your meat and drink your milk. If they start drinking soy milk and eating vegan burgers, it’s no skin off their nose – it’s skin off the noses of Irish farmers, including the majority of decent and good farmers.
Perhaps Charlie McConalogue’s statement is a good place to start with an example of what the problem is:
The Minister for Agriculture has condemned the abuse of animals exposed by RTÉ Investigates and has said the issues raised will be “vigorously pursued” by a Department of Agriculture investigation which is under way.
Charlie McConalogue said: “What we saw was utterly unacceptable and in some instances illegal”.
There you go: The unacceptable is only in some instances illegal. There’s a thing we could fix straight away.
The simplest thing to do, straight off the bat, would be to ban the live export of cattle. To put this in context, the latest figures show that the Irish live export industry is worth €230m every year to the Irish economy: This is a vanishingly tiny amount – just 0.004% of Irish GDP in 2021, and a fraction of the total size of the agriculture economy, which comes in at €13billion every year. Live exports barely make a dent in the Irish economy in terms of what they add, but the damage that they do in PR terms should now be plain to see.
The best arguments for the Irish agri industry, in the face of an increasingly hostile political establishment, are quality based: That Ireland is well suited to producing food. That our animal rights legislation is some of the best in the world. That our farmers care about what they do and produce the highest quality produce. That we are, in short, better at it than many of our second and third-world competitors, across every metric.
Allowing one tiny segment of the agri-food economy to tarnish the rest of it with this kind of mindless cruelty to animals is a strategic error, as well as an obvious moral wrong. There should be a consensus about banning it, and doing so tomorrow. And there should also be a consensus when it comes to animal cruelty, Minister McConalogue: If it is unacceptable, then it should be illegal. In all circumstances, and not just in some.