Meat sector says Ireland is top performer on climate change
MII director Cormac Healy said it would be foolhardy to demand that Ireland should reduce its beef output. He said Ireland operates one of the most eco-friendly beef industries in the world.
“It would be foolhardy in the extreme to curb the production of beef in a country where we produce in an extensive grass-based system that is far more efficient and sustainable than elsewhere in the world,” said Mr Healy.
He said Irish beef has the fifth lowest carbon footprint in Europe and is far more sustainable than beef production in South America.
He said Ireland’s meat sector is also committed to the Bord Bia-led Origin Green initiative, an independently verified, national scale sustainability programme which involves a sustainability audit of all farms and the use of the Carbon Navigator tool enabling farmers to focus on improving both their economic and environmental efficiency.
Mr Healy cited a World Bank statement which noted: “If every cow was as good as the top 10% produced in Ireland we would have one-third less methane emissions on the planet.”
He also praised Taoiseach Enda Kenny for the views he expressed at the COP 21 meetings in Paris last week.
He said Mr Kenny set out the progressive steps being taken by Ireland to meet the challenge of climate change and to further improve the efficiency and sustainability of agriculture and food production in Ireland.
The Taoiseach told the 150 world leaders at the Paris summit that Ireland would need “time and space” to deal with meeting stringent EU targets of a 40 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030.
He singled out the exceptional performance of Irish agriculture in particular.
However, the Taoiseach was criticised by environmental group Friends of The Earth for taking a soft position on climate change
Friends of the Earth director, Oisín Coghlan, said: “The reason we are not on track to meet our 2020 targets is because this Government has made no concerted effort to do so. It will go through its entire five year term without producing an Action Plan to reduce emissions. Compare that to the Action Plan for Jobs and you see what policy looks like when the Government is serious about setting and meeting targets.
“In fact, Friends of the Earth has reluctantly concluded that the Government is deliberately not trying to meet the 2020 targets, because they want to say to the European Commission ‘look, we told you that they were too hard, make our 2030 targets easier.”
MII’s Cormac Healy said Ireland remains very sustainable compared to food production in many other parts of the world.
The meat sector alone supports over 100,000 jobs across farming and processing in rural Ireland and accounts for some €3.5 billion in export earnings annually, he added.
