Mick Clifford: Faux outrage ignores what is at stake

Meat-tweetgate blew up last week when the EPA issued a tweet urging consumers to eat less red meat. The content was harmless but the reaction from farmer’s organisations was as if the EPA had announced that it was ordering firstborn calves from every dairy farm in the country be slaughtered.

For whom the tweet tolls? The hunt is on for the issuer of the latest tweet to cause outrage, horror and disturb a whole reservoir of anger. The anonymous bearer of offence must be identified, exposed to the glare of ridicule and, if there is any justice, fitted out for stocks where the vengeful public can effect righteous retribution.

Who has scandalised public decency this time? What we do know is that this person is most likely an employee, or agent, of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a body that is now taking on the role of demonising those who persist in eating their dinner in the middle of the day. And not just any dinner, but one for which the stable is the reddest of meat with two veg an optional extra.