Farming in Ireland has many problems and all the wrong answers. Whether it’s flying male calves to Europe to bypass welfare restrictions on lengthy export times, or shooting them at birth, neither “solution” addresses the real problem.

Dairy farmers in Ireland are regularly creating a “calf tsunami” and until recently there were few options other than to let the males die rather than pay for a vet or shoot them soon after birth. Now the Irish government plans to fly them to mainland Europe and beyond to get around the problem of EU welfare laws prohibiting journeys of more than eight hours unless animals are fed and given a 12-hour rest en route.

According to the Guardian, Ireland’s 1.6 million dairy herd is growing rapidly with ever more calves born each year. Around 750,000 male calves are born each spring, most are sold to be raised for beef, 30,000 are slaughtered and 200,000 are sent overseas by road or boat for veal production.

Worse still, Ireland has a “compact calving” system where the majority of calves are born in a six-to-eight week period from February to April. During this time, farmers practice “snatch calving” by which calves are taken away from their mothers within an hour of birth and sold off as soon as possible. This drives down prices per calf, with the life of a sentient individual being valued at as little as 49p in 2019.

The Irish government believes that rather than address the elephant in the room - a harmful and exploitative farming industry with no future - the solution instead is to make export markets more accessible. Rather than help farmers transition to more sustainable forms of plant-based agriculture, find alternative uses for their land or subsidise land stewardship and carbon sequestration initiatives, the answer according to the Irish administration is to subject young calves to lengthy loading procedures, noisy cargo holds and pressure changes.

Ethical Farming Ireland’s Caroline Rowley, speaking to the newspaper, said: “Flying calves sounds horrific. I don’t understand the logistics. It’s still going to be a long journey of turning up to the airport, unloading calves from trucks into pens. It’s noisy in the plane – there’s air pressure changes and turbulence. Flying them is avoiding the fundamental issue: we are producing too many animals.”

Ireland is also under pressure to open up new markets for its farmers following comments by Dutch agriculture minister Carola Schouten who has spoken out against the transport of calves over long distances, and specifically in regards to Irish calves being imported into the Netherlands to be raised for veal.

Should farmers choose to stay within the dairy industry, they are faced with the dilemma of what to do with male calves, whose lives are valued in mere pennies because they don’t produce milk like females. Last year the Guardian reported on comments by experts who said it would be “kinder to shoot them” than allow what was actually happening. It emerged that many farmers were simply letting animals die rather than treat them for diseases, with vets costing €150 for a call-out and male calves selling for less than €1 each.

Rather than address the real problem, why would the Irish government apply a band-aid and an ineffective one at that? While there has been an increase in the number of cows exported in recent years, the value of the industry – about €110m (£94m) a year – has declined six per cent year-on-year indicating that stimulus in this area is not helping farmers.

“It is not boosting the economy,” said Caroline Rowley, from Compassion in World Farming. “It is not stimulating prices, live export volumes are going up each year but factory prices are not following. It is not helping the average livestock farmer. The only winners in this outdated industry are the exporters.”

Farmers face increasingly difficult challenges with falling demand for animal products and a shift in consumer attitudes surrounding meat and the disproportionate impact of animal agriculture on the environment and public health. It strikes us as incredibly short-sighted and irresponsible of the Irish government to continue propping up animal agriculture, though subsidies and bail-outs are rife across Europe. In the UK, the struggling dairy industry received funding from Defra to run ill-conceived ineffective advertising campaigns to coax people back to drinking milk, a monumental waste of taxpayer money.

When your only options to sustain an entire industry are to fly baby calves around the world or shoot them dead, the writing really is on the wall.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager at Surge.

Your support makes a huge difference to us. Supporting Surge with a monthly or one-off donation enables us to continue our work to end all animal oppression.

LATEST ARTICLES