GOING OUT

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IN-CALF HEIFER SALE

Monday evening 20th February at 7pm in Elphin Mart

30 Heifers, CH, LM and SIX

15 with calves at foot

Some 4 and 5 Star Heifers. All export tested Heifers can be viewed prior to sale

Please contact Fred Dolan: 086 - 86 86 883

ICSA President: ‘Stop trolling farmers!’

< DAN DOONER

The President of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association has said the ‘constant trolling’ of livestock farmers by Government agencies, politicians, members of the media, and academics would ‘backfire spectacularly’.

Dermot Kelleher was speaking about what he described as the “increasing demands to dismantle meat and dairy farming”.

“The internal EPA report which is calling for a onethird cull of livestock numbers, re-wetting of 90 per cent of reclaimed land and quadruple its forestry targets is the latest example,” he said among farmers to develop their farming systems to be more sustainable and many farmers are actively working to improve biodiversity. But they are not going to engage if the agenda is the insane vision of a tiny minority where wolves would roam a rural wasteland, consumers would be forced to make do with insect protein and fake burgers and rural communities would be economically devastated,” Mr Kelleher said.

“Within hours of the report being exposed in the media, a small cabal of unrepresentative but noisy activists were salivating at the prospect of ripping out the heart of economic activity in rural Ireland”.

The ICSA President said that farmers “are getting sick of the constant baiting” and feel nothing they do will satisfy the more extreme green campaigners.

He said that farmers were doing their share citing the oversubscription to the new agri-environmental scheme, but insisted that they were not willing to lie down and allow their livelihoods to be destroyed.

“I am sick of people who have no clue of what they are talking about imagining that farmers can easily and profitably switch to growing peas and carrots in the west of Ireland or the Golden Vale.