The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) deleted a tweet advising people to cut down on their red meat consumption earlier this week after a swift reaction from Irish farming organisations.

The widely shared tweet suggested three things: “1. Reduce food waste: we throw out about 10 per cent of the meat we buy. 2. Reduce your meat consumption slowly; veggie lunches, Meat Free Mondays etc. 3. Be more adventurous, try veggie recipes.” It was accompanied by a smiling photo of actor Kim Cattrall in character as Samantha Jones in Sex and the City, along with the legend: “the planet when you reduce your red meat intake”.

The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) told the EPA it “had caused considerable anger among farmers who feel it goes beyond the remit of the EPA and is not consistent with Government dietary guidelines”, while the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association (ICSA) asked the EPA to clarify what it called “political campaigning against meat”.

ICSA president, Dermot Kelleher said his organisation was taken aback. “The tweet might well be acceptable from a vegan or vegetarian lobby group. However, in the context of a body charged with environmental regulation and key data measurements in respect of climate and water, it really isn’t good judgment to be seen to be actively campaigning against Irish livestock products,” he said.

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Such strongly worded statements from farming bodies at a time when intensive farming practices to produce beef and dairy are proven to contribute to both greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution provoked a further response from environmentalists.

Sadhbh O’Neill, coordinator of Stop Climate Chaos coalition, said: “If the EPA wants to be taken seriously as an impartial scientific body, then it must continue to tell the truth, even if the message is inconvenient or unwelcome,” she said.

O’Neill also quoted the EAT-Lancet Commission report which itself caused quite a stir among some farming organisations when published in 2019. That report recommended reducing highly processed foods and red and processed meat by over 50 per cent and increasing fruit, vegetable and legume consumption by over 100 per cent.

Deeper malaise

But organic beef and dairy farmer Hannah Quinn-Mulligan believes the controversy highlights a deeper malaise in the agricultural sector. “Beef and dairy farmers are very insecure at the moment and this isn’t helped by a knee-jerk, reactionary response from farming organisations. It also made environmental organisations look like they have the higher moral ground,” says Quinn-Mulligan.

She also thinks that the EPA tweet was poorly phased. “They didn’t get how sensitive the agricultural sector is, but the farming organisations could have been smarter and seen the bigger picture and supported struggling Irish vegetable growers in their response.”

[ EPA deletes tweet advising people to cut their red meat consumptionOpens in new window ]

Other farmers were “horrified when they heard about or read this tweet,” IFA President Tim Cullinan told Newstalk Breakfast.

“There was huge rage among our members. We contacted the EPA and we asked them to take down the tweet - which they did - and I think that was very important.”

“People themselves make their own choices around diet - we don’t need an EPA man telling us what we can and cannot eat.”

This is not the first time that there has been a furore about comments made in public about cutting back on red meat in Ireland. In 2019, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar met the ire of rural TDs when he made comments about cutting back on his consumption of meat to reduce his carbon footprint. Varadkar had not said that people should stop eating meat (neither did the EPA’s tweet) but that he was “trying to eat less red meat both for health reasons and reasons of climate change”.

At that time, the then ICSA president Patrick Kent described Varadkar’s comments as “reckless in the extreme”. Yet experts agree that the two biggest things individuals can do to reduce the impact of climate change are to fly less and to reduce their consumption of meat.

Back to this week, the EPA responded that its tweet was removed so as not to cause any confusion and that Twitter was not the appropriate forum for the “complex” debate on meat consumption. It did, however, add that it has highlighted repeatedly that economic growth in the agri-food sector in recent years is happening at the expense of the environment.

“EPA reports indicate that Ireland’s reputation as a food producer with a low environmental footprint continues to be at risk of being irreversibly damaged,” Laura Burke, the director general of the EPA, told the Business Post earlier this week.

Burke also said that to reduce this complex debate to a single tweet would “diminish the seriousness of the discussion we need to have”.

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In Ireland, agriculture is responsible for about 38 per cent of national greenhouse gas emissions – principally from methane-emitting livestock, nitrous oxide from chemical fertilisers and manure management.

Greenhouse gases

A study in Public Health Nutrition, published in 2017 reported that almost half of Ireland’s dietary greenhouse gas emissions come from animal food products. And globally, food systems currently account for about 30 per cent of emissions (with food waste accounting for about 10 per cent of this). So climate change cannotrealistically be addressed without looking at food consumption and production.

Orna O’Brien, dietitian with the Irish Heart Foundation and lead author of Fixing Food Together, the position paper from the Climate and Health Alliance published in May 2023, says that reducing consumption of excessive amounts of red meat such as beef and lamb is recommended by several respected medical organisations. For example, the 2021 clinical practice guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology recommend that red meat should be reduced to a maximum of 350-500g per week cooked weight (that’s 50-70g a day which is about five dessert spoons of minced beef or three-quarters of a medium burger and one quarter of a pork chop/half a small sirloin steak) and processed meat should be minimised.

In 2019, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland recommended a palm-sized portion of lean red meat two to three times per week and to limit processed meats. O’Brien says: “There was nothing wrong with what the EPA tweeted. It’s shocking that it was removed. The level of red meat and processed meat consumption in Ireland is significantly higher than recommended levels,” referencing a 2017 analysis of adult nutrition which reported an average of 134g of red and processed meat per day by men and 89g per day by women.

The authors of Fixing Food Together call for a new Cabinet subcommittee on food to includes both the Minister for Health and the Minister for Agriculture – with a mandate to protect public health and develop a sustainable farming sector in tandem.

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Meanwhile, the Food Systems Partnership 2023 report, Pathways for Food Systems Transformation, states that a critical component of promoting healthy and sustainable diets is “to diversity protein supply which could include aquatic, plant-based, insect-based and laboratory-cultured protein”. It also recommended a shift away from harmful food and farming practices such as chemical-intensive agriculture, intensive livestock systems and the production of ultra-processed foods.

No doubt all these points will be raised when the EPA meets the IFA to discuss a way forward for Irish agriculture.