War on dairy: Ireland proposes ‘displacing’ cows to meet ‘climate goals’

Ireland’s Agriculture Ministry is considering a €600 million ($641.4 million) initiative to remove 65,000 cows per year from the national herd to meet its “climate goals”.

Globalists consider livestock to be offensive to the climate because their urine, flatulence, and sneezes produce nitrogen emissions. While these emissions are absorbed by trees and replaced with clean oxygen according to climate science, western governments are targeting farmers for their “contributions” to climate change.

A report last week revealed that the Irish government is weighing a proposal to remove 10% of the country’s livestock to meet its climate goals for 2025. The campaign would allocate about €200 million ($215 million) per year for the cause.

The funds would be used to pay farmers €3,000 ($3,217) for each cow that they cut from the breeding herd, with the aim to cut 65,000 cows annually in total.

“Approximately 60,000-65,000 dairy cows per annum would need to be displaced in 2023, 2024 and 2025. This would allow for some modest growth for new entrants and young farmers (10,000 per year),” said the proposal, obtained via a Freedom of Information request.

In addition to displacing individual cows, the paper also proposed a retirement or exit scheme for farmers, based on bids:

It is recommended that it could operate on a bidding system, whereby farmers would accept a financial payment to exit the sector. The farmer would propose the level of payment per cow, paid over 7-10 years, that he/she would need to exit.

​This scheme would be particularly attractive for dairy farmers who were approaching retirement age with no obvious successor.

A minimum number of cows would need to be set to avoid unnecessary administration. The design of such a scheme would need to ensure that the benefit was not eroded through expansion elsewhere…

As Ireland Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue mulls the proposal, the war on dairy in the name of climate change is also being waged on the corporate level.

Fake dairy manufacturer Remilk founder and CEO Aviv Wolff says the dairy industry “has no right to exist” due to its greenhouse gas emissions. Remilk, which has so far raised $150 million in funding, last month obtained approval from Israel’s Health Ministry to sell its fake whey protein. The company already received regulatory approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Singapore Food Authority (SFA) last year.

Remilk produces whey protein in a lab which it claims is “100% identical to cow’s protein”. Whey is used in 80% of dairy products, including yogurts, ice cream, milk and soft cheeses. The company intends to also start producing lab-grown casein protein, which is found in hard cheeses.

One of Wolff’s primary motivations for starting Remilk was the environmental impact of the dairy industry, which he says should not exist.

“On the environmental side, in order to avoid an environmental catastrophe, the food industry needs to drastically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The dairy industry has no way to do this and that means that in the long run, in an era of climate crisis, it has no right to exist. The only way is transformation. Our technology can save 95% of emissions. The dairy industry will never reach these numbers,” Wolff told Calcalist.

The fake food enthusiast also said he hopes to capitalize on veganism and put dairy farmers out of business.

“The dairy industry is struggling to survive,” he said. “50% of an American dairy farmer's income comes from government subsidies. This number will have to grow dramatically in the coming decades as in the past two decades more than half of the dairy farms in the U.S. closed due to financial pressure. The profit margins are very low. 

“This is the most central factor that will help us take market shares from the traditional industry: we will remove the economic interest from building a dairy farm and milking cows. We also see that consumer preferences are changing, especially among the younger generations. There is a sharp decrease in the desire of the young to consume animal products and specifically milk. In the natural cycle of life, the expectation is for the sector to grow and the consumption of animal milk to decrease."