Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Guardiannewspaper, based on an investigation by Greenpeace UK, reported last week that leading European agribusiness groups using a manifesto called the Dublin Declaration have been lobbying senior EU officials against recommendations for reduced meat consumption in the bloc's cancer strategy, its sustainability policies and its climate goals. The Dublin Declaration of scientists on the societal role of livestock was launched at Teagasc in October last year. It is a relatively short document that argues for the nutritional, environmental and social benefits of meat-eating, but the document, which presents itself as a declaration of scientists, was in fact written by a cabal of lobbyists with close ties to the livestock industry.

The declaration's launch in Dublin was hosted, as I said, by Teagasc. The agency receives 75% of its funding from the Irish Government and the EU, which helped pay for the event. They contributed €39,000 of the event's €45,000 cost, mainly in the form of travel, accommodation and support for the speakers who attended. To get a sense of the scale of the involvement of the livestock industry in this event and how far from a scientifically objective document the declaration is, the networking event at the conference was sponsored by two industry groups, namely the American Meat Science Association and the North American Meat Institute. The Dublin Declaration was the centrepiece of an addition of the peer-reviewed journal Animal Frontiers, and in November 2022 the EU's leading agrifood groups wrote to the EU Commissioner for Agriculture using the Dublin Declaration to argue against a plan to end public funding for the promotion of red and processed meats.

In January 2023 a delegation for the declaration travelled to Warsaw to present its findings at an event organised by the Polish Beef Association and attended by the Commissioner.

The lead author of the declaration is Mr. Peer Ederer. He is a former McKinsey consultant, who works closely with agribusiness and whose clients include McDonalds and the US meat producer Smithfield. He has described veganism as "an eating disorder requiring psychological treatment". Authors of the declaration include Collette Kaster, chief executive of the American Meat Science Association, which is funded by major meat producers such as Cargill Meat Solutions, Smithfield and Tyson Foods. The second lead author, Frédéric Leroy, is a food science academic in Brussels but also president of the Belgian Association of Meat Science and Technology. He is a regular presence on the meat industry conference circuit and the author of ALEPH2020, an academic-led initiative in support of meat production. Last is Dr. Rod Polkinghorne, who is a self-described "pioneer of the Australian feedlot industry" and who works with meat industry actors.

A State agency in Ireland has been made an utter fool of by industry lobbyists intent on their selfish pursuit of ever-increasing global climate emissions in the name of profit. Teagasc is lending its funding and credibility to a campaign that is undermining efforts to tackle climate change and take science seriously within the EU. Ireland has the second-highest emissionsper capitain Europe, and that is driven in large part by our export-oriented agriculture model. It is not what we are eating ourselves but what we export, based in beef and dairy products. Most lobbyists pay the State for access and consideration but Ireland must be in a unique position of paying those same lobbyists €39,000 for the privilege of being manipulated and hoodwinked by an unethical and anti-science industry operative. Teagasc was founded as a research and industry development body. If we cannot rely on the data and scientific objectivity of Teagasc, where does that leave us?

See this speech in context