Letters to the editor on EPA and financial viability

Name and details with the editor

DEAR EDITOR: The recent tweet from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding the consumption of red meat is both surprising and careless from the State body.

The content of the tweet, which has since been deleted, is nothing unusual. It’s the role that the EPA plays in the production of red meat in Ireland which is the concerning part.

I worked as an environmental officer for over 10 years, in a meat production plant, so I am familiar with the requirements placed upon factories by the EPA.

The vast majority of abattoirs in Ireland require an industrial emissions licence, which is issued by the EPA, to operate.

This licence puts limits on the emissions from the plant, whether that is waste water, noise, odour, etc, and in certain cases limits on production. To put it simply, these meat production plants cannot operate without this licence.

The farm organisations have accused the EPA of an anti-meat crusade.

While this might be an exaggeration, it is not entirely untrue.

In my opinion, the EPA’s recent actions have shown bias against red meat. How can the EPA effectively police an industry that, in my opinion, it is clearly biased against? I suspect this is why the tweet was removed and not because it was “open to interpretation”.