Welcome to our website. Ethical Farming Ireland is a group run by a small number of volunteers, established to campaign for improved conditions for farm animals that also benefit our environment. Our mission is to promote sustainable, ethical farming methods whilst standing against animal cruelty, specifically factory farming and live animal export. We also encourage a move to more plant-based foods, as current levels of consumption of animal produce are not sustainable.
Our food system is broken. Since the end of the second world war, farming has become more intensified with little regard to either the welfare of the animals being farmed or the devastating impact on our planet.
Half of the world’s wildlife has been wiped out in the past 40 years and two thirds of this loss is driven by food production, with animal agriculture being a major contributor to greenhouse gases worldwide. Mega crops are grown to feed farmed animals, food that we could eat ourselves. Large swaths of the Amazon are being cleared to grow these crops and also for cattle to graze. Run off from fields heavily sprayed with artificial fertilizers and pesticides are creating huge ‘dead zones’ in our oceans and lakes.
However, all is not lost and there is a growing movement of farmers who want to bring about change by regenerative farming. They are generally small scale livestock and crop farmers who use their animals and other farming methods to rejuvinate and rewild the land. We can rebuild our soils and with a move towards more plant based farming and agro-forestry we can slow down global warming. But we must greatly cut down our consumption of meat, dairy and fish, or eliminate it altogther, as small, sustainable, extensive farms cannot meet current demand. Plus we must avoid intensively farmed produce, whether we are vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian or meat eaters.
All animals deserve a life free of pain and stress and they should be able to fully carry out all their natural behaviours, including caring for their young. This means getting animals out of the factories and back into the fields where they belong. It also means an end to long distance transport and live export. Unfortunately the bulk of poultry and almost all pigs in Ireland are reared in intensive systems, where they are denied natural behaviours. Half of the egg laying hens are in cages and a large volume are exported to the UK for slaughter when their productivity slows down. Cattle and sheep are mostly farmed extensively but there are a number of feedlots and zero grazing dairy systems where the cows are indoors 24/7. Large volumes of unwanted male dairy calves are sent on horrendously long journeys to veal farms in the Netherlands and beyond, and cattle, including pregnant dairy heifers, are shipped off to North Africa and the Middle East in hideous huge, rusty, ancient livestock vessels..
Ireland prides itself in having high welfare standards and you won’t see any of the above in the Bord Bia ads or the National Dairy Council propaganda. That’s where we come in. Our goal is to raise awareness of the darker side of animal agriculture that most people don’t know about. We do this mostly through our social media channels and have also run a number of billboard campaigns. We continuously monitor the live export industry, submitting complaints when legislation is breached (which is frequently.) We work with many NGOs across Europe, and globally, to lobby for legislation change, as well as pushing for existing legislation to be enforced.
Ethical Farming Ireland is an active member of Eurogroup for Animals, the leading Brussels-based, pan-European umbrella organization representing over 100 NGOs. It serves as the secretariat for the European Parliamentary Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals, with the goal of EU policy to improve animal welfare standards across Europe.
We have to change our mindset and stop expecting cheap food, all purchased in one location. There is no such thing as cheap food, there is always a cost, we just can’t always see it.
Caroline Rowley
Founder and Executive Director
