NW Valley Times

Arizona State Rep. Austin Smith (R-Surprise) took to Twitter to respond to a Fox News story reporting that a proposal to cull 200,000 cows has been discussed by an Irish Department of Agriculture panel.           

"Lunatic politicians and climate crazies are intentionally trying to starve the planet," Smith tweeted.

The Fox News story headline said, "Elon Musk, farmers torch Ireland government proposal to slaughter 200,000 cows." The story picked up on a twitter exchange between author Ashley St. Clair, who promoted an article from Cowboy State Daily about the proposal, and Elon Musk.                 

"This really needs to stop," Musk said. "Killing some cows doesn’t matter for climate change."

St. Clair's original tweet said "The push to end life, of both animals and humans, in the name of “climate activism” is fundamentally evil."                 

The story lit up the Internet Monday, ignited by stories in Irish dairy news publications. One of them, edairynews, ran the headline, "Ireland weighs culling 200,000 dairy cows to meet climate goals."  

In the story, it said an Irish Department of Agriculture spokesperson characterized an Irish government report discussing culling 65,000 cows a year for three years as a “modelling document” and “not final policy...part of a deliberative process. It is one of a number of modelling documents considered by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and is not a final policy decision.”  

Edairynews said the 200,000 number emerged this month when another Irish publication, the Farming Independent, obtained a government report citing the number through a Freedom of Information request.

This subject was first reported by Edairynews on Aug. 8, 2022, under a headline, "Irish dairy report recommends paying dairy farmers €5,000 to cull cows." That story added, "Plans from the Food Vision Dairy Group show they want the Irish government to compensate farmers up to €5,000 per animal to cull their cows." That story didn't mention the 200,000 number.                

The Food Vision Dairy Group was chartered by the Irish Department of Agriculture in January 2022 "to identify measures that the dairy sector can take to contribute to stabilising and reducing agriculture emissions," said MerrionStreet.ie, the Irish government news service. 

That panel didn't mention the 200,000 number, either, but it did say in its final report to the Agriculture Department in October 2022 that an "estimated 0.45Mt CO2eq" could be saved "per 100,000 dairy cows reduced."