Lay of the Land: Shipping animals to war zones doesn’t bother our brave MEPs

He has form when it comes to fighting fascism, as he reminded us. “Back in 2017, I did the same when I travelled to the Occupied Territories to better understand the plight of the besieged Palestinian people.”

I’m not sure how Billy’s visit helped the biggest European crisis since World War II but it surely proves the truth of the insight attributed to Theodor W Adorno, the Jewish philosopher who lived through it, that “Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals”.

What does the former Fianna Fáil TD, who has declared earnings of approximately €240,000 a year from farming, think of the practice of sending cattle of only a few months old to war-torn Libya, where there is also a feed and water shortage?

What about the practice of culling cows struggling to walk, exhausted and spent after a few years of service, when they are packed off to Irish marts? There, some dairy farmers are giving away unweaned calves with shrunken stomachs and covered in diarrhoea for free, after they fail to sell for even a fiver — their age classified as zero months in lots with a starting price of nothing.

Little wonder you’ll hardly see farmers in some marts, only dealer types hovering around the ringside, looking to pick up 14- to 25-day-old calves as “shippers”.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Caroline Rowley of Ethical Farming Ireland (EFI) says. “There are good farmers out there who want to find better ways of doing dairy, like Calf at Foot farms. The industry needs a serious overhaul.”

Especially with breaches of EU law around feeding that occur even before these calves with underdeveloped immune systems and no body fat in reserve leave our shores. This was witnessed last month by Danish MEP Anja Hazekamp, who was moved by the suffering of animals to join an investigation by Dutch group Eyes On Animals and EFI which found calves fed just once in 50 hours.

Truckloads of tiny creatures whizzed pass me in Rosslare last month, a stone’s throw from the official face of Fáilte Ireland, land of a thousand welcomes, where currently tens of thousands of refugees are arriving from a war zone. While we ship animals to suffering and war zones.

You could hear them bawling themselves hoarse in vain before disappearing into the bowels of the ferry that takes human passengers upstairs on holidays.

It seems none of that bothers Billy and fellow Irish MEPs Maria Walsh, Frances Fitzgerald, Seán Kelly, Barry Andrews, Colm Markey, Chris MacManus and Deirdre Clune. Earlier this year, they voted against a ban on the export of animals to countries outside the EU, against limiting sea journeys to 24 hours and against a ban on the export of unweaned calves.

Instead, expect the rinse-and-repeat mantra about Ireland maintaining the highest welfare standards, along with vehement denials of animal abuse, despite footage of what happens some animals on foreign shores prompting Britain to soon become the first country in Europe to follow New Zealand in banning a trade that goes against the sort of western world values for which Ukrainians are dying. Or the democratic findings shared by the EU Commission this month that reveals 94pc of people want a ban on EU live exports.

But with powerful lobby groups influencing MEPs, many of whom have vested interests, don’t hold your breath that Billy and other highly paid colleagues will heed those calls.