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The Beef Plan Movement has told members not to break the law during protests and adhere to the guidelines that it has published.
“We are asking that no person attending any Beef Plan Movement protest site breaks the law - under any circumstances,” Eoin Donnelly, Beef Plan negotiator, said.
The statement comes on the back of an earlier statement from Meat Industry Ireland (MII) in which it threatens the Beef Plan with legal action over what it perceives as “unlawful behaviour”.
Donnelly asked that farm organisations clarified whether their members were taking part in protests and to ensure that members from other farm organisations were made aware of the rules of behaviour outlined by the Beef Plan.
“We are not asking if they agree or not with what we are doing - just simply that they ask their members to follow our guidelines it those individuals choose to attend a Beef Plan protest location,” Donnelly said.
“We are asking the people that have ensured our protests have been lawful to date not to allow an individual or group of people to sabotage our protest.”
Communication
Donnelly also outlined a lack of consistency with communication from various parties.
“Recently, we have had people imply that we had ignored their advances to meet which, from our perspective, made it look like they wanted people to think we don't want to talk to anyone - our position is that we will talk to anyone without preconditions,” Donnelly said, although he did not name any individual or organisation in the statement.
He continued that the Beef Plan was reviewing “literally thousands of messages” the organisation had received but reiterated that if someone had really wanted to contact them they would have been “persistent” in their communication.
“Just sending one note or email, from our perspective, is not what we consider being persistent.”
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