The Irish meat-processing industry has expressed serious concern at the possibility that further concessions on agricultural market access by the European Union was being contemplated. Seán MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent, reports
Lobby group Meat Industry Ireland (MII) reacted sharply to a speech by the agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fisher Boel, this week that there may be room for more concessions to restart the talks later this month.
Her statement was described as a "blatant softening-up process" in the context of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations and this was extremely worrying for Irish and European agriculture and for the meat industry in particular.
"The EU offer on import access has simply been banked by other WTO partners such as the USA and Brazil without any equivalent or reciprocal moves on their part either on agriculture or industrial products," it said. "It is of grave concern therefore to hear suggestions from commissioner Fischer Boel of the possibility of further concessions by the EU on agriculture.
"The EU offer already on the table, which proposes to cut import tariffs by 50-60 per cent will, according to the Commission's own analysis, increase EU beef imports from 500,000 tonnes to 1.3 million tonnes per annum," it went on.
"Such an expansion in imports of low-priced, lower-quality beef would seriously destabilise the EU beef market and expose domestic beef production to unfair competition," it continued.
The statement went on to say that neither the current offer nor further concessions would result in imports of an extra kilogramme of beef from developing countries whose development needs are at the heart of the Doha trade round.
"In reality EU import concessions will only facilitate increased imports from Brazil to the European beef market which will displace Irish beef produced under much higher food safety, consumer assurance and eco-friendly standards and at considerably higher costs," it said.
The MII statement said the stability in the European beef market had only been restored on the basis of millions of euro invested by taxpayers and EU processors equally and it was perverse to undermine this valuable asset, which provided valuable export earnings, gave employment to upwards of 5,000 people and supported almost 90,000 producers.
"The Government must ensure that the future of our domestic beef sector is defended and not sacrificed in the EU's attempts to reach a new WTO deal," it concluded.
