IMAGINE the fuss if the Minister for Enterprise and Employment announced that the country's largest enterprise is set to lose £500 million, with factories closing down and production going into sharp decline.

Imagine if the Minister for Finance announced that exports will drop 21/2 per cent next year, which reduce the level of tax reliefs he will be able to hand out.

You don't have to stretch your imagination too far because both are already happening. However, because it's in the beef industry, there appears to be no great panic in political circles or elsewhere.

Perhaps the old agricultural cry of "wolf" has gone up too often. It may be that we are virtually immune to the wails from IFA headquarters in Bluebell and the cries of pain from the ICMSA in Limerick.

The truth of the matter is that the Irish beef industry has "O'Sullivaned". It has run off the track and like poor Sonia, the fault is not of its own making.

Since March 20th, when it was announced in the British House of Commons that possible links between BSE and a new form of CJD were being examined, the industry has been in a virtual state of crisis.

The beef industry is Ireland's largest single enterprise. Some 100,000 farmers are engaged in either full time or part-time production, supplying the near 1.5 million animals a year for the slaughtering and processing sector.

Nearly 5,000 people are employed in meat plants and other processing outlets, which rises to 6,000 or more at peak production time

BEEF exports are valued at £1.75 billion a year and make up just over 5 per cent of total exports. Because of events in the past few months, the value of these exports has been halved.

Beef consumption in the EU is estimated to have fallen by 11 per cent overall, and in some countries it has dropped by up to 30 per cent.

Unfortunately for Ireland, the EU's surplus beef is produced here, and the greatest fall off in consumption has taken place in our prime markets like Germany. France and Britain, where Irish beef was a very sought after commodity.

The EU had been producing surplus beef before the BSE crisis, but there were outlets for it. Thousands of live animals were being shipped out to North African and Middle Eastern countries each week from Ireland, supported by EU subsidies. These markets have now dried up to a trickle.

The results were very predictable. Prices for animals ready for slaughter plummeted at factories. From a high of 108p per lb before March 20th, similar animals are now being purchased for 91/92p per lb.

The industry here is quite complex. Few farmers rear a beast from the calf to slaughtering stage, which is normally two years later. Most beef animals are produced on dairy farms or on small farms where cows feed their own calves. These calves tend to be sold on when they are weaned and kept in the western side of the country and fed on grass to a stage when they become known as store cattle.

These store cattle are kept until a few months prior to slaughter, when they are sold to specialist farmers called "finishers", who fatten them for sale to the factories or live exporters.

It is these specialist finishers who are currently bearing the brunt of the fallout, which is leading to a radical shake-up in the industry.

Many finishers were caught in March with large numbers of animals. Because they purchase mature store animals and need special housing, and feed special rations to fatten the animals, most work on very high bank borrowings.

AS most of them work on the basis of high turnover and tight profit margins, most of the animals have been sold at a loss since March.

They are unlikely to rush into the marketplace again to replace animals, so smaller farmers, especially in the west, cannot sell on their store cattle because of the uncertainty.

As autumn approaches, the movement of animals from the farms should be happening; but weanlings are being left unsold, and as the calves begin to arrive there is no demand for them.

Last week, Mr Franz Fischler, the European Agriculture Commissioner, moved to ease what he termed "this unprecedented crisis" with a six-point plan which has made the future even more unclear.

In order to reduce EU beef production he has proposed the slaughter of weanlings (7-9 months) for intervention; a national reduction of premia payments for male animals; measures to encourage farmers to reduce the levels at which they stock animals and an increase in the level of intervention for finished animals.

His most controversial proposal involves the voluntary slaughter of one million calves under 10 days old, a measure which will be resisted by animal welfare groups in Europe.

While these proposals, which will be part-funded by reducing support for cereal farmers, must be ratified by the Council of Farm Ministers, their impact will not be known until they have been fully costed in September in Killarney at a special meeting of farm ministers.

If the farmers who produce calves are paid close to the market price to slaughter them, the farmers who buy them as weanlings fear a scarcity next spring.

If farmers who have weanlings get a market price of £415 a beast from intervention, then there will be no raw material for stores, and if there are no stores available, then there can be no finished beef cattle.

Against the background of this confusion, prices at factories continue to fall and farmers are afraid to move either one way or the other.

The paralysis has already set in, a paralysis which has the potential to further weaken rural Ireland's already shaky foundations and do grave damage to the entire economy.