The animal welfare group, Compassion in World Farming (CWIF), has delivered a letter of protest to the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, ahead of an European Agriculture Council vote on new proposals governing the live export of farm animals.
The vote will take place next Monday in Luxembourg. Irish agriculture organsations consider passing the proposals of vital economic interest to livestock farmers. The Department of Agriculture declined to comment on proposals which have been drawn up during Ireland's presidency.
At a demonstration outside the Department of Agriculture and Food in Dublin today, the CIWF president, Ms Mary-Anne Bartlett, said the new rules were a "cynical backward step that the Irish Government should be ashamed of".
The CWIF is seeking to ban on live animal exports and replace it with a trade in slaughtered meat products. She told ireland.com: "We are working towards a total ban but we would accept the position of the European Parliament which voted to limit the journey for slaughter for animals to a maximum of 9 hours, and the ferry time".
Mr Pat O'Rourke, the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association (ICMSA) president, said he hoped the proposals followed the evidence of scientific scrutiny.
He said research presented at the EU Parliamentary Debate on the issue earlier this year, including a study from Teagasc, "had conclusively proven no significant level of stress among animals in transport compared with those on the home farm".
"We are happy to let science dictate what is best for animal welfare, we have no difficulty with regulations once they are scientifically based," he said.
A spokesman for the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) said Irish farmers "need realistic, workable proposals. We would be concerned if there was a serious restriction in travel time . . . while a decrease in [animal] density would make it [the trade] unviable", he said.
At a recent rally in Ennis, the president of the IFA, Mr John Dillon said "protecting Ireland's live export trade is the biggest single challenge for the Minister for Agriculture Joe Walsh during Ireland's EU Presidency."
The draft proposals suggest a sequence of nine hours travel followed by two hours rest, with another 9 hours travel and 12 hours rest, a sequence that can be repeated until the destination is reached.
This is a change to the current rules where 28 hours travel is followed by 24 hours rest. Animal rights groups claim that in the example of a 33 hour journey animals which currently get 24 hours rest will now only get 12.
The new proposals also allow animals to be rested "on board". Time spent on a ferry is classed as rest.