The twin crises facing the Irish meat industry will be discussed at a meeting of EU farm ministers in Brussels next week. It will be attended by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh.
The blockading of Irish food products in Britain had already been placed on the agenda, but the Irish will attempt to have the recommendations of the EU Scientific Steering Committee also discussed. The committee recommended a ban on sales of lamb on the bone from animals over 12 months, together with the removal of intestine and backbone from all cattle and goats.
These recommendations pose a threat to consumer confidence not only in beef but also in sheep meat, which had benefited from the drop in beef consumption since March 1996.
The chairman of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association, Mr T.J. Nally, warned yesterday that the recommendation of the scientific committee could bring the entire sector to its knees.
Mr Nally said Irish consumers should have no worry about eating sheep meat as most of the lamb consumed here was under 12 months. He added that the recommendations were extraordinary given that the most modern scientific evidence indicated that sheep could not get BSE, except when subjected to unnatural laboratory practices. The Irish Meat Association, representing the factories, said it would examine the proposals to see what impact they would have on trade.
There are 7.7 million sheep in the Republic and the industry is worth £0.5 billion annually.
A Bord Bia spokesman said media coverage of the BSE crisis was much greater in Ireland and Britain than on the Continent, where the media had more or less ignored the issue. There was no indication so far, he said, of cancellations or falling demand for Irish lamb.
The IFA president, Mr John Donnelly, was in Brussels yesterday with a delegation to meet the Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, to seek assurances on the future of the beef industry.
The IFA also lobbied the Commissioner to take a significant quantity of Irish beef into intervention before Christmas at a price of 85p a lb, 3p more than the current market price. Intervention tenders will be decided today.