Farmers who do not comply with the terms of a new national beef quality assurance scheme will have their licence to produce beef withdrawn, the Government has warned.
In Paris yesterday at a Bord Bia promotion, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food, Mr Ned O'Keeffe, said he would be presenting legislation this month to the Cabinet to set up a national scheme.
Under its terms, farmers would be subject to regular audits of how they were rearing and caring for their animals and how they were feeding them. The package would also include a traceability scheme.
He said the delay in getting such a scheme together had occurred because of the difficulty in pulling all the legislation necessary for it together in one cohesive Bill.
"I hope that it will become law before the end of the year because we want it to underpin our exports and to give all consumers the assurances they need." Farmers could lose their right to produce beef if they were found to be in breach of the regulations which will be the best in Europe, he said.
Mr O'Keeffe was in Paris as part of the drive by Irish exporters to win back the market share lost there as a result of the BSE scare in 1996 and to promote Irish lamb, which is under pressure because of cheap exports from Britain.
Ms Aisling Roche, Bord Bia's manager in Paris, said beef exports to France had fallen from 75,000 tonnes to 27,000 tonnes because of the BSE crisis. She said the market had improved significantly, with between 800 and 900 tonnes of Irish beef arriving in France every week.
It was being promoted as a quality product, and the concentration was on persuading the wholesalers and the supermarkets to buy and distribute the product. There had been a major breakthrough in the lamb trade with the decision of the Carrefour supermarket chain to identify and promote Irish lamb in its stores.
Bord Bia, she said, would also be using its sponsorship of the Tour de France as a marketing opportunity to promote food and drink exports which were worth £316 million last year.
Irish meat exporters last night attended a reception in the Irish Embassy where 60 French lamb purchasers were in attendance for the start of the annual lamb season.
Ireland is the second-largest supplier of lamb to France. Last year the French bought 38,310 tonnes, 70 per cent of Ireland's total lamb exports.