The EU Farm Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, yesterday warmly welcomed last week's resumption of Irish live beef exports to the Continent.
Speaking at a meeting of EU Farm Ministers, he dismissed suggestions that exports to Egypt might give rise to animal welfare concerns, warning that the alternative would be to hand the trade to the Australians.
A Department of Agriculture spokesman confirmed that an Irish vet is travelling to Egypt to ensure that a plant there will be able to take out brain and spinal material as required by the Egyptian authorities.
Resumption of cattle exports on the MV Purbeck to Cherbourg three times a week was made possible by a £1 million grant from the Department. It is understood to have prompted a formal complaint to the Commission from animal welfare supporters. Consideration of the legality of the State aid is expected to take some months.
The president of the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr John Donnelly, said it was "very important that Irish exporters had a direct link to the Continent" and the resumption of the trade had helped to boost prices by up to £50 a head.
Meanwhile, responding to the Commission's proposals for agricultural reform in Agenda 2000, the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, insisted that farmers would have to be "fully compensated through direct aids for any price reductions".
He accepted that the challenges of enlargement, another world trade round, and the threat of massive surpluses had to be met and that this should not be done through extending setaside but through continuing price reductions.
Mr Walsh acknowledged that the 1992 reforms of cereals and beef had been "largely successful" in reducing huge surpluses and in "cushioning" the effect of price reductions on farm incomes. But he emphasised that further reform would have to "respect the economic interests of member-states in the products concerned and they will have to be equitable between different types of production".
The reforms would also have to take account of the needs of less developed areas. He said there was still "much work to be done on the Commission's price reduction approach". Mr Walsh urged the Commission to produce studies of the potential for increased consumption in the Union and for increased exports before a view is taken on the overall package.
Department sources refused to be drawn on IFA estimates costing the Agenda 2000 reforms at £150 million to Irish farmers, but did confirm that the Department accepts that if the proposals go through unchanged there will be losses.
