Recent scandals concerning international food shipments are hampering Government efforts to secure the resumption of exports of live cattle to Egypt, according to the Department of Agriculture. Revelations that some British beef has been sent to Egypt recently through unconventional routes to disguise its origin and reports in the Egyptian media of other such incidents have made the Egyptian authorities wary about relaxing the ban, a Department spokesman said yesterday. While none of these incidents related to Irish food, they were affecting the negotiations, he said.
Egyptian negotiators raised these incidents with officials from the Department of Agriculture this week. Officials continue to have talks with their Egyptian counterparts in attempts to have the ban on the importation of live cattle lifted.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, will visit Egypt within weeks for talks about the lifting of the ban.
In June the Egyptian Agriculture Minister and deputy Prime Minister, Dr Youssef Wally, wrote to the then minister for agriculture, Mr Yates, saying that Egypt had decided "in principle" to lift the ban. The resumption of imports, however, was dependent on certain technical conditions being met. These include requirements relating to the age of the animals exported, the herds from which they come and the conditions under which they will be slaughtered when they arrive in Egypt.
The Department spokesman said that last week's seizure by German customs authorities of 60 tonnes of beef bearing Irish stamps "does not help the negotiations". The Department of Agriculture is investigating claims by the German authorities that the beef is British. The Department's investigation team is understood to have raided a premises in Dublin earlier this week and discovered bogus invoices.