Sir, - BSE is not a calamitous bolt from the blue. This dreadful disease - with the consequent recent loss of the Egyptian market - is a stark example of the failure of strategic leadership in our beef system.
With Ireland's low-cost, grass-fed industry, we ought to be the major beef supplier to the EU market. Instead, high CAP supports enable others to dominate, despite the higher cost of their intensive inputs. And these feed ingredients, as we now know, include some highly dubious substances, such as chicken manure, badly processed blood and bone meal, and even human excrement - hence BSE and other nasties.
This leaves Ireland scrabbling to dispose of the bulk of our output in low-margin commodity markets in Third World countries. It is a business fraught with uncertainties, and possible only because of Brussels export rebates.
What a situation! We European taxpayers pay subsidies to sustain high-cost beef producers who use unsafe inputs that cause major health dangers to consumers. Then we pay more subsidies to Irish farmers to dump otherwise unsaleable beef into Third World markets. Finally, we give (declining amounts of) aid that only partly compensates very poor farmers overseas for their inability to earn a living!
The solution is to reduce CAP support prices, thereby pushing out the higher-cost producers, while providing properly targeted social and environmental supports to our rural society. Ireland could then, with intelligent marketing, switch exports from the volatile developing countries to the more stable EU markets.
Which do our beef industry leaders lack: the courage or the imagination to ensure the future of their own businesses? And how much longer will our Government acquiesce in the pain of our own farmers and that of wretchedly poor farmers overseas? - Yours, etc.,
Dr Brian Scott, Executive director, Oxfam Ireland, Burgh Quay, Dublin 2.