The new IFA president made a strong intervention at the COPA Praesidium meeting with the deputy director general for international trade in DG AGRI Ms Maria Los Angeles Benitez Salas.

Joe Healy said Irish and European farmers were outraged at the draft offer put forward to member states by trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström which would give Mercosur a new tariff rate quota providing additional access for 78,000t of beef, on top of the preferential access they already have, under which an estimated 180,000t of steak cuts were imported in 2015.

He pointed out that, with 39,000t of the EU draft offer in the form of high-value cuts, this would mean giving the South American countries over one-third of the 600,000t EU market for steak cuts.

“This would be a total sell-out of Irish and European livestock farmers, with no gains for European agriculture. Farmers in sensitive sectors are being sacrificed for the benefit of European industry and services.”

Healy stressed that previous analysis by the European Commission had shown that a Mercosur deal would inflict losses of €7.8bn on the EU agriculture sector. “The impact at farm level would be to devastate the incomes of Ireland’s 100,000 livestock farmers, with huge damage and job losses across the rural economy.”

The IFA president also challenged the Commission on the issue of standards, saying that the Mercosur countries had consistently failed to meet EU standards on the key issues of traceability, animal health and welfare controls, the ban on hormone growth promoters, and environmental controls.

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