The Irish Farmers Journal has obtained documents which show the UK will open the floodgates to Brazilian beef in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

On Tuesday, UK environment secretary Michael Gove committed to protecting British farmers by introducing a sectoral tariff regime.

For beef, the Irish Farmers Journal understands a tariff of over €3/kg would be applied. This would cost the Irish beef sector €750m per annum.

Dairy Industry Ireland estimates the cost of tariffs on the Irish dairy sector to be €400m.

However, the documents obtained by the Irish Farmers Journal indicate the UK government also wants to keep food prices down.

To this end, it plans to offer a Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ) on beef imports. This would allow up to 300,000t of beef into Britain every year without paying any tariffs.

Under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, countries such as Australia, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay would have the same access as Ireland to this tariff-free quota.

It would leave Irish beef competing in the British market with imports from parts of the world where beef prices are as low as €2.16/kg.

To avoid such a nightmare scenario, all hope is centred on securing a meaningful agreement between London and Brussels.