IFA
EU negotiators have colluded in a deal that has sold out Irish and European farmers, IFA president Joe Healy has said.
“This is a bad deal for Ireland and for Irish farmers, it’s a bad deal for the environment and it’s a bad deal for EU standards and consumers,” Healy said, adding that this will be a low point in EU Commissioner Phil Hogan’s term in Brussels.
“The ‘turning a blind eye’ approach to double standards and environmental degradation in Brazil is indefensible.
"It makes an utter mockery of the pledge that this EU Commission signed when it took up office in 2014 to uphold EU legislation,” said Healy.
According to the IFA, this is a “backroom deal with big business and kowtows to the likes of Mercedes and BMW in their drive to get cars into South America. It is a disgraceful and feeble sell-out of a large part of our most valuable beef market to Latin American ranchers and factory farm units.”
IFA livestock chair Angus Woods pointed said Ireland’s €3bn beef sector is much more important to Ireland than any other EU member state and "we cannot allow our vital national interest in beef to be ruined by Brazilian beef imports".
He said the EU Commission joint research centre has calculated the impact of trade deals on the EU beef sector including Mercosur would cost be up to €7bn pa.
ICMSA
The ICMSA has described the trade deal as a a massive blow to the Irish beef sector and will “destroy forever” the EU’s credibility on putting forward measures to combat climate change.
ICMSA president Pat McCormack said that the economic damage to Ireland’s multi-billion euro beef sector from cheap lower-standard South American imports would be enormous and set alongside Brexit must mean that the Government was content to see Irish beef production fall into terminal decline.
“It is simply not tenable for Minister Bruton or anyone else to tell Ireland that we will have to change to prevent climate disaster while sitting at a cabinet table that even contemplates signing-off on a Mercosur agreement,” McCormack said.
ICMSA president Pat McCormack \ Philip Doyle
“For 25 years, environmental scientists have focused on the destruction of South American forests by ranchers for beef production as possibly the single biggest threat to our ability to control carbon emissions and global warming.
"Now we have the EU signing-off on a trade agreement that will accelerate that destruction; it is almost beyond belief.”
On that basis, he called on the Irish Government to vote against the Mercosur trade deal.
ICSA
Newly elected ICSA president Edmond Phelan has slammed the EU/ Mercosur trade deal as “an absolute disgrace, which completely undermines the EU’s moral authority to lead on climate change.
ICSA president Patrick Kent hands in letters asking for beef to be left out of Mercosur trade talks at the European Commission's Dublin office during a protest last year
“Let there be no doubt: a calculated decision has been made by European leaders to increase car sales, mainly petrol and diesel, at the price of sacrificing the EU beef farmer. The Irish beef sector, with 90% exported to EU markets, will take the full brunt of this outrageous decision.”
Macra na Feirme
Similarly, Macra na Feirme said it is “outraged” at the total betrayal of Irish beef farmers by the European Commission.
“We call on both Minister Creed and An Taoiseach to veto the deal to have any credibility in their emissions reduction targets,” Macra president Thomas Duffy said “This beef cannot be allowed into EU on environmental, welfare, traceability or economic grounds. We call on all farm organisations to agree a common approach to defeat this deal. All inter-farm organisation politics need to be put aside in the national interest of all Irish beef farmers”
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