Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) officials have warned European Commissioner for Agriculture Christophe Hansen that ever-increasing levels of regulation in the pig and poultry sectors are impractical and unsustainable for farmers.

The association’s poultry chair Nigel Sweetnam told the Commissioner that allowing more Mercosur chicken into the EU while tightening rules for poultry farmers puts production at risk.

"The cost of production increases imposed by the Commission are unsustainable. If the EU expects us to adhere to these regulations, they must support us in return and not proceed with the Mercosur deal which would destabilise the market,” Sweetnam said.

"Farmers cannot shoulder the financial and logistical burdens of new regulations alone. Nor can we shoulder the burden of the Mercosur trade deal.

“If the EU wants to champion sustainable agriculture, it must ensure its policies are practical and achievable for those on the ground and are not undermined by cheap imports.”

Pig sector

Newly-elected IFA pig chair Michael Caffrey stated that a planned expansion of the industrial emissions directive (IED) to cover farms as small as 100-sow integrated units is unfair, as the directive is targeted at addressing pollution from manufacturing and industry.

"Farms are not industrial operations and should not be categorised under the same regulatory framework as chemical industries,” Caffrey commented.

“Pig and poultry farms already fall unduly under the IED and it should not apply to them."

Caffrey also raised the EU’s revision of animal welfare and transport regulations as an area of legislation that looks set to hit farmers.

Animal transport space requirement increases proposed under this review would require almost half a million additional truck journeys each year to being fattened pigs for processing under the proposals, he said.

The pig chair questioned the implications this would have for “sustainability, carbon footprints and the EU's own carbon reduction targets".