The current rules around animal transport should be enforced before new ones are made, Commissioner Christophe Hansen told the IFA AGM last Thursday.

“I think it is very important to be strict on the rules that already exist, and to enforce them where they are not respected, before going a step further.

“I think there will be a big ally in the European Parliament for a pragmatic approach that will allow Irish producers to access properly the EU internal market”.

Hansen was responding to IFA dairy chair Martin McElearney, who said that the live export trade was “a critical component of our EU single market”. Irish exports totalled 300,000 cattle last year he said, and the export trade is being threatened by “vested interest groups and ill-informed policy makers”.

“Will you commit to ensure that the EU transport regulation review ensures that we can continue to export animals to mainland Europe?” McElearney asked the commissioner.

Hansen responded by referering to an incident last November, involving live exports from Romania, out of the EU.

“Recently there was a case on the Bulgarian-Turkey border where there was a truck of heavily pregnant cows that had to stop at the border because the company didn’t have the necessary paperwork.

Important

“That was something very important, because cows died on that border in the bloody heat, and that is something that should be avoided,” he said.

“It is very unfortunate because, shall we say, the ‘bad guys’ shone a very bad light on everybody,on those who are doing their work brilliantly,” he continued.

“When an animal is transported, it is not the distance or the time that is the most relevant, it is the condition, and it’s how many times you have to embark, disembark, [and so on].

“Sometimes a 50km journey can be more stressful for an animal than putting them on a ship and bringing them to the Netherlands for example in the Irish case.”