Minister Must Get the Meat Factories to Come Forward with Real Proposals
Following today’s events where farmers were hauled before the courts by meat factories, IFA President Joe Healy said the Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed should stop telling the farm organisations what to do and instead instruct the meat factories to come forward with proposals to bring full transparency to the sector.
“We spent the morning in the High Court and then we listened to Minister Creed this evening explaining that he had contacted all the farm organisations, but not Meat Industry Ireland,” he said.
“The Minister has to call in the meat factories and insist that they come forward with realistic measures around transparency and price that will improve the income of beef farmers. There is no point in having talks unless there are serious proposals on the table,” he said.
“The Minister himself also needs to address the looming Brexit crisis by putting real money on the table. The €100m provided already will be nowhere near enough. We need specific proposals on the table from the Minister to give farmers some reassurance as we face the biggest ever threat to Irish farming,” he said.
The IFA President said that the IFA have set out four key areas that require urgent attention:
- An immediate ban on all substandard South American beef imports;
- A further fund to compensate farmers who supplied cattle post May 12th, 2019 and are currently losing €4m per week on beef prices;
- €1bn Brexit fund of market supports and direct aid for farmers;
- An EU campaign to promote our environmentally sustainable EU beef production.
