The Irish Council Against Blood Sports called on the Irish Dairy Board to withdraw its sponsorship of the Kerrygold Inter-Hunt Chase at the Kerrygold Horse Show in the RDS.
In sponsoring the event, it said, the Dairy Board was "endorsing, glamorising and giving respectability to the activity of hunts".
"Hunts," it said, "take out packs of dogs to terrorise and kill wild animals for sport." It added that the board's sponsorship effectively equated Ireland with heartless animal abuse.
"The Irish Council Against Blood Sports would like to see the Irish Dairy Board telling hunts they no longer wish to associate with their cruel activities," said the statement.
"We are also calling on all other sponsors of the Kerrygold Horse Show to reconsider their association with an event that invites the participation of cruelty clubs," it continued.
"We would like to see such sponsors tell the hunts: `switch to drag hunting or we will pull the plug on sponsorship'.
"We also call on the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, who gave his support to fox hunting last year by endorsing the so-called Code of Conduct, which permits the digging out of foxes and the use of terriers, to take stock of moves in England and Scotland to ban hunting," it said.
A spokesman for the Irish Dairy Board, Mr Aidan McCarthy, dismissed the allegations made by the ICABS. His organisation was sponsoring a chase which was a competition between two teams.
"Anything else regarding hunting or anything like that, should be directed to the RDS," Mr McCarthy said.
But yesterday when he attended the show, the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, repeated his support for fox hunting and other rural pursuits and his opposition to any form of cruel activity.
He said certain cruel practices, like the digging out and recycling of foxes which had escaped underground, was now banned under the Code of Conduct which had been agreed between the hunts and the Department.
"The Department of Agriculture had not received any complaint about any hunt, about grief being caused to any animal by huntspeople," he said.
He said in certain circumstances, where a fox was injured or where a farmer had asked that the numbers of foxes be culled on his land, foxes could be dug up and killed.
"I am very happy with the way this scheme is operating and that any cruel practices which may have developed over the years, have been eradicated," he said.
The president of the Irish Farmers' Association, Mr Tom Parlon, who visited the grounds yesterday, welcomed the establishment of an EU Food and Drug Agency under the responsibility of the new Irish Commissioner, Mr David Byrne.
He said the lack of such a body to counter-balance the US Federal Drugs Authority had meant that the EU had lost ground in the last GATT agreement and may now have to allow hormone-treated beef into the EU.
He also said he would be seeking detailed consultation with the Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms Harney, well in advance of the new world trade round in Seattle at the end of November.