What's the deal with Brazilian beef? When it emerged last month that the Irish Army had been feeding a small number of its soldiers beef from Brazil, the farming lobby was enraged.
Although the beef - in ration packs given out to soldiers on manoeuvres in Ireland and overseas - was completely safe, legally imported into the State and had been supplied by the only company that had tendered for the contract, the IFA immediately dubbed the move a disgrace and demanded to know why this act of virtual high treason had been committed.
An IFA spokesman claimed Brazilian production standards did not meet EU requirements and called on the Minister for Defence, Willie O'Dea, to order an immediate investigation "of this embarrassing revelation". The Minister's spokeswoman rejected the IFA demand for an investigation.
The calls for an army investigation were also rejected and a spokesman pointed out that just 500 ration packs out of a total of 30,000 contained Brazilian beef. He said the contract had been given to a licensed British supplier of imported food listed with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI). And the storm died, just another scare story about South American beef fed to Irish consumers by the farming lobby in recent months.
Ireland's 100,000 beef farmers are gravely concerned about the threat market liberalisation poses to their livelihoods and are painfully aware that if the EU opens its doors even wider to cheap South American beef - it currently imports 500,000 tons, roughly the same amount as Irish farmers produce - it will have a negative impact on the beef trade here.
However, what consumers really want to know is - is imported beef safe to eat? A great deal of negative attention has been heaped on the shoulders of Brazilian cows this summer in the wake of a report published by the IFA which was severely critical of the beef sector there.
The report, compiled after a delegation of farmers visited the country in May, claims there was poor traceability, that border and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) controls were lacking and it also expressed dark concerns about the chemicals and additives used in the rearing process in South America.
BUT IS AN Irish farming lobby investigation into Brazilian beef as impartial and ultimately as useful as a turkey's assessment of the traditional Christmas dinner? The EU food safety commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, seemed to think so. He dismissed the IFA findings as "misleading" and "based on incorrect interpretation of EU requirements". He said the IFA mission had visited Brazilian states that did not export meat to the EU and said the report did not assess the full system of controls and safeguards available in the country.
Martin Territt, director of the European Commission Representation in Ireland, echoed Kyprianou's comments and accused farmers of misleading the Irish consumer. Beef imports were tested for residues on a random basis, he said, emphasising that the EU ensured standards to protect consumers were applied.
Last week, Pricewatch spoke to Alan Reilly, deputy chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), who joined the chorus. "It is safe to eat. If it wasn't safe to eat, we would ensure it was not on the market here," he says.
Reilly points out that the beef is imported into the State chilled and boned and says there is virtually no way Irish herds could contract FMD from Brazilian beef. While he accepts that Irish farmers have very real economic concerns about increased exports from South America, "trying to create a food scare around the issue is not really where we want to be".
Kevin Kinsella, IFA director of livestock, completely rejects accusations that the IFA is scaremongering. "If you ask me if Irish beef is safe, I can answer with complete certainty that it is because of all the controls that are in place. In Brazil there is no traceability system in place and there is no control of the veterinary medicines at farm level."
He has travelled to Brazil twice and was shocked by the lax farm controls he saw. "If we don't know where the animals have come from and we don't know what they have been treated with how can [ the Minister for Agriculture] Mary Coughlan, the FSAI or the commission say the beef is safe? The commission is turning a blind eye to it and is responsible for a cover-up of the double standards that exist."
Farmers are not alone in being suspicious of overseas food. Last year, Agri Aware, the farming and food educational body, published a survey which showed less than 20 per cent of consumers had complete confidence in fresh food imported from outside the EU.
Consumers blamed their lack of confidence on an absence of information about its provenance, concerns about its freshness and the amount of additives, chemicals and preservatives used in the process.
Reilly believes that this suspicion may be partly due to the negative headlines generated by the farming lobby. "If you see enough stories in the news that Brazilian beef, for example, is unsafe, people might end up believing it."
SINCE THE END of February, the country of origin of all beef is clearly labelled, both in supermarkets and restaurants. The legislation which states that all restaurants have to have information on the country of origin of the beef on display was not prompted by food safety concerns, stresses Reilly, but to inform consumers and give them increased choice.
At least, that is how it is supposed to work. One restaurant owner Pricewatch spoke to last week said the legislation is not being enforced. "I am not certain the legislation is even beneficial to consumers. I think it would be better if more stringent hygiene checks were carried out for instance - if a kitchen is clean and well run, that should inspire more confidence than the origins of the meat," he says.
"Irish beef is not the best beef in the world by any means. Argentinean beef really is first class and most of it is free range, but if we were to put it on our menus we would have farmers' groups complaining, which is not something we would want from a PR perspective."
