There are definite signs that a sustainable recovery of the beef trade is underway, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Mr Walsh said yesterday.
Officially opening Bord Bia's international conference "Winning with Beef", in the Four Seasons Hotel, Ballsbridge, Mr Walsh gave an upbeat view of the industry facing into the winter.
"I believe that the worst is over and there are definite signs of recovery in the industry with a reversal in the declines we have seen over the past year," he said.
The British market, he said, would take 150,000 tonnes this year and there are signs that European consumers were turning back to beef and consumption was back up to 85 per cent of the levels as existed before the latest BSE scare in November last.
"I am hopeful that the Egyptians will remove their ban in a few days and I have spoken to the Agriculture Minister, Dr Walli, who said that the technical delegation which visited here recently are very positive about the controls we have in place," he said.
He said the Egyptian ban on beef from the EU remained in place until October 6th, but Dr Walli had advised him that the decision would have to go through a number of committees before a final decision would be made.
He said the Russian market was holding up well. The option of using EU intervention was available to the trade.
Mr Walsh told the international meat buyers and processors attending the conference that Ireland had the most effective controls against BSE infected meat entering the food chain.
Mr Walsh assured delegates that as far as the Government was concerned food safety was non-negotiable and this had been the approach to the BSE crisis from the start.
Dr Patrick Wall, chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, said that while it was not the authority's job to sell beef, an opportunity existed now for the industry here to promote Irish beef as the safest product available. "We have the tightest controls in place since 1996 and the disease is now confined to a subset of older cows and the animals being processed into beef have not been exposed to infected cattle feed," he said.
The BSE crisis, he said, was not going to go away because BSE had been exported to many countries in contaminated cattle feed from Britain.