The European Commission has denied it is involved in covering up a report on beef production in Brazil as alleged by the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA), which staged a 24-hour sit-in at the commission offices in Dublin.
About 30 members of the IFA's livestock committee occupied the offices on Tuesday afternoon and left the premises yesterday to hold a protest rally with about 100 supporters in Dawson Street.
IFA president Pádraig Walshe accused the EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Affairs, Markos Kyprianou, of suppressing a key EU veterinary report on foot-and-mouth and food safety controls in Brazil.
Mr Walshe claimed the findings of the latest EU veterinary inspection in Brazil, which took place seven months ago, had not been released because they would verify the lack of controls found by the IFA when it sent its own inquiry team there this year.
Reports, he said, were normally published three or four months after veterinary inspections, but in this case the report had been deliberately withheld from the public, which was a breach of EU laws.
He said Irish beef farmers would "not go away" on this issue and would persist in their protests until Irish and European farmers were given fair play, and the same high production rules applied to Brazilian imports as were being applied in the union.
In a statement, the EU office in Dublin described the "invasion of its public information centre" as "deeply regrettable".
It said that last March the food and veterinary office (FVO) of the commission had carried out an inspection in Brazil which had covered, among other matters, conditions relating to beef exports to the EU.
"Following normal procedure, comments are sought from the various parties involved before the draft is released for publication. This process is almost complete. The FVO expects to be able to publish their report in the coming weeks and it will then appear on their website," it said.
"The preparation of this report has followed normal procedure. Contrary to statements by the IFA, there is no question of the commission departing from the well-established norms of publication of reports covering third countries, of a cover-up or of withholding of information about the contents of the report."