The Minister for Agriculture Mr Walsh is in Luxembourg today for a meeting with other farm ministers to discuss what more they can do to combat foot-and-mouth disease in Europe.
A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture said the meeting was a general review of the situation, and the Minister was not expected to make a specific statement at the regular monthly meeting.
Statistics issued today by the European Commission indicated that beef consumption throughout the EU was down 18 per cent from last October, with the biggest national declines in Germany (40 per cent) and Italy (30 per cent).
The ministers were also expected to consider whether a ban on feeding meat and bone meal to animals - a suspected conduit of BSE - should stay in effect beyond its planned expiry in June.
In a working paper, made public last week in Brussels, the European Commission said it would be "premature" to lift the six-month feed ban, adopted last December.
"Therefore, the commission suggests to keep the ban in place until the adoption of proposed (EU) legislation on animal by-products which is foreseen in the beginning of 2002," the commission said.
Such legislation would ensure that meat and bone meal is made exclusively from byproducts derived from livestock fit for human consumption, it said.
Greeting the ministers outside the European Union's Luxembourg offices today were several dozen banner-waving protesters from the European Federation of Trade Unions of Food, Agriculture and Tourism (EFFAT).
"The mad cow and foot-and-mouth crises did not fall from the sky," the EFFAT said in a statement that blamed the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for putting more than 100,000 farm-related jobs in peril.
The CAP, which accounts for half of the European Union's total spending, is under fire for encouraging industrial-scale agriculture with generous subsidies and protection from imported produce.
AFP