The Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, has called for a discussion by the EU's veterinary committee on the report prepared by the EU food and veterinary office (FVO) on the Brazilian beef industry.
Irish and European farm groups have alleged that the EU has been downplaying the problems with foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Brazil, and claim that border controls are lax and that Brazilian farmers are being allowed produce beef at standards lower than those of EU farmers.
The Irish Farmers' Association had accused the European Commission of suppressing the report and recently occupied the commission's offices in Dublin to protest over the delay in its publication.
The FVO report on the mission to Brazil, which took place last March, concluded that the public health control systems in place were generally satisfactory. It said that the FMD vaccination programme was generally implemented in a satisfactory way, but there were minor shortcomings remaining in the design and supervision of the programme.
There was continuing criticism of the blood sampling system carried out to detect FMD; movement of sampled animals took place between first and second serological sampling; and unauthorised movements were insufficiently investigated.
While the FVO reported a tightening of border controls on the movement of live animals, the investigators found the number of animals recorded on holding registers on two farms visited did not match the number of animals present.
In EU-approved slaughterhouses, the FVO team found differences between the number of animals registered on the Brazilian database and on the premises.
The team found that, in one case, animals from a non-EU approved state were sent to a farm in an EU-approved state, from where the animals were sent to slaughter without respecting the 90-day residence that the EU insists must take place because of FMD.