Minister for Agriculture and Food Mary Coughlan says she will be "vicious" in her pursuit of equal standards for food produced outside the EU in competition with Irish meat producers.
At the official opening of the AIB National Livestock and Tullamore Show yesterday, Ms Coughlan said she was unhappy that food produced at lower standards than in the EU, was continuing to be imported into the Union.
"Taking beef as a case in point, all recent reports by the EU food and veterinary office clearly showed that a major player, Brazil, could not be judged to offer guarantees equivalent to those provided for in Community legislation," she said, "yet Brazil continues to export very significant quantities of beef to the EU.
"It is difficult to reconcile this fact with the content of the food and veterinary reports."
Ms Coughlan said her greatest difficulty was that too many of her farm ministerial colleagues in Europe wanted to import cheap meat but she would oppose the importation of food which did not comply with EU standards.
"It is totally unrealistic to expect EU producers to continue to labour under very tight regulations for the production of food here when imported product was not subject to an equivalent level of regulation," she said.
The president of the Irish Farmers Association, Pádraig Walshe, welcomed Ms Coughlan's comments and said beef farmers had been complaining about the lack of controls in Latin America and it was an issue they had been attempting to highlight.
"What we would like to see is the labelling of imported beef being as tightly monitored and policed as we Irish producers are and that would be a step forward," he said.
Ms Coughlan also announced that she had asked the European Commission to allow her to pay farmers their single farm payment, which now incorporates all farm grants, early this year because of the difficulties many faced from the drought.
"I would hope we will be allowed pay out a portion of the SFP in October, not just because of the weather but also to help farmers with cash flow, because the cheque is not due until December," she said.
Ms Coughlan said it had been reported that some farmers were being forced to feed their winter fodder to animals due to the drought.
Michael Dowling, head of agri-strategy at AIB, the main sponsor of the livestock show, said that following a major financial payout to farmers last year, there would be a drop in farm income this year as there would be no doubling of payments as in 2005.
Mr Dowling warned that many farmers faced particular cash-flow problems this year because of special weather circumstances and he said that if farmers were faced with difficulties, they should come to the bank as soon as possible.