The first moves to have Ireland move to where it can claim its food is produced without the aid of GM feed will be made soon by Minister for Food Trevor Sargent.
On his first official engagement as Minister of State for Agriculture with responsibility for food and horticulture, Mr Sargent said yesterday there was an urgency to move on the GM issue. "I have been getting reports from our markets in Italy and France that they are increasingly moving in the direction of requiring that produce be fed on GM-free feed," he said.
"Ireland does not have a clear position in my mind, as yet, on the direction we are going in that regards," he said at the launch of the latest Bridgestone guide.
"I want to bring together the farming organisations, the food retailers, the grain importers and the people in the Department of Agriculture so we can formulate a strategy in the best interests of the producers and the country."
He said countries which were already able to make this claim were threatening Irish exports and using GM-free status as a marketing tool.
He addressed issues raised by the joint editor of the Bridgestone guide, John McKenna, who sought changes in the regulations governing farmers markets and specialist portable abattoirs for organic producers.
Mr Sargent said he would be working with the Minister for the Environment John Gormley, to bring about some standardisation in the regulations covering farmers markets.
He said he wanted to build a bridge between large-scale producers and the farmers' market system which would allow them to produce for the multiples and for the local markets.
There were not enough local abattoirs and this was holding back the development of distinctive artisan food production, particularly in the organic sector and he would be looking at the mobile abattoir systems being used on the Continent.