Tesco Ireland has said the placing of an advertisement by its British parent company pledging not to buy Irish beef for its British stores was a "mistake".
Mr Maurice Pratt, managing director of Tesco Ireland, said the company was still committed to buying Irish beef for its British stores and pointed to a recent £5 million contract signed with Dairygold.
He expects to see Tesco increase its orders of Irish beef throughout this year.
However, the Irish retailers' organisation, RGDATA, says this contradicts the advertisement placed in the current edition of the British magazine, Farmers' Weekly, which talked of the company having a "pro-British policy".
"We will not profiteer by opportunistically buying abroad. Irish beef is now 20 per cent cheaper to purchase than its British equivalent. Currently, we are only buying British fresh beef," the advertisement stated.
Mr Pratt said his "British colleagues were wrong" in placing the advertisement and he insisted that there was no attempt to discriminate against Irish beef.
A delegation, including the Minister of State for Agriculture, Mr Ned O'Keeffe, the chairman of the IFA national livestock committee, Mr Raymond O'Malley, and officials from Bord Bia will visit Britain today to assess how much Irish beef is being bought by British retailers.
The Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, speaking after a meeting of agriculture ministers in Brussels, said Tesco was not only refusing to sell Irish beef in its British stores, but was boasting about it.
Mr Walsh said: "The campaign of dumping Irish beef has now moved to the boardrooms of the supermarkets, where it is more difficult for us to deal with it."
He said that Tesco's approach was contrary to the spirit of the Treaty of Rome and particularly serious for a company which was a major investor in the Republic. Apart from Tesco, other British multiples like Marks and Spencer, Asda and Sainsburys were no longer stocking Irish beef.
The director-general of RGDATA, Mr Michael Campbell, said that when Tesco arrived in Ireland it had promised to provide opportunities for Irish suppliers throughout all its stores. "Now we realise this was just a hollow platitude and it illustrates that Tesco does not really see Irish suppliers as being very important," he said.
Tesco yesterday placed advertisements in all Irish national newspapers pointing out that all the beef in its Irish stores was sourced here.
According to a spokesman, it was decided to place the advertisements after some Tesco customers inquired about the origins of some of Tesco's beef products.
Mr Walsh, who held a meeting with Tesco executives last Tuesday, said Ireland's £200 million beef export trade with Britain was facing "major difficulties".
He said Tesco management in Ireland had promised to look at the slant of its advertising campaign. The issue has been raised with the British Secretary of State for Agriculture, Dr Jack Cunningham.
The Minister said there was a particular irony in the fact that Ireland had supported Britain's early return to the European beef markets but was now facing exclusion from the British market.