The foot-and-mouth outbreak led to an immediate ban on British beef, but are farmers right to ask why we have no such bar on Brazilian meat, asks Paul Cullen.
How is this for a contrast? Britain uncovers two cases of foot-and-mouth disease and shuts down the movement of cattle throughout the land. Brazil has hundreds of thousands of foot-and-mouth cases throughout 60 per cent of its landmass and yet the EU, far from banning imports, slaps down Irish farmers when they complain about standards in the South American country.
For the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA), this is only the latest disparity in treatment between EU cattle and those reared in Brazil and then imported into Europe. While the movement and health of cattle in the EU are controlled to a far greater degree than that of any human, increasing amounts of beef are being imported from developing countries where controls are more lax and more difficult to police.
'THEY ENSURE NONE of the rigours the EU has imposed on its farmers," according to Fine Gael MEP Mairead McGuinness. "Our farmers are asking why they have to comply with such a plethora of regulations when they don't." For more than three years, the IFA has been campaigning against beef imports from Brazil. Twice, senior IFA officials have visited the country and come back with claims of low standards and ineffective controls in the Brazilian beef sector. The organisation claims include: that there is little or no traceability of cattle; illegal cutting out of ear-tags; inadequate movement and border controls preventing movement of cattle into foot-and-mouth infected zones; and widespread use of hormone growth promoters.
The IFA's assertions have been robustly rejected by the EU Commission.
"We are confident the measures we apply are sufficient to protect animal health within the EU," the Commission's health spokesman, Philip Tod, told The Irish Times this week.
Under EU restrictions, exports from the Brazilian states where foot-and-mouth is rampant are banned. Cattle from a foot-and-mouth infected area can still be moved to a disease-free area but they have to spend 90 days there, and 40 days on an authorised farm, before they can be slaughtered and exported. Slaughterhouses must be approved by the EU, and only matured and deboned meat is allowed for export. "These are essential defences against foot-and-mouth that ensure any virus would be destroyed," says Tod.
And yet, for all the assurances, as McGuinness says, "there must have been a lot of people in the commission holding their breath last weekend", when news of the English outbreak emerged. "I was worried myself." For a while at least, it seemed that the IFA's direst prognostications had come true, and it seemed the outbreak could have been caused by imported meat.
It didn't, we now know, but even the possibility that the health of a multi-billion euro industry might have been risked for the sake of a few imported carcasses must give commission officials pause for thought.
Staff in the EU's Food and Veterinary Office, which has its headquarters in Co Meath, are likely to be taking a very close look at standards when they next visit Brazil in October.
There is both more and less to the row between the IFA and the commission over Brazilian beef imports than meets the eye. Less, in that foot-and-mouth, while lethal for cattle, does not pose a risk to human health. "This is not an issue of food safety," Prof Patrick Wall, chairman of the European Food Safety Association, points out.
Further, many of the controls imposed on EU beef production came about as a result of the BSE crisis, and Brazil does not have BSE, which is harmful to humans. "Europe has beaten itself over the head because of the horrors of BSE, but who is going to row back on those regulations now? It's a great system for tracing a problem if something goes wrong," says McGuinness.
Tod says the EU is looking again at the controls brought in on foot of the BSE crisis.
The wider picture, one that possibly explains why the EU tolerates the uneven playing pitch between EU beef production standards and those in Brazil, is the drive towards globalisation.
"Trade is the bigger agenda," McGuinness explains. "Even in Ireland, where farmers are well organised, there are voices saying we need to sell our products to South America. Brazilian beef poses a huge market threat, and our farmers would never be able to produce beef as cheaply as they can."
Many Irish farmers use grain imported from Brazil, so they can hardly object to the principle of imports from that country.
Beef production within the EU has dropped, and with the dismantling of its food mountains, Europe needs to import beef to meet its needs. Last year, more than 331,000 tonnes of Brazilian beef were imported into the EU.
Imports from Brazil are growing by 20 per cent a year and now account for two-thirds of all beef imports.
Droughts in Australia and Canada and the diversion of up to 40 per cent of the US grain crop for biofuels are pushing up grain prices and increasing the input costs for Irish beef producers. Rising cattle prices should mean good news for farmers but as Wall points out, supermarkets may turn to cheaper imports rather than allow their prices to go up.
THE COMMISSION SAYS it is prevented under international trade rules from demanding that countries such as Brazil impose regulations similar to those that apply within the EU. But, as the IFA points out, countries such as the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea don't feel similarly constrained; all ban imports of fresh beef from Brazil because of fears over foot-and-mouth.
Then again, the US bans beef imports from the EU because of BSE.
The problem with globalisation is that it goes for the least common denominator, says McGuinness. "I wish the EU would push for the raising of all standards globally."
Finally, we shouldn't forget the mote in our own eye. Ireland still has cases of bovine brucellosis and TB, as well as less well-known diseases, such as IBR, which have been eradicated in other countries. There are still cases of illegal movement of animals, such as the sheep from Carlisle that turned up in Roscommon a few years ago to be exported as France as "Connemara lamb".
"Are we a model of international best practice? I think we still have some way to go," says Patrick Wall.