Cork politicians slam Mercosur deal in ‘junk beef’ warning – ‘bad for farmers, bad for public health’

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

The Mercosur trade deal between the EU and South American countries would see “99,000 tonnes of rubbish” beef imported into Europe that would endanger Irish farming and consumer health, a debate on the deal at a Cork County Council meeting heard last week.

Cllr Finbarr Harrington brought forward a motion calling on the council to write to the government to demand that it reject the deal, which he said would threaten the viability of Ireland’s agricultural sector.

“This will threaten the family-run farms as we know them because the family-owned farms will struggle to compete with these cheaper imports. There's no comparison of the regulation around the Irish-produced beef and the beef that will be imported as part of the Mercosur deal,” he said.

“There's going to be huge health implications for Irish consumers because Irish farmers follow very strict rules around medications of cattle, especially in what they are allowed to use. So the meat that we will be importing won't have any of these restrictions in place. People will be eating meat that could possibly be injected with any type of an antibiotic or a growth hormone the day before."

"This is a bad deal for our agricultural sector, it's a bad deal for our farmers, but it's a bad deal as well for people's public health in general as they won't know what they're eating,” the West Cork councillor said.

Cllr Anthony Barry said that as a beef farmer for the last 43 years he knows the “level of bureaucracy, the level of accountability, the level of traceability that's there. Anyone that's involved in the game knows how frustrating it is to tick all the boxes and then when you see a situation like this where a product basically can be sold on a shelf without anything approaching that level of traceability and accountability and you're expected to compete with that, it’s absolutely ridiculous.”

He said Irish beef is recognised worldwide and “to be putting it on the same level as a product that is inferior in almost every single way and the traceability is not there and has been proven not to be there, I think that's unfair.”

Cllr John Michael Foley agreed that “our standards are very high here. The standard of beef coming in from Brazil or other South American countries would be very, very low standard compared to the standards we have here in this country. Irish farmers already face tight margins and high costs. If these imports come into our market, small and medium farms could be forced out of business, threatening rural communities and livelihoods which were built over generations.”

Cllr Daniel Sexton said “99,000 tonnes of rubbish is what we're going to be getting from Brazil really because this beef is very, very poor quality. We need to write a letter to our MPs as quick as we can because the clock is ticking with this. No-one's talking about the carbon footprint of bringing this beef from Brazil to Europe and I think that is a major question. We're all trying to cut emissions and all this and yet we're importing this junk from the other side of the world.”

The council agreed to write to the government as well as local TDs and MEPs to express concern over the deal. The free trade deal between the European Union and the South American trading bloc was expected to be signed soon but has faced pushback from EU member states, including France and Poland. Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon has also expressed Ireland’s "grave concerns" about the deal, particularly its impact on the indigenous beef sector.