IRELAND'S beef industry faces a crisis in the new year despite a dramatic recovery in recent weeks from the impact of BSE, which drove cattle prices to a 20 year low.
New EU rules due to come into force on January 1st are likely to erode this recovery, which last week saw the prices for cattle climbing from 82p per lb to 96p per lb.
The Minister for Agriculture Mr Yates, and the farm organisations are to mount an intensive campaign to reverse the new rule changes which are aimed at limiting the amount of beef going into EU intervention.
The EU Beef Management Committee decided at the weekend that from January 1st it will make it harder for animals to qualify for intervention by lowering carcase weights and excluding plainer type cattle.
This will mean that intervention, which is a market control mechanism to take surplus beef off the market and keep prices up, will not be an option for nearly 30 per cent of Irish cattle.
Intervention was reintroduced as an emergency measure when the BSE crisis broke in March last. It had not been used here for nearly three years as demand for Irish beef in Europe and strong live cattle exports kept demand high.
The BSE crisis changed this overnight, and farmers and beef factories found they had no outlets as consumption fell by half in some EU countries and North African and Middle Eastern countries banned live imports.
The EU agreed to allow intervention again, and since April 50,000 tonnes of beef, the equivalent of 150,000 buttocks, has been purchased into the system which set a floor price for beef until about 10 days ago.
Since then a scarcity of animals' to service a growing demand for beef in the Union and in Third Country markets has driven up prices to 96p per lb, only a few pence short of pre BSE prices.
However, the Beef Management Committee wants much tighter controls on what will be taken off the market and wants to cut the upper weight limit of carcases by 10 kg per month to 360 kg by next March.
But of greater importance to Irish farmers is the total exclusion of "04" graded animals, plainertype beasts which come from dairy farms and non beef breeds.
Mr Raymond O'Malley, chairman of the Irish Farmers' Association's Livestock Committee, said their exclusion means that there would be a difficulty disposing of 20 per cent of the male animals coming on to the market after January.
"We are going to have to oppose this rule change because it will have a severe impact on farmers, especially those involved in dairying who produce this kind of animal," he said.
He added that it was now imperative to reopen the Libyan trade because it has been an important outlet for these animals, which are favoured by some of the North African buyers.
Mr Yates pledged to take the matter up with the EU Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Franz Fischler, and try to have the decision reversed.