THE value of the national cattle herd has fallen by nearly £1 billion because of the BSE crisis, the Irish Farmers Association claimed yesterday.
The claim was made as the Department of Agriculture confirmed another case of the disease, this time in Co Clare in a seven year old cow in a dairy herd of 94 animals. It is the 136th confirmed case in the Republic.
The IFA said that before March 20th the seven million cattle in the Irish herd were worth £4.2 billion but their value had slumped since because of falling consumption in Europe. We are now heading close to £1 billion of a loss of value in our cattle, and that is frightening," said Mr Raymond O'Malley, the chairman of the IFA's beef committee, at a press conference in the RDS.
The IFA president, Mr John Donnelly, accused the Government and the Minister for Agriculture of mishandling the crisis which was costing Irish farmers a fortune. "For every drop of one penny in the price of a pound of beef, Irish farmers lose £12.5 million. I want to tell Mr Yates that we will be looking for every penny of that in compensation," said Mr Donnelly.
"I am also saying to Mr Yates that we will pursue him into every corner of the country, even to Enniscorthy, to get what we are entitled to because the BSE crisis was not of our making".
He said the IFA wanted a special beef intervention deal to cope with the crisis because Ireland could not carry all the pain to be inflicted because of British and EU mishandling of the issue.
"We also want the EU and the Minister to re-examine the GATT agreement in relation to imports of beef into Europe because the situation has changed dramatically and there is massive over supply now," he said.
He said that even after five weeks as president of the EU agriculture ministers, Mr Yates did not appear to know what was going on or what was needed at grass roots level.
"We have a situation where a Minister is talking about reducing the weight of Irish cattle when we have the most to lose in the Union. We cannot allow that to happen".
Many beef farmers, he said, would go out of business this autumn unless there was a dramatic reversal of policies to help people cast into a crisis not of their own making.
He accused the Minister of "talking down the price of beef" and said it was imperative that third country markets reopen and that a massive drive be launched to help restore consumer confidence in beef.
The IFA was also critical yesterday of the latest EU beef intervention contract secured by Irish processors. It is for 6,905 tonnes (20,000 cattle) at a price of 86.9p per lb, one penny lower than the last contract.
Since intervention was restored because of BSE, Europe has placed 275,000 tonnes of beef in intervention. Just 22,000 tonnes of the total came from Irish herds.