IRELAND was perceived as being "animal welfare devious", a British Tory MP said yesterday in Geneva, where a major animal welfare conference aimed at ending the long distance transportation of farm animals began.
Mr Roger Gale, who chairs the Commons all party parliamentary group on animal welfare, is a keynote speaker at the conference arranged by the Franz Weber Foundation and the United Animal Nations.
The conference is being attended by parliamentarians from 15 countries and delegates from 60 animal welfare organisations who are seeking to end the live trade. Ireland is not represented.
Mr Gale, who described himself as a "Euro realist", said while Irish people would disagree with what he was saying, the perception in Britain was that Ireland was welfare devious".
While he had no "hard" evidence to support his claim, he said there was evidence to suggest that there were problems with the transport of greyhounds, donkeys and cattle from Ireland to Europe.
There was evidence, he said, to suggest the Irish were finding ways to circumvent the regulations relating to the value of old horses so they could export them.
At the start of yesterday's conference the delegates were shown a film entitled Food Animal Transports in Europe which described terrible animal abuses at ports, slaughterhouses and on European motorways.
The footage was so horrible in parts that some of the delegates left the conference hall in distress, some became ill and others wept. A motion to show the film to all elected representatives in Europe was carried unanimously. One portion of the film, shot in Lebanon, was particularly upsetting.
It also emerged that there has been widespread closures of small slaughterhouses throughout the EU because the smaller plants would have to spend too much money to upgrade their facilities to acquire export licences.
This means, of course, that animals must be transported much greater distances for processing. One Belgian delegate said there was "total chaos" in his country because of the regulations.
It also emerged that many animals were being exported from Germany and Austria to Italy for slaughter because it was cheaper to process them there.
A Green Party MPG from Austria, Ms Katharina Fatzi, said in her country a system of using mobile slaughter units had been working very well and this had reduced the level of stress on animals.
She estimated that 300 such mobile units, which could fully process an animal in an hour would be capable of dealing with the Austrian beef output.
Many of the Austrian delegates spoke of the lack of enforcement of regulations dealing with animals passing through their countries for processing in Italy.
A French environmentalist Mr Jean Carlier, said he had just returned from Chernobyl to discover, to his horror, that animals were now being raised in the contaminated areas around the power plant. "They are taken from the area and put on grass for a short period which is called a decontamination period, and sold on for finishing to Poland," he said. "From there they are being sold into the EU and this is a grave problem.
There were repeated calls from delegates for an amendment to the Maastricht Treaty so animals could be recognised as living creatures, not agricultural commodities.
This, Mr Gale told the conference, would require an amendment to the Treaty of Rome and he urged delegates to set up all party groups in their parliaments to lobby for this amendment.
Last night the various groupings worked late to prepare a draft bill for the ending of long distance transportation which they hoped to force through the European Parliament and national parliaments in Europe.
The conference is being sponsored by the Franz Weber Foundation and Mr Weber, one of Europe's best known and respected environmentalists, said the aim was to end long term transportation before the end of this year.