Walsh urges EU to act on failing pig market

Urgent action is needed to prop up the pig market, the Minister for Agriculture told EU Farm Ministers yesterday. Mr Walsh, who also met a delegation from the Irish Farmers Association and the Ulster Farmers Union, warned that many small producers could be forced out of business unless the Commission expands the export refund scheme to include boneless meat and intervention for meat usually destined for the Japanese market.

"It is clear more action is needed to support the market until such a time as it gets into better balance," he said.

A glut on the EU market, a slump in Japanese demand because of the recession there, and the burning down of the Ballymoney Lorell Christmas plant recently, have combined to push prices in Ireland down to what the chairman of the IFA's pigs committee, Mr Liam Ryan, says is their worst ever level.

Commission sources said yesterday it is unlikely to expand either intervention or export refunds until it is clear what is going to happen in the market, probably in September.

The president of the IFA, Mr Tom Parlin, warned, "September is too late. Many of our people will be out of business", a view echoed by Mr Charlie Pogue, of the UFU.

There is already an "overhang" of 17,000 pigs on the Irish market, Mr Parlin said.

Mr Walsh also made clear Ireland's opposition to an agricultural component in a proposed free-trade deal with the South American Mercosur countries. Tomorrow, the Commission is due to seek a negotiating mandate for talks with the four Mercosur countries, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, as well as Chile, which could open access to the EU market for huge quantities of cheap beef.

Mr Walsh said he had spoken to his French counterpart last week and was confident the farm trade liberalisation could be blocked.

And the Minister rejected claims made in Brussels yesterday by Compassion in World Farming that Irish cattle exported to Lebanon was systematically maltreated both in transport and pre-slaughter. Mr Walsh said on his recent Beirut visit he had raised the issue of animal welfare with both the Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and had received satisfactory assurances.

CWF joined with the Taxpayers Association in Europe and the German animal welfare organisation, Menshen fur Teirrechte, in presenting a petition of 1 million signatures to the Commission calling for the ending of EU subsidies to live animal exports.

At a press conference the groups showed a video showing, among other scenes of considerable animal distress, an Irish bull being unloaded from a lorry in a Beirut abattoir. It was dropped off the side of truck while one leg remained suspended, attached to the lorry. The animal staggered on the spot on three legs, in evident excruciating pain and panic, for several minutes.

Ms Aoife ni Fhearghail, the CWF campaigns officer in Ireland, said that 11,100 Irish cattle had so far been exported to Lebanon this year. The trade, she said, was a disgrace compounded by the fact that it was subsidised by the taxpayer.