Tipperary farming: Minister urged to call on meat processors to bring forward proposals

The Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed should stop telling the farm organisations what to do and instead instruct the meat factories to come forward with proposals to bring full transparency to the sector, according to IFA president Joe Healy.

Mr Healy said that the farm organisations had spent last Friday morning in the High Court and thenlistened to Minister Creed that evening explaining that he had contacted all the farm organisations, but not Meat Industry Ireland.

“The Minister has to call in the meat factories and insist that they come forward with realistic measures around transparency and price that will improve the income of beef farmers. There is no point in having talks unless there are serious proposals on the table,” he said.

Mr Healy said that the Minister himself also needed to address the looming Brexit crisis by putting real money on the table as the €100m provided already will be nowhere near enough.

"We need specific proposals on the table from the Minister to give farmers some reassurance as we face the biggest ever threat to Irish farming,” he said.

The IFA president said that the IFA had set out four key areas that require urgent attention:

- An immediate ban on all substandard South American beef imports

- A further fund to compensate farmers who supplied cattle post May 12, 2019, and are currently losing €4m per week on beef prices

- €1bn Brexit fund of market supports and direct aid for farmers

- An EU campaign to promote our environmentally sustainable EU beef production.