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IRISH FARMING BODIES have called for a ban on meat imports from Brazil over claims that corrupt exporters sold tainted products.
Both the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) and the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMA) have said there should be an immediate ban on Brazilian meat imports into the EU in light of the scandal.
News broke on Friday that Brazilian police had found, after a two-year probe, that major meat producers bribed health inspectors to certify tainted food as fit for consumption.
At least 30 people have so far been arrested, with police raiding more than a dozen processing plants and issuing 27 arrest warrants.
A poultry-processing plant run by the multinational BRF group and two meat-processing plants operated by the local Peccin company were shut down, Brazil’s agriculture ministry said.
The European Commission has urged Brazil to ban four companies implicated in the scandal from exporting their meat to the EU, the bloc’s spokesman Enrico Brivio told reporters in Brussels.
Chile and China have already suspended meat imports from the South American country.
Confidence
IFA president Joe Healy has written to the EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis, demanding a complete import ban on Brazilian meat.
The farming body has for years accused Brazil of failing to meet EU quality controls and standards.
“No credible or proper (export) control system can effectively operate on the basis of no traceability, tagging, registration and national data base,” Healy said.
The ICMSA said there should be an immediate ban on Brazilian beef and poultry imports “until some degree of trust and confidence could be restored”.
The body’s president, John Comer, said the allegations are “of the most serious kind and must be treated as an absolute priority”.
He urged for EU standards to be applied to imported poultry and beef.
“There’s no point in operating our own certified farm-to-fork safety policy if we have even a remote possibility of this kind of stuff coming in from Brazil,” he said.
Neither the European Commission nor the Irish Department of Agriculture has made a statement on the issue.
Brazilian threat
The scandal is threatening Brazil’s reputation as the world’s biggest beef and poultry-exporting nation.
The news broke just days before the start of negotiations to seek a free-trade accord between the European Union and several South American countries including Brazil.
Brazilian meat is exported to more than 150 countries, with principal markets including Saudi Arabia, China, Singapore, Japan, Russia, the Netherlands and Italy.
Sales in 2016 reached $5.9 billion in poultry and $4.3 billion in beef, according to government data.
With reporting by Conor McMahon and AFP.
Written by Fora Staff and posted on Fora.ie
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It’s madness farmers here are meant to compete with the rubbish brought in from countries like Brazil with no standards or traceability, and to top it off we have to deal with the trickery of the owners of factories here.
@Adrian™: Few years ago there was an scandal involving horse meat being sold as beef from sick and mistreated animals in Tesco, so don’t say this kind of things happen only happen in “countries like Brazil”. What happened in Brazil is awful and I hope everyone that is responsible for that go to jail. I challenge you Adrian to stop consuming products from countries like Brazil I’ll see how will be your life like. Good luck!
@Keiner Moraes: you didn’t read my comment properly, there is no traceability in Brazil and many other countries we import beef from. Until they have traceability then we should stop imports from them. And I can survive easily without imports from Brazil as I’m a dairy and beef producer, in fact I’d do better as prices would probably increase domestically without the cheap imports from countries without traceability.
@Adrian™: Adrian this is all politically driven by the 1% richest people in the world so they can get richer. they dont care about jobs or stamdards. this is about “globalization”
@Keiner Moraes: i eat irish meat, chicken, beef, and fish that i know is local. i challenge you to try it, my life is healthier. irish beef is the worlds best and germans know it, oh inc. usa where we’re the only eu exporter. lets be like norway and take back our resources. as i said before, the rest of europe can grow lab meat.
@Keiner Moraes: only for Ireland’s traceability and rigorous testing systems the horsemeat saga would be still going on…
Why are the Irish state importing meat FFS, Is this an EU bloody idea??? Time to leave.
@Burke John: yes it is a trade agreement between the eu an brazil and u are right.
@Burke John: well its not like the irish state does the importing, its individuals and businesses that do the importing. And the EU has by far and a way the best food standards in the world, something that’s possible only because the market is so big they have leverage. As the UK is about to find out, if you go out on your own and start trading with other countries you have no choice but accept their standards, so leaving the EU is literally the worst thing you could do for food standards in this country… Not that you care though, your hatred of the EU is clearly all ideological
@Burke John: Oh yeah, lets leave the EU. Capital Idea!
Of course then our farmers won’t get that handy 1.8bn euros the EU gives them every year to allow them to compete against poorer countries with cheaper products. Countries like Brazil…
@Chucky Arlaw: ha! sugar factory in mallow closed after major investment went in to meet eu environmental stamdards but then the eu said eff it let’s import sugar from brazil and china!!
In ireland, we have the very best quality of food produced here. Dairy. Cheese Vegetables. Meat. Fruit. Bakery. Poultry. Fish. We need to protect and cherish it as it is a national treasure. Yes there are high standards and the farming community requires our support to keep it going. They are required by eu laws to meet high standards bit then are forced to sell at common world prices. So deeply unfair. And then one of our supermarket chains chooses to hive away free potatoes recently. How heartbreaking for our farmers who toil in all weathers trying to meet the high standards. Get pittance for their produce by the supermarkets who can then afford to give it for free to advertise their stores. These actions will serve to close down our biggest industry and export for which our land and weather can support but only if we appreciate irish farming and stop placing insurmountable obstacles . cjd was a major crisis and i still cannot donate blood as i lived in the uk for more than 3 months in the 80s. The food chain and our water supply is more important than stocks and shares. Silicon valley and others high status business. We cannot afford to risk contamination from imported goods therefore there should be a ban until all is clear as per our own standards.
@ARIS: 100%
@ARIS: our agri business thrived before joining Eu in 1973. after that we couldn’t compete so it’s long gone. they said “access to eu markets”, they meant german superstores will take over and buy from lowest seller…not good for us!
Stop eating meat, or reduce your intake to once a week or month and watch your health improve!
@Stephen murphy: good advice.
Also better for the Environment and the the animal of course.
@Stephen murphy: I tried cutting out meat and it damaged my muscles. I’m sticking with meat
I am with the farmers on this one.
Maybe start labelling food products that are “actually grown and processed in ireland” as Irish, instead of labelling them as being made in Ireland when they’re only processed here. i.e.: the origin being originated in other country and then processed here, thereby labelling it Irish. Absolutely ridiculous in this day and age that they get away with this. Yet another reason to be vegetarian or vegan. If you can’t even trust your own government to enforce laws and labelling then it’s a case of being better safe than sorry. (Not a 100% vegetarian by the way either).
@Melanie Vasquez: yup the major stores do this all the time. not good, excellent point. the french protect their “champagne” brand very well indeed!
Have they forgotten our own horsemeat scandal or are we to forget about that to satisfy Mr. Coveney?
Irish meat only. No foreign meat.
The trouble with letting product from countries with inferior controls is that when there is a food scare it will affect the domestically produced food also. With trade being political there is pressure politically to let in cheaper Brazilian beef that has far lower tractability, animal welfare,veterinary medicine control, disease control, production quality control and the rest. We can produce beef ion Ireland as cheap as it gets anywhere, we would be as cheap as or cheaper than Brazil if we were producing to the same low standards as they are.
Farmers have been going on for years on the lower and cheaper standards in Brazil. It’s the same with beef from the USA. They produce using hormones and have less tractability and lower standards in other areas. If we insist on European farmers producing to a standard of quality we should insist on imported product being of the same standard. European standards and regulations are not optional for European farmers.
@Mike: trump is right about 1 thing…globalization. And the 1% Win!
Why Europe imports meat from Brazil is beyond me. It contributes to deforestation. Of course the euroeejits would
Prefer to tax us for global warming rather than deal practically with this issue
@Phil Keenan: De-forestation is brazil is proven to be a major contributor to global warming. They call the amazon the lungs of the earth. i used to invest in a Robeco Fund in Holland (excellent btw) who had a green fund which included buying up an preserving amazon forest and selling on C02 credits…so win-win.
ffs sake brailian beef – transport, what about environmental cost of transportation. oh yeah can we stop importing sugar from germany and get our own factories back on track…
@gregory: Right, because we should base our economy on a product that everyone’s cutting back on, not focus on our international reputation for healthy, quality food at all.
Is Larry Goodman living in Brazil now?
If Brazilian meat satisfies European safety /traceability /non hormone etc..import it..if it doesn’t..dont..but realistically,how many of us can swear hand on heart..that that steak or chicken restaurant meal that you got for €15 .was Irish?
@Kieran OKeeffe: big red thumb
Apart from the spectacle of Irish farmers calling for banning imported beef (purely on health grounds, of course) this raises an interesting issue -
Normally authorities are slow to attack their own producers because of the inevitable cost to the industry, but Brazil seems to be on an anti-corruption binge these days, as the IOC found out!
Not so long ago Irish beef was threatened when our own authorities were doing DNA tests to detect horsemeat, which was in fact a greater problem in the UK and much of Europe where they only now do similar tests – but not before they were calling for Irish beef bans.
On the question of empathy with animals, rearing animals to eat them is brutal…while I won’t be giving up meat eating I STRONGLY call on everyone else to do so.
Let’s face it, Irish farmers want a ban on anything that’s a competitor.
@Smiley:Red Thumb x45
Time to ban Brazilian beef into the EU. They have no proper system for food production.
Larry won’t like that.
Just another reason to not eat from all the Brazilian cafes opening up around Dublin selling steak for dirt cheap.
Garlic butter on steak? Bah humbug.
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