It looked like an easy win

Imported beef from Brazil was linked to a company managed by the chair of Ireland’s food promotion body, Bord Bia. A headhunting exercise ensued. Rarely are things as simple as they seem. With backing from his board members and the government – from the Taoiseach down – and his own insistence that there was no wrongdoing involved in his meat supply hedging exercise, Larry Murrin held firm.
When does taking a principled stand against seeming contradictions in roles and actions become an unfortunate distraction? That is what ultimately happened in the 'Great Bord Bia standoff'. While principles must be upheld, we live in a messy world of compromises and practicalities. Irish beef is high quality, certified and sustainable. At least these are the intended outcomes of our Origin Green certification process. Produced in Ireland, fully traceable from conception to the butcher’s fridge, we can stand proudly over our produce. 

Buffered 

Yet, let he or she who is without sin cast the stones at others. The diets of our beef and dairy herds, our sheep flocks and our pigs are buffered with imported grains, including protein sources. Much of that buffering is supplied by Brazilian farmers operating under considerably different production protocols from Irish or European tillage farmers. Genetically modified grains are widely grown not only in South America but also across most of the world outside of Europe. Our food quality legislators consider their use to be unsafe and have banned them for many years. Whether there is any real danger from their use is neither here nor there. The regulations must be obeyed. We, as individual livestock producers, must carefully consider whether our production systems are compromised by the use of animal feed products that are, in many cases, banned from being produced in the European Union. We cite necessity as a valid excuse for the use of livestock feeds produced under conditions that are inimical with European production standards. Necessity may be the mother of invention but it hardly qualifies as a valid argument for compromising our production standards. Given that the EU cannot, or at least does not, produce adequate tonnages of grains or protein-rich products to feed our livestock herds, the rationale is that this feed deficit provides us with a cleverly constructed and reasonable excuse for compromising our widely touted food quality standards. 

A need to delve deeper

Various fact-finding missions to South America by Irish farmer representatives over the years have, in comparison to European regulatory standards, uncovered inferior food production methodologies, including low traceability, the use of growth promoters banned in Europe and slackness in the control and administration of antimicrobial and other veterinary products. A similar delve into crop production would show widespread use of glyphosate-resistant grain varieties and genetically modified plants, as well as the continuing application of several crop protectants that are no longer approved for use in the EU. Meanwhile, the importation of Brazilian beef is a cause of major concern for Irish farmers, especially when the importer is linked to Bord Bia, which administers a quality standards system which has had the full endorsement of Irish livestock producers. The importer cites the necessity of evaluating and testing alternative sources of meat, in the event of some catastrophe afflicting European and Irish supply lines. At the same time, it is recognised that European beef supplies are in decline, so alternative supply lines will inevitably have to be explored over time. There is also the uncomfortable fact that thousands of tonnes of South American beef are already being legitimately imported into Europe, with no obvious adverse impacts on human health. What is one sector’s necessity is, apparently, another’s discretion.