Title: Senior director.

Organisation: Meat Industry Ireland (MII).

Companies represented: Irish beef, lamb, pigmeat and poultry processors.

What is the Irish meat industry’s view of the proposed EU-Mercosur trade agreement?

The view of Meat Industry Ireland (MII), which represents the Irish meat processing sector, is that the EU–Mercosur trade deal is a sellout of the domestic beef sector in Ireland and the EU. If it goes ahead, Europe’s beef sector will pay dearly for gains made by other parts of the EU economy (cars, machinery, services, pharma, etc).

How would the trade agreement damage the EU meat sector?

The four Mercosur countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay) already account for over 80% of beef imports into the EU. In 2018, Mercosur beef exports to the EU stood at 270,000t. Granting these countries access for an additional 99,000t will be extremely damaging to the EU beef market. However, Brexit remains the critical issue as a no-deal Brexit would cause massive disruption to the European beef market before any Mercosur deal could be signed. If the UK crashes out of the EU at the end of October, not only will we face major issues for our traditional beef trade to the UK market, but Mercosur countries and other global suppliers will also get access to the 180,000t import quota that the UK Government has signalled.

How will the Irish beef sector be affected?

As the main beef exporter to EU countries, Ireland will be hit first and face the greatest impact of all member states. Irish exporters are already facing a challenging EU beef market, with consumption under serious pressure and the threat of a no-deal Brexit. The market can ill afford additional volumes of lower-priced South American beef.

How do you think the Mercosur countries will use this quota?

The European Commission is being disingenuous when it asserts that the new quota only represents only 1% of all EU beef consumption. Our fear is that the Mercosur countries will use this quota to export steak cuts to the EU. Less than 10% of the meat from every animal is used for steak cuts yet these cuts represent 30% of the value of the animal. The entire production of EU steak cuts is about 700,000t. If Mercosur exporters are allowed to supply this new quota of 99,000t as steaks cuts, then this represents 14% of the EU steak market. Mercosur steak prices are about half of EU price levels. If the Commission is serious about “carefully managed quotas” then it needs to ensure that all this beef is not allowed to be supplied as steak cuts. A fresh/frozen quota split will not achieve this.

Can anything be done to limit the potential damage?

MII continues to say that any quota concessions to the Mercosur countries should comprise a natural balance of cuts from the beef carcase and not just steak cuts. 99,000t of steak equates to 3.3m cattle whereas 99,000t supplied in the natural balance of cuts equates to only 300,000 cattle.