12,000 angry men: the IFA beef blockade becomes a courtroom drama
As the millennium began, the IFA embarked on a protest at the gates of beef processors across the country. The beef sector had endured a very challenging decade since BSE had first been found in Irish cows.
Beef from eight selected counties had been banned from Russia, a major export market that had all but collapsed as a result of the links between BSE and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in the human population.
Farmers had to adjust to finishing cattle earlier, as over 36-month cattle became unwanted and margins remained poor to non-existent for finishers.
Farmers finally reached breaking point as the decade turned. In early January of 2000, the IFA decided to place pickets on beef plants right across the country. Its primary demand was 90p/lb for O3 steers, the equivalent of just under €2.50/kg today.
It seems a very modest price now, but back then, it would at least be enough to stop farmers from haemorrhaging losses.
Cattle stopped going in and beef only went out by agreement on a load-by-load basis. Tar barrels became furnaces on the long winter nights, as farmers operated in shifts to maintain a 24-hour presence.
It was a blockade that would escalate to high drama in the High Court.
The beef processors quickly lost patience, expressing fears that markets and customers hard won would be lost. They laid workers off, and went to court to seek an injunction against disruption of trade.
Farmers weren’t employees, and didn’t have the right to form a picket, the High Court said, imposing a fine of £100,000 a day.
The IFA continued to maintain a presence at beef factory gates, paying the fine and continuing their action. Then, on Monday 17 January, the High Court increased the fine to a prohibitive £500,000 a day.
The IFA held an emergency council meeting that evening. In a breathtaking move, the IFA president Tom Parlon, livestock chair Raymond O’Malley and the entire national council resigned en masse.
The IFA had effectively disbanded. At factory gates around the country, farmer numbers swelled in solidarity, with no identifiable ringleader. No member of this new regime, dubbed the “provisional IFA” was reported for a breach of the injunction.
The IFA had outmanoeuvred the beef barons, and individual factories began to strike deals as the second week of protests ended.
Parlon and the rest of the IFA’s national leadership were triumphantly returned to their positions, but relations between processors and the farm organisations were damaged.
Funeral pyres of thousands of animals were a common sight on the evening news in 2001 during the Food and Mouth crisis.
Stop the clocks: Ireland comes to a standstill to combat foot and mouth
It all started on 19 February 2001, when a case of the dreaded foot and mouth disease (FMD) was discovered in a pig slaughtered in Essex.
By the time authorities had traced the source of the infection to a big farm on the far side of England, up in Sunderland, it was too late.
The disease swept across the country, with funeral pyres of thousands of animals a common sight on our evening news.
Ireland moved quickly and decisively to prevent the spread of infection across the Irish Sea.
Animal imports were banned, and biosecurity was stepped up at ports and airports, with every vehicle coming into the country washed down.
Animal movement restrictions were imposed across the country, permits were needed to transport livestock to an outfarm or to a processing plant.
Despite all the restrictions, a case of FMD was diagnosed on a farm in Jenkinstown, Co Louth, on 22 March.
This case was linked back to a consignment of sheep that came from Carlisle into Northern Ireland, and from there illegally sent to slaughter plants in Navan and Athleague.
Offaly farmer John Walsh, who owned the sheep, was eventually jailed for his role in this chain of events.
Any animals that had any contact with Walsh’s lorry, and all the livestock on the farm they were traced to, were destroyed as a precautionary measure.
As the scale of the threat became apparent, even more drastic steps were taken. Ireland’s final three Six Nations rugby matches were postponed until the autumn. Forests were closed to the public.
Agricultural shows, including the Tullamore Show and the Ploughing Championships, were cancelled. Farmers were required to apply for permits prior to any movement.
Was it worth it? Over six million sheep and cattle were slaughtered in the UK, so undoubtedly yes. Farmers in the border region suffered most, particularly sheep farmers on the Cooley peninsula.
A high degree of co-operation between authorities north and south led to a “Fortress Ireland” approach to maximise the advantages of being an island. This same approach successfully kept bluetongue largely at bay in 2007-08.
The closure of the Carlow sugar factory came as a shock.
The beet doesn’t go on: Irish Sugar closes Carlow and Mallow factories
In January 2005, Greencore announced the closure of the Carlow sugar factory. It came as a tremendous shock; Carlow had been the first factory built in 1927, and its demise would leave Mallow as the only plant left, with Tuam and Thurles having closed in the 1980s.
Greencore made a commitment to invest €25m in upgrading Mallow, increasing its capacity. It also claimed the move was in anticipation of the imminent reform of the EU’s sugar regime.
When the detail of that reform was unveiled during the summer, it emerged that compensation would be paid to processors for factory closures. However, the prior announcement meant Carlow wasn’t eligible, losing out on €730 for every tonne of sugar quota surrendered.
There had been outrage among all farmers at Greencore’s decision. The recently appointed Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, was called on to use the “golden share” the government held in Irish Sugar, which had been a semi-state body until privatisation in 1991.
It turned out there was little legal standing behind the share. It became apparent that one attraction for closing Carlow was the high development value of the site.
Meanwhile, farmers split as to whether to pursue the retention of beet growing or to chase compensation. The Midland growers, formed from some former Carlow suppliers, believed there was no long-term future in beet production, and an early surrender of Ireland’s quota would yield a high payment to farmers from a commission grateful for co-operation.
The IFA’s sugar beet section (formerly the BVA) fought tooth and nail against closure, supported by the president John Dillon.
The 2005 campaign saw beet transported to Mallow by road and rail, but when the factory gates closed after a marathon season, closure seemed likely. Irish Sugar asked farmers if they would be willing to grow beet for processing in 2006, perhaps hoping for a negative response.
When farmers indicated that they would, in fact, grow beet despite the challenges of price and transport, Irish Sugar quickly announced the closure of Mallow on 16 March 2006.
This was despite Irish Sugar making a profit of €10m in it’s last year of processing beet, albeit under the old regime.
In 2010, an EU Court of Auditors report found that the closures were “needless”. Subsequent attempts to revive beet processing, most notably Beet Ireland, failed to come to fruition. There is a difference in the economics of maintaining a beet processing industry in the EU’s unprotected market and re-establishing one. Meanwhile, Greencore completely exited the Irish agri-business sector.
Thankfully, it sold the malt business to Boortmalt, having rationalised tonnage significantly. Boortmalt has more than doubled it again since. The lands in Carlow were sold for €1.6m in 2024, the lands in Mallow were sold in 2023 for €2.2m.
100,000 Irish pigs had to be slaughtered as a result of the pork dioxin crisis.
Total recall: the pork dioxin crisis
On 6 December 2008, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland announced that contaminated animal feed had been supplied to 37 beef farms and nine pig farms across the Republic of Ireland.
Eight beef farms and one dairy farm in Northern Ireland had also been supplied with the contaminated feed.
The issue was elevated levels of dioxins in the feed, it was explained. While there was no public health issue, the decision was being taken to recall all affected pork products because of the scale of the elevated dioxins, which were discovered to be 80-200 times the EU’s legal limit.
The recall was to apply to all products dating back to September. Because of the impossibility of tracing which products were affected and which weren’t, all pigmeat products were being recalled for destruction. In addition, 100,000 pigs were to be slaughtered and their meat destroyed.
With the pig sector reeling at the news, it emerged that Millstream Recycling, which converted bread and other human food waste products into animal feed, was the plant that had supplied the contaminated feed.
Owner Robert Hogg returned from his honeymoon to a blaze of publicity. It was established that the source of the problem was contaminated fuel in the burner used in the recycling process.
The diesel had been contaminated by toxic waste oil from electricity transformers which was mixed in at some stage.
In 2010, Millstream was awarded €38.7m in damages against O’Neill Fuels of Coalisland and later a further €34m against Newtown Lodge, a fuel distribution company which had supplied the fuel from O’Neills to Millstream.
It is understood both companies folded, and while his name was cleared, Robert Hogg and Millstream received little if any payment for damages.
The whole affair cost the state close to €150m in compensation payments to processors and farmers, but the reputation of Irish meat exports was upheld by the speed and scale of the recall.
It led directly to testing of all animal feed for dioxins, and indirectly to DNA testing of all pigs, allowing individual identification of porkmeat products.
12,000 angry men: the IFA beef blockade becomes a courtroom drama
As the millennium began, the IFA embarked on a protest at the gates of beef processors across the country. The beef sector had endured a very challenging decade since BSE had first been found in Irish cows.
Beef from eight selected counties had been banned from Russia, a major export market that had all but collapsed as a result of the links between BSE and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in the human population.
Farmers had to adjust to finishing cattle earlier, as over 36-month cattle became unwanted and margins remained poor to non-existent for finishers.
Farmers finally reached breaking point as the decade turned. In early January of 2000, the IFA decided to place pickets on beef plants right across the country. Its primary demand was 90p/lb for O3 steers, the equivalent of just under €2.50/kg today.
It seems a very modest price now, but back then, it would at least be enough to stop farmers from haemorrhaging losses.
Cattle stopped going in and beef only went out by agreement on a load-by-load basis. Tar barrels became furnaces on the long winter nights, as farmers operated in shifts to maintain a 24-hour presence.
It was a blockade that would escalate to high drama in the High Court.
The beef processors quickly lost patience, expressing fears that markets and customers hard won would be lost. They laid workers off, and went to court to seek an injunction against disruption of trade.
Farmers weren’t employees, and didn’t have the right to form a picket, the High Court said, imposing a fine of £100,000 a day.
The IFA continued to maintain a presence at beef factory gates, paying the fine and continuing their action. Then, on Monday 17 January, the High Court increased the fine to a prohibitive £500,000 a day.
The IFA held an emergency council meeting that evening. In a breathtaking move, the IFA president Tom Parlon, livestock chair Raymond O’Malley and the entire national council resigned en masse.
The IFA had effectively disbanded. At factory gates around the country, farmer numbers swelled in solidarity, with no identifiable ringleader. No member of this new regime, dubbed the “provisional IFA” was reported for a breach of the injunction.
The IFA had outmanoeuvred the beef barons, and individual factories began to strike deals as the second week of protests ended.
Parlon and the rest of the IFA’s national leadership were triumphantly returned to their positions, but relations between processors and the farm organisations were damaged.
Funeral pyres of thousands of animals were a common sight on the evening news in 2001 during the Food and Mouth crisis.
Stop the clocks: Ireland comes to a standstill to combat foot and mouth
It all started on 19 February 2001, when a case of the dreaded foot and mouth disease (FMD) was discovered in a pig slaughtered in Essex.
By the time authorities had traced the source of the infection to a big farm on the far side of England, up in Sunderland, it was too late.
The disease swept across the country, with funeral pyres of thousands of animals a common sight on our evening news.
Ireland moved quickly and decisively to prevent the spread of infection across the Irish Sea.
Animal imports were banned, and biosecurity was stepped up at ports and airports, with every vehicle coming into the country washed down.
Animal movement restrictions were imposed across the country, permits were needed to transport livestock to an outfarm or to a processing plant.
Despite all the restrictions, a case of FMD was diagnosed on a farm in Jenkinstown, Co Louth, on 22 March.
This case was linked back to a consignment of sheep that came from Carlisle into Northern Ireland, and from there illegally sent to slaughter plants in Navan and Athleague.
Offaly farmer John Walsh, who owned the sheep, was eventually jailed for his role in this chain of events.
Any animals that had any contact with Walsh’s lorry, and all the livestock on the farm they were traced to, were destroyed as a precautionary measure.
As the scale of the threat became apparent, even more drastic steps were taken. Ireland’s final three Six Nations rugby matches were postponed until the autumn. Forests were closed to the public.
Agricultural shows, including the Tullamore Show and the Ploughing Championships, were cancelled. Farmers were required to apply for permits prior to any movement.
Was it worth it? Over six million sheep and cattle were slaughtered in the UK, so undoubtedly yes. Farmers in the border region suffered most, particularly sheep farmers on the Cooley peninsula.
A high degree of co-operation between authorities north and south led to a “Fortress Ireland” approach to maximise the advantages of being an island. This same approach successfully kept bluetongue largely at bay in 2007-08.
The closure of the Carlow sugar factory came as a shock.
The beet doesn’t go on: Irish Sugar closes Carlow and Mallow factories
In January 2005, Greencore announced the closure of the Carlow sugar factory. It came as a tremendous shock; Carlow had been the first factory built in 1927, and its demise would leave Mallow as the only plant left, with Tuam and Thurles having closed in the 1980s.
Greencore made a commitment to invest €25m in upgrading Mallow, increasing its capacity. It also claimed the move was in anticipation of the imminent reform of the EU’s sugar regime.
When the detail of that reform was unveiled during the summer, it emerged that compensation would be paid to processors for factory closures. However, the prior announcement meant Carlow wasn’t eligible, losing out on €730 for every tonne of sugar quota surrendered.
There had been outrage among all farmers at Greencore’s decision. The recently appointed Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, was called on to use the “golden share” the government held in Irish Sugar, which had been a semi-state body until privatisation in 1991.
It turned out there was little legal standing behind the share. It became apparent that one attraction for closing Carlow was the high development value of the site.
Meanwhile, farmers split as to whether to pursue the retention of beet growing or to chase compensation. The Midland growers, formed from some former Carlow suppliers, believed there was no long-term future in beet production, and an early surrender of Ireland’s quota would yield a high payment to farmers from a commission grateful for co-operation.
The IFA’s sugar beet section (formerly the BVA) fought tooth and nail against closure, supported by the president John Dillon.
The 2005 campaign saw beet transported to Mallow by road and rail, but when the factory gates closed after a marathon season, closure seemed likely. Irish Sugar asked farmers if they would be willing to grow beet for processing in 2006, perhaps hoping for a negative response.
When farmers indicated that they would, in fact, grow beet despite the challenges of price and transport, Irish Sugar quickly announced the closure of Mallow on 16 March 2006.
This was despite Irish Sugar making a profit of €10m in it’s last year of processing beet, albeit under the old regime.
In 2010, an EU Court of Auditors report found that the closures were “needless”. Subsequent attempts to revive beet processing, most notably Beet Ireland, failed to come to fruition. There is a difference in the economics of maintaining a beet processing industry in the EU’s unprotected market and re-establishing one. Meanwhile, Greencore completely exited the Irish agri-business sector.
Thankfully, it sold the malt business to Boortmalt, having rationalised tonnage significantly. Boortmalt has more than doubled it again since. The lands in Carlow were sold for €1.6m in 2024, the lands in Mallow were sold in 2023 for €2.2m.
100,000 Irish pigs had to be slaughtered as a result of the pork dioxin crisis.
Total recall: the pork dioxin crisis
On 6 December 2008, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland announced that contaminated animal feed had been supplied to 37 beef farms and nine pig farms across the Republic of Ireland.
Eight beef farms and one dairy farm in Northern Ireland had also been supplied with the contaminated feed.
The issue was elevated levels of dioxins in the feed, it was explained. While there was no public health issue, the decision was being taken to recall all affected pork products because of the scale of the elevated dioxins, which were discovered to be 80-200 times the EU’s legal limit.
The recall was to apply to all products dating back to September. Because of the impossibility of tracing which products were affected and which weren’t, all pigmeat products were being recalled for destruction. In addition, 100,000 pigs were to be slaughtered and their meat destroyed.
With the pig sector reeling at the news, it emerged that Millstream Recycling, which converted bread and other human food waste products into animal feed, was the plant that had supplied the contaminated feed.
Owner Robert Hogg returned from his honeymoon to a blaze of publicity. It was established that the source of the problem was contaminated fuel in the burner used in the recycling process.
The diesel had been contaminated by toxic waste oil from electricity transformers which was mixed in at some stage.
In 2010, Millstream was awarded €38.7m in damages against O’Neill Fuels of Coalisland and later a further €34m against Newtown Lodge, a fuel distribution company which had supplied the fuel from O’Neills to Millstream.
It is understood both companies folded, and while his name was cleared, Robert Hogg and Millstream received little if any payment for damages.
The whole affair cost the state close to €150m in compensation payments to processors and farmers, but the reputation of Irish meat exports was upheld by the speed and scale of the recall.
It led directly to testing of all animal feed for dioxins, and indirectly to DNA testing of all pigs, allowing individual identification of porkmeat products.
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