Ms Henrieta Jany-Roskova:

Under normal conditions, for example, it is not possible to have an agreement between several farmers and a processor where they agree for the farmers to implement additional animal welfare objectives and agree on a fixed price. For example, if a farmer needs to have bigger stables, allow for animals to graze outside, carry out additional checks for animal welfare or reduce the use of antibiotics for the animals, this comes with a risk that there may be a reduction in the quantity produced. This also comes with a risk that there may be additional costs for complying with this more ambitious environmental or animal welfare and animal health standard, going beyond what is mandated by Union or Irish law. The farmer can agree with a retailer or processor to have a higher price if this is necessary to achieve this higher objective. Under normal conditions, these are hard restrictions to competition law and the farmer would not be allowed to do this. The idea was, in addition to the public funding from the CAP budget or from the national resources for additional sustainability initiatives, to have a market-based approach, allowing the market to pay for those additional sustainability efforts undertaken by the farmers.