Mr. Eddie Punch:

Let us talk about our proposal for auditing the price of beef and the margins at EU level. Someone asked previously why it should be done at EU level. Deputy Cahill spoke about using the price index operated by Ornua but at one telling point, he said that when during his time in Ornua, some of the processors tried to do away with that transparency, the board was able to prevent that from happening. There are no boards in meat factories so that is the critical difference. Therefore, we must deal with this through a regulatory approach. In our view, doing it at Irish level will not work because we are an exporting country, the beef we sell predominantly goes into markets all over Europe and in many cases, the multinational retailers that sell our beef are not answerable to just one member state.

We see how Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has shown her teeth in tackling the likes of Google. That is the kind of power we need to deal with companies of this kind. There is no possibility of resolving all of the issues that prevent getting a fair price unless there is absolute transparency in naming and shaming and showing where the margins in beef production are going. Farmers spend three years breeding and feeding cattle. About three weeks are spent processing that meat, delivering it and putting it on shelves and about three days are spent selling it. We do all the work and they get all the profit. This has to be tackled. What Commissioner Hogan did in tackling unfair trading practices is only the beginning. We need a much more aggressive movement by politicians right across Europe to ensure that consumers and producers know exactly who is making what margins out of beef.

This is particularly important because the processing industry operates on the basis of unlimited private companies. Their accounts are a mystery, completely opaque to everybody. The large multinationals are public limited companies, plcs, and there is some examination of their profits, but because they are such massive corporations, we do not know whether they are making money out of selling washing-up liquid, chewing gum or meat. We need to drill down and do a granular examination of what they are making out of the critical parts of the food chain. Until we get to that stage everything else is going to be very difficult.

We have said that we want to see suckler beef marketed as a specialty product. That is critical and that is why the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association, ICSA, has been looking for protected geographical indication, PGI, status for suckler beef. That can be a help to Irish beef. If we try to secure PGI status for the entire national supply of beef, we will undermine our ability to get any niche price premium for any of it. That would play into the hands of the processors. It would put all of the beef into one massive mountain for the meat factories to do what they have always done, which is to play one group of producers off against another. We need to look at specialised prices for specialty producers.

The ICSA holds that we need to better target Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, payments at low-intensity to medium-intensity farming systems. It is all very well for Deputy Cahill to say that we should not pit one against the other, but the fact is that CAP reforms have already taken a lot of money from our members through convergence. Of course we want a fully funded CAP. Even with a fully funded CAP, however, there is not enough money to support cattle and sheep farmers adequately under the present regime. A potential 5% cut, which we hope will not happen, would make things tighter still. Choices must be made. The cattle and sheep sector and the tillage sector produce a half and a quarter, respectively, of the emissions of intensive dairying systems. They are doing the dairy farmer a favour. If we all had the emission levels of high-intensity dairying, Ireland would be in serious difficulty regarding climate change. We are keeping the wolf from the door when it comes to penalties because some farmers are using farming systems that are less intensive and produce less emissions per hectare. It is only logical that those farmers should be rewarded for that because they are helping the national interest. They are also allowing farmers who want to be more intensive to continue to be more intensive.

We must also consider the fact that the dairy expansion model has had an adverse impact on our sector. There is more to it than the number of calves. I refer to the deliberate strategy of going down the New Zealand route of raising Jersey cross and Kiwi cross calves. That has been done primarily with herds of 200 to 300 cows. Let us be honest about it. This is about pretending that one farmer can do the impossible in terms of numbers. Those are the places these calves are utilised. There is no point in putting a tooth in it. We have seen no system of beef finishing that will make it possible to finish those calves. This needs to be rethought. We are disappointed that Teagasc has not shown what could be done with a herd of Montbéliarde, Fleckvieh or British Friesian cattle. Unfortunately, Jersey cross is the predominant model used in the rush to expand dairy herds. There is a bit of a rolling back from that now, but it will take three or four generations to solve that.

The grid was mentioned. We think it needs to be reformed. The weight limits are a significant problem for suckler farmers. Last night I was looking at the Tesco offering on fake meat burgers. Two of those burgers can be bought for €7. This goes back to the point we are making. We have got to get on top of what retailers and processors are doing to our sector. They have told us for years that consumers will not pay any more than €10 for two steaks, which are high-quality natural products with nothing added. However, they are selling two fake burgers for €7, even though the beef burger, the genuine article, costs considerably less. How are they managing to get this money out of consumers? The reality is that we are being led astray as to what consumers will or will not pay for. Interestingly, 27 ingredients go into the Tesco British version of the fake burger. It is packed in the UK using plant products grown in the USA. They may be genetically modified. Who knows what the regulations in the USA are? This stuff is brought in here and sold as a premium product, yet we are told that we cannot get any more than €10 for two steaks. We are told that minced beef has to be sold at half price to get it off the shelves. Somebody is codding somebody here. It all goes back to the need for a tough regulatory approach at retail and processor level. We must have this. In our view, every politician in every member state must stand up for this. Commissioner Margrethe Vestager would not tolerate Google completely controlling the Internet, yet we do not seem bothered by allowing a couple of multinational corporations to control the food chain. That is where we have to start and that is the central point we want to make on this.