Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

The broken record is sitting in the Seanad. If Deputy Naughten has a problem with the Seanad he should take it up with his Senators. They all agreed that this Bill should be implemented as quickly as possible. We are all in agreement. It will happen and I will take a strict approach to the labelling of beef and this will continue to other products.

Equivalence and equality are the issues. I have raised the concerns we all have on traceability, identification and residues with the Commissioner. As I indicated in my response, the FVO is dealing with it.

The overall problem is that within the European Union we have a beef deficit. Banning the importation of beef would be problematic from a food availability point of view. That said, I feel if we introduce measures to ensure people are aware and consumers are informed, they will make choices. The issue of the price of beef is equally important to us. I have a problem with other countries, particularly the United States, telling us we must import Brazilian beef while they are not prepared to do so, nor are they prepared to allow us to export our beef to the United States, Japan or North Korea. This is the main issue with which we need to deal at WTO level.

I am not in a position to fully ban beef from Brazil on the basis that it is regionalised. During the foot and mouth disease crisis here, we used regionalisation to ensure we had a continuity of production available to the market.

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