Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)

The price of feedstuff is a worldwide issue and is based on biofuels, increased population and a very competitive world market. India and China are the largest buyers of food. It is also based on weather conditions and many of the grain growers have lost their crops in desperate weather. It is on that basis that we will move ahead with the issue of setaside in 2008 for the production of cereals. On the issue of synchronisation and GM, Herculex will be passed by the Commission. There are two other varieties in the ground in the US and the process of consultation with the Europeans on recognition has not started. That is a serious issue. There is also the issue of access to maize on the basis that some of these GM products will not be available. There will be competition in the United States for biofuels initially and for farmers who feel the easier option is not to separate varieties but sell the combined product to China and India. We will work towards addressing these concerns at the beginning of next year.

Deputy Crawford is correct that the pig and poultry sectors have been very difficult because of many of these issues on world feed price markets. We will work with the industry to see what we can do in terms of supports.

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