Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The development of a dairy sustainability and quality programme comes against the background of ambitious plans under the Food Harvest 2020 report to increase dairy production by 50% in the period to 2020, and the need to find a home on international markets for this additional production.

We are taking a series of steps on a number of levels to prepare for this. State agencies, the Department and companies are working together to restore new markets in areas such as Asia, the Middle East, Russia and Africa. We are also developing a common brand, Origin Green, across the food industry generally. This is about differentiating Irish food from food produced in competitor countries. Essentially, it is a sustainability claim backed up by data that are internationally accredited in respect of how food is produced in Ireland. Part of building that brand requires a sustainability and quality programme for primary producers of dairy projects. This is why, in last year's budget, I announced that I wanted to see the rolling out of a quality or sustainability programme among the 18,000 dairy farmers in the country to ensure we could stand over our collective dairy industry and say we produce milk to a certain standard. This will not be some kind of inspection-based witch-hunt of farmers; it will be quite the opposite. We will roll out the programme in the same way that the carbon-footprinting programme has been rolled out for the beef sector. By the end of this year, 32,000 beef farms across Ireland will be carbon-footprinted. When we sell a steak, not only will we be able to put on the label the traceability claim indicating the farmyard from where it came, we will also be able to tell buyers the carbon footprint of the animal that produced it.

We want to provide similar sustainability claims for dairy production in Ireland. Bord Bia is working with all the interested parties and farming organisations to ensure we get buy in from farmers and that we insulate the Irish dairy industry from price volatility in the future on the basis of quality and the data we collect which can prove sustainability.

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