Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

621. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his views on correspondence (details supplied) regarding pig meat imports; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [7790/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The Russian market for Irish pork is extremely important with exports in 2013 of approx. 20,000 tonnes (66.5% higher than 2012) and a value of €55m. It is one of our largest non-EU markets and the strong 2013 sales performance contributed greatly to the rise in value of overall pigmeat exports by 3% in 2013 to €525m.

In January 2014 the Lithuanian authorities discovered two cases of African Swine Fever in wild boar near its border with Belarus. They put in place the required disease control measures and informed fellow member states and the EU Commission of the outbreak. The EU Commission, being the competent authority for agreeing sanitary and phytosanitary matters on behalf of the EU informed the OIE, the international organisation for animal health.

The EU Commission proposed, under Chapter 4 of the OIE Terrestrial Animal Health Code, to provisionally exclude the affected region in Lithuania from exporting pigs and pigmeat to other countries including Russia, thereby “regionalising” the outbreak and allowing other EU Member States not affected by the disease to trade freely in live pigs, pigmeat and pigmeat products.

The value of the Terrestrial Code is twofold; the measures published in it are the result of consensus among the veterinary authorities of OIE members, and it constitutes a reference within the World Trade Organisation Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures as an international standard for animal health and zoonoses.

However, the Russian Federation and Customs Union refused to accept regionalisation of the disease and imposed a ban on all exports of pigs, pigmeat and pigmeat products from the EU certified after 26 January 2013.

A meeting took place last week in Vilnius between the EU Commission and Russian Federation and while no progress was registered the Commission continues to pursue the matter with urgency.

I am in agreement with the EU Commission that the ban is disproportionate as it does not respect the OIE rules on regionalisation. The Commission services are currently considering instigating a WTO panel action against the Russian Federation for its non-respect of the regionalisation provision.

I spoke on the matter at the Council of Ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday of this week and I confirmed that Ireland supports the Commission approach to protecting the OIE based regionalisation approach to managing animal disease outbreaks. I urged fellow Member States to continue to act as one on this issue and to show support for the Commission`s approach to dealing with the current difficulty.

I warned that time is running out for producers and processors in the EU and I encouraged the Commission to step up its efforts to find a solution soon. This solution needs to bring to an end to this unnecessary blanket ban on EU product while assuring the continued protection of the EU against the threat of animal disease.

My Department officials met with industry representatives last week to update them on developments and will continue this arrangement until the matter is resolved.

On a positive note the Russian Federation agreed this week to lift the ban on finished product containing pork subject to certain conditions and treatment of the meat before export. This however accounts for only a small proportion of our exports to Russia.